Abstract
This essay re-examines Kafka's reactions to the theme of the death of God. While focusing primarily on The Great Wall of China, it also compares this story to several other texts by Kafka, The Castle in particular.
Moreover, it takes into account earlier commentaries, chiefly by Robert Alter, Wiebrecht Ries, Ritchie Robertson, and Hans Dieter Zimmermann. When it comes to Kafka's relation to Nietzsche, the imagery used by Kafka is sometimes conspicuously Nietzschean.
However, Kafka's texts were influenced by other sources as well, for example by Kierkegaard. Moreover, they are marked by profound indeterminacy.
They are, therefore, open both to religious and to non-religious readings; and they do not deny the existence of God, they merely cast doubt upon it. More specifically, the article argues that Kafka demonstrates that God, though possibly existent, does not control the life of human communities; and that religious traditions may prevent the reception of divine revelations.
Kafka's skepticism, nonetheless, permits that religiousness might belong to the proper mode of existence. The concluding section explains, in reaction to Adorno, in what sense Kafka should elicit humility.
As the article establishes by comparing his texts with the classic Czech author Němcová, the supreme authority expresses itself in Kafka only indistinctly. One cannot decide whether its ostensible manifestations are truly divine or merely "dreamed up".
Everyone thus ought to be aware that no answer to the unknown is sufficiently justified.