A Christian Crisis of Modernity: Intellectual Confrontations with and within Christianity at the Time of Kafka

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)

Abstract

This chapter offers some theological background material to encourage and equip Kafka scholars to interpret the quasi-religious quality of Kafka’s work not as a straightforward ›secularisation‹ of religious concerns (as has been as popular in Kafka studies), but against the background of the internal complexity of religion itself. The chapter opens with a summary of recent criticisms of the ›secularization thesis‹ by philosophers, historians and literary biographers. It then discusses some key tensions inherent in the Judeo-Christian tradition: between history and metaphysics, and between immanent and transcendent aspects of divinity. These tensions defined some of the most interesting intellectual conflicts of modernity, and are creatively engaged by Kafka.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationKafka, Religion and Modernity
Place of PublicationWürzburg
PublisherKönigshausen & Neumann
ISBN (Print)9783826054518
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Publication series

NameOxford Kafka Studies
Volume3

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