Continuing the Fiction: From Leibniz' "petite fable" to Kafka's In der Strafkolonie

Theodicy has failed. This is hardly news, of course. In 1791 Kant had announced as much in his essay "Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee." ¹ The philosophical-juridical project Leibniz launched in his Essais de Théodicée failed to do what it promised: vindicate the justice of God in the court of finite reason. With the announcement of this failure, Kant was hardly making news, for the theodicical project had long before lost its strength. And even in the Essais de Théodicée themselves, as their last lines, the announcement is made: the "essays" have failed. Leibniz, of course, does not proclaim this verdict; instead, he allows Athena to insinuate it. At the very end of the "petite fable," ² with which he concludes the only philosophical treatise whose publication he oversaw, Leibniz places the following words of wisdom into the mouth of its goddess: "Le crime de Sextus sert à de grandes choses; il rend Rome libre, il en naitre un grand Empire, qui donnera de grands exemples. Mais cela n'est rien au prix du total de ce monde, dont vous admirerés la beauté, lors qu'apres un heureux passage de cet etat mortel à un autre meilleur, les Dieux vous auront rendu capable de la connoitre" (L, 364, italics added). Theodore, whom Athena addresses, is not even capable of knowing what he wishes to know; but what he wishes to know is nothing other than the answer to the question posed by the Essais de Théodicée as a whole: as the representative of all those loyal servants of Jove who, for this reason, cannot fail to ask about the nature of his goodness, Theodore expresses the astonishment in which the project of "theodicy" is first generated: "vos fideles adorateurs sont etonnés: ils souhaiteroient d'admirer vostre bonté, aussi bien que vostre grandeur" (L, 362)--and yet Athena, to whom Jove immediately thereafter dispatches Theodore for the purpose of theodicical instruction, concludes her lesson by speaking of nothing other than "grandeur." With this, then, she announces--however quietly--the failure of all philosophical essays in theodicy.

Leibniz' "petite fable" is not his own free invention; it derives from Lorenzo Valla, who concludes his Dialogus de libero arbitrio with a discussion of the legitimacy of Sextus Tarquinius' suit against the gods for the fate to which he is condemned. Insofar as Valla fails to bring his own fiction to an end Leibniz claims the right to conclude his own treatise by doing so: "m'étant souvenu de Dialogue de Laurent Valla sur le Libre-Arbitre contre Boëce [...] j'ay cru qu'il seroit à propos d'en rapporter le precis, en gardant la forme du dialogue, et puis de poursuivre où il finit, en continuant la fiction qu'il a commencée" (L, 367). By "continuing the fiction," Leibniz turns Valla's discussion of Sextus' suit into a story of Theodore's education under the auspices of Athena; neither student nor pupil appeared in Valla's dialogue. Since the instruction also fails, however, the fiction must be continued once again. For Leibniz, continuation consists in resumption: Theodore will be able to know what he wishes to know once he has passed from this mortal condition to a better one. But the continuation of the fiction can be understood in another manner altogether--as a resumption of the "petite fable" under the presumption that the lesson Athena seeks to impart cannot, in principle, be learned. Not only are all philosophical attempts at theodicy doomed to fail, but so, too, is Athena's other--and more elementary--lesson: how to understand an original scene of reading. Such is the case with Kafka's In der Strafkolonie, ³ as if it were the parodic fulfillment of Athena's prophecy that Theodore's instruction would someday resume. For Kafka's fiction repeats...