"The fall is the proof of our freedom" : mediated freedom in Kafka

In Totality and Infinity, Levinas proffers a radical critique of philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Martin Heidegger. This consists in questioning the assumption that philosophy starts with the question, "ti esti" or "what is." The question of existence inevitably leads to totality, that is, to a structure that eliminates difference because it seeks to subsume alterity to the subject's representations. According to the tradition that asks "what is?" the ideal of human fulfilment is freedom. Conversely, Levinas proposes a sense of imprisonment that is more primary than freedom. The suspicion against freedom and the attempt to find a productive sense of imprisonment bind Levinas to Kafka.1 A complex sense of imprisonment traverses Kafka's works, from Gregor Samsa's confinement in his room in the Metamorphosis, to the land-surveyor's entrapment in the village seeking access to the castle, to Josef K.'s generalized imprisonment in a city where everyone judges him as guilty in the Trial. By focussing on imprisonment, Kafka converses with philosophy, if not directly, at least on a conceptual level that engages polemically with the idea that freedom is the goal of human existence.