Kafka and the Ethics of Alienated Consciousness: A Divine Philosophical Literary Reading

Repository abstract

This paper applies Divine Philosophical Literary Analysis (DPLA) to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. It examines alienated consciousness through human dignity, authority, shame, failed recognition, constrained agency, responsibility, and human becoming. The study argues that consciousness may deepen even when effective agency narrows, and it develops four refinements to DPLA: separating recognition from agency, analysing power relation by relation, distinguishing shame from guilt, and treating unresolved becoming as a legitimate literary outcome.

Abstract by Mukata Dangi, as published on Zenodo. CC BY 4.0.