Week 7: Michael
Kohlhaas Lecture 1
Heinrich von Kleist 1777-1811
Prussian nobility
1801 “Kant crisis”
Kant’s Critical Philosophy: How do we know what we know?
Through categories put there by mind
Some things cannot be known; only
believed
Kleist’s understanding:
this means that we cannot know Truth, God, Reality
and this is a disaster
Letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge
If all people had green glasses for eyes, they
would have to judge that the objects they see through them ARE green and they
would never be able to determine whether their eyes showed them the things as
they are or whether they added some property which does not belong to the
thing, but to the eye.
And so it is with understanding. We cannot determine whether that which we
call truth really is truth, or whether it only appears to be.... My only, my
greatest goal has disappeared, and now I have nothing left.
This crisis is reflected in writings that
question TRUTH, CERTAINTY, RELIABILITY OF PERCEPTION
1811
Kleist’s suicide
Chronicle of Hans Kohlhase
1532 Horses confiscated by nobleman
1534 HK stops petitioning
1540 Executed in Brandenburg
TERRORISM: The systematic use of terror, violence,
and intimidation to achieve an end.
Limited elective monarchy
Emperor, Imperial Diet, numerous territories and
ranks of territorial lords
(Dukes, Margraves, Princes, Counts, Barons,
Bishops, Archbishops)
Junker = Prussian nobleman
HRE was allied with the Catholic Church until
the REFORMATION
[next lecture]
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Michael Kohlhaas as
“narrative of justifiable violence”
Complications in the simple vengeance plot:
I. GREEN GLASSES
We
can’t be sure of the information we get
reported, overheard, interpreted
II. DOUBTS ABOUT THE LAW
Three
jurisdictions
Prince
for each jurisdiction
Many representatives
of each prince [law becomes less clear at each step]
III. CONFUSIONS OF AGENCY
Who
actually does things here?
How much is
accomplished through agents, representatives, intermediaries?
How much of the crime
against Kohlhaas did Wenzel von Tronka actually perpetrate?
Who is responsible for
the things Kohlhaas does in the countryside?
IV. MEDIATION
Just as the green
glasses mediate our perception of objects, so do the intermediaries intervene
in the direct and exact administration of law.
p.120
Bureaucracy and the
fragmentation of and elaborate classification of authority
The tale itself is an
unmanageable bureaucracy
Very
little is “im-mediate” in this tale (except for MK’s insistence that
Wenzel
fatten the horses personally)
V. AMBIGUITY
OF LEGAL PROCEEDINGS all the
doubling!
2
states (MK has
a home in each)
2
Electors
2
Princes of
Hinz
and Kunz
Kohlhaas
and Nagelschmidt
Lisbeth
and the gypsy woman
Heinrich
and Leopold
But, despite all the uncertainty and mediated
agency, the idea of JUSTICE is strong and singular in MK’s mind.
MY THESES:
Kleist’s tale is driven by the idea of an inner
“sense of justice” that often conflicts with state laws and the manner of their
application. This sense of justice is,
to an extent, a shared sense that connects with the inner idea of justice that
many of us have and this accounts for the sympathy of the narrator and
approving public opinion. But in
Kohlhaas it is excessive and in this excess of justice are the roots of what we
now call terrorism: “But his sense of justice made him a robber and a murderer”
(114).
Furthermore, the tale, written during the years
of
