The Way of Oblivion: Heraclitus and Kafka

by David Schur

If Heraclitus is one of our most ancient writers, Kafka seems especially modern. They share in a struggle between disclosure and obscurity that is perhaps as old as writing itself. In this lucid and engaging volume, David Schur takes us from philosophy to literature and back in a sustained examination of a fundamental philosophical metaphor: the way or path of method. Through close readings of texts by Heraclitus, Plato, Heidegger, Blanchot, and Kafka, he follows the development of a rhetorical commonplace into a distinctly Heraclitean paradox of method, concluding that Kafka's account of the way beyond mortal existence renews Heraclitus's emphasis on oblivion in the search for truth.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674948033
• ISBN13: 9780674948037
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Harvard University Department of Comparative
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.2" x 8.2"