Kafka’s Genius Philosophy

Franz Kafka wrote about some really dark feelings most of us experience, such as failure, nightmarish powerlessness, self-loathing and anxiety. Kafka turned his nightmares into art and stories. In this video I discuss Franz Kafka by looking at his life, then summarise and analayse six of his novels and short stories and finally ten lessons we can learn from him. Kafka is one of the profoundest novelists of the 20th century.

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0:00 Intro
01:16 Kafka's brief biography
06:51 Kafka's 3 novels and 3 short stories
19:58 Ten Lessons from Franz Kafka

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[Fiction_Beast]

Franz Kafka dedicated his life to literature. Unfortunately he didn't get to enjoy it as his fame and success came after his death. So this video is to celebrate his life and his work, but also the lessons he offers us, a century later. I hope you enjoy the video and take a few things away from it.

[Endymion]

Kafka doesn't give sad endings necessarily, just "normal" endings, aka, disappointing ones, because that's how it usually goes in real life. Almost everything is a disappointment eventually. I think that's why so many people can relate to those stories so much.

[monochrome]

I think he found freedom by writing, his father was controlling, he was unsatisfied with his job, and unhappy with his relationships it's almost like he was a prisoner of life and was aware of it

[crookedpaths]

Kafka is one of the few writers that doesn’t give a happy ending. It is quite liberating.

[maskedproductions]

‘The Metamorphosis’ was the first and only book that has ever made me cry, and at the time I didn’t fully understand why. But as I’ve gotten older I think I understand that it’s because the story and all of Kafka’s works are so hopeless and filled with struggle, which are so much more relatable to modern life than typical books, that have happy endings and a purpose. Kafkas books are sad, yet so much more real. Anyways, that’s why he’s my favorite author. :)

[cgong]

Kafka is one of writers I love the most. He is 100 years ahead of his contemporaries on realizing these and put them in writings.

[audreyheart]

"life sometimes has no meaning/sense, is a nightmare even"..."sometimes we're all alone"... "sometimes life itself is a trial, our value to society and to our family is only as long as we're a provider, useful, and productive member. Once we're no longer able to do that, we have no worth".... "Artists need an audience to motivate them, to sustain them. This is an innate human desire to be admired by others." "The poor man shouts but they cannot hear his voice. He is so poor that he has become invisible, weightless, and inaudible." -Franz Kafka

[RiteshRauniyarL]

The first sentence "I'm free and that's why I am lost", I totally get it and am going through the same phase. 😅

[tehreemamjad]

1: beauty of failure
2: life is full of interruptions
3: life is absurd
4:We are all alone
5: Life is full of irony
6: knowledge is relative
7: we are not sacred
8: individual autonomy
9: alienation is universal
10: tell stories

[paulkossak]

What I found in much of his writings was his sense of irony, saying one thing but meaning another. One of his lines has always stayed with me. "Please sleep faster, I need the pillow"

[PZBrooklyn]

I enjoyed the video, but it is important to recognize Kafka's humor. His books are tragic but hilarious, filled with absurdity. He enjoyed reading them aloud to his friends, which would frequently be interrupted by his own uncontrollable fits of laughter (I'd do anything to witness one of those readings!). This humor is what makes his work so wonderful--a good example are the ridiculous, annoying assistants in the Castle.

[dev]

Here are some more ironies that life thrusts on our face: 1) Medicines are supposed to cure diseases, but taking them causes adverse side effects that may bring in other diseases 2) Junk food is bad for health, yet they are the tastiest and are very difficult to give up once you get addicted to them 3) We try desperately to finish a task to enjoy leisure, but once we have leisure, we can't decide what to do with it, and end up working through our leisure hours 4) We crave human company, yet when we get it, we are repelled by differences of tastes and opinions and start craving for solitude 5) We need a job to feel worthy, yet working in a cubicle like a robot makes us feel more worthless than ever 6) We think of death as the ultimate release from suffering, yet when we actually die, we don't feel any sense of release because death ends not only the pain, but also the capacity to experience release from the pain

[threethrushes]

Playing the same musical refrain on repeat for 33 minutes was a deliciously Kafkaesque move.

[yearofthegarden]

This is very relatable for me. I've never read Kafka but hearing the summary of his stories, it reads like my own life timeline. I've essentially dropped my own success to focus on giving towards my family, but now that I am 35 years old, that family really is just a few disfunctional people who can only bring up memories of a time in my life where I was held back, and any interest in participating with me towards a greater communal end is met with blatant disinterest. Often as a 20 something I pushed myself to the extremes of going into the cold mountains in december for the challenge of struggling to be present in order to survive, and always romanticized with myself about never coming back down. Yet I always push and my will to survive is strong.
I used to be a workaholic, I had goals, ambitions, created a community around me, but as life unveiled the lack of interest in who I had built myself to be, and makes it more clear every day that by giving myself towards moral indignations, I am setting myself up to suffer over the long course, from lack of material and wealth, which require no explanation, but the moral purpose seems to read like an excuse for lack of material success.

I am quitting my career as a farmer/gardener/mycologist to focus on digital art, because art diffuses the time which can easily be filled with over stimulated through, and art is the only true way to present an message for those to be attracted towards. I don't anticipate becoming massively successful over night, as I am about 15 years behind where I would have been if I didn't quit my clothing company business to learn to grow food so that my family won't suffer in the future of resource scarcity, but at least I am leaving the cycle of dead end ambitions, to start compiling together a new life of my own design.

[nickvoutsas]

I believe that Kafka has the unique ability of writing down bid nightmares. Nightmares help us resolve problems thereby allowing us to face the next day more optimistically. What Kafka taught me is that many problems are not resolved even though they seemed resolved in our awake life. It's when we live our nightmares that's when we see reality. Kafka has a great deal of faith and does believe because he sees through the veneer of daily life and injustices of man. He has not lost hope but rather he sees truth hoping in love which the world denied him. Normal people have nightmares resolve some and live to see another successful day, Kafka lived his nightmares and when he died he resolved his living nightmares and is at peace with his creator. Sometimes to die is to live and in his life he experienced many dead end deaths but in death he discovered eternal life.

[ss-grlt]

Hey man. Just wanted to express my sincere gratitude for how respectful and in-depth you explore authors and their works, regardless if they are japanese, russian, german or what not. I am in awe of your knowledge and your ability to share it in these documentary videos. Please keep doing your thing. Nobody on YT does it better as far as I'm aware! Much love

[nicholasleonard]

I feel for him. So much. I churn out novella after novella. Poetry collection after poetry collection. I stray so far from what everyone else does. I love making art, but the lack of love for my art is crushing. I'm never going to stop though, because of people like Franz.

[dominicfernando]

Your channel is underrated mate, one of the healthy aspects of YouTube is you get to watch these types of videos for free. What an outstanding analysis.

[vidyeshwarprasad]

TREMENDOUS!!! Such a qualitative, brilliantly scripted, comprehensive n engagingly narrated upload on the one n only one :Kafka! I remained hooked from start to end as if I was watching a riveting movie.Thanks a lot Fiction Beast!

[justsomebloke]

I found so much to resonate with Camus. Kafka's understanding of absurdity seems to be his method of surviving the knowledge that weighs on him. I know it works for me.