The Moral Meaning of Babel: Kafka, Ahad Ha'am, Borges

Abstract

Abstract:The moral meaning of the Tower of Babel is diaspora, but there are many thoughts of diaspora. A comparative evaluation of disapora thoughts is needed. I compare two esoteric ones, that of Ahad Ha'am and Jorge Luis Borges, with some reference to Franz Kafka, in order to evaluates the effects of a pattern of dispersal on a human community. In the battle between Borges's and Ha'am's diaspora thoughts, the more radical and morally better pattern belongs to the less radical thinker. Both commit to a negative concept of diaspora. Borges commits, however, to an absolute diaspora, in which a person or a people can only get lost. Ha'am commits to a relative diaspora, in which a people takes its orientation continually from multiple vectors of distance and foreignness.