No clue, but it certainly won’t be up to me. When I’m dead that’ll all be up to the ones left behind. What point is there in satisfying the wishes of someone that’s already dead? They won’t care any more.
I'd say the law is a good reference for that. Some countries legislate inheritance and related topics different from others. Some let the person decide exactly what happens with their inheritance and under which conditions, others have more generic rules to go to the next of kin and don't have the concept of wishes.
Well, that's why wills exist.
If you decided to split your wealth between your grandchildren when you passed away, should that wish be discarded now because you're dead so who cares?
Because you're (hopefully!) not an asshole of a human being?
If the dying wish of a man costs you nothing to execute, why not? Men are brought into this world regardless of their wishes, can't men at least exit this plane of existence according to their wishes?
That’s not a very good argument in the case in question. The sons made money by publishing the book.
Sure, but this is for the satisfaction and closure of the living, not for the dead. The dead aren’t satisfied, or anything else really.
Because the concept of honor should transcend death, come on.
What would human kind have gained from not having read The Metamorphosis or The Trial and so many others?
I made this argument in this thread, but come to think of it there's an opposite argument too:
If honor was worth more, Kafka's works describing life as a hellish landscape of bureucratic indifference, betrayal, control, and alienation, wouldn't have been as descriptive of the state of humanity.
>What would human kind have gained from not having read The Metamorphosis or The Trial and so many others?
If they have gained honor, that would have been worth 1000 Trials and Metamorphosis.
If they haven't, and just read them violating Kafka's request, they'd be the person The Trial and Metamorphosis protested about, just another cog in the machinery of humilliation and degradation.
Betrayal, control and alienation are exactly what informs Kafka's request. Faith (in his friend, in art) and openness are what inspired his friend not to obey Kafka's wish born out of that alienation and shame.
Bureaucracy never enters into this at all. There is no humiliation, Kafka is considered to be one of the greatest writers ever.
First of all, the request was in a letter. His friend (they were friends for decades) found the letter, it's not like he agreed beforehand. Secondly this friend was a writer himself. No one knows more the embarrassment and shame that can come from looking at one's own art as much as another artist, but this is just inherently the nature of making art, and what are friends for if not to shake us out of that wrong view that we get from our perspective being too close?
Frankly I think you're making lofty claims for their own sake. This is not a matter of "humanity gaining honor", it was a matter of a man believing in his friend's art, and the rest of us benefiting from that "betrayal".
Nailed it!
Sure, most people would feel terrible about doing that. But you would keep that promise out of respect, not because the dead are hurt by breaking it.