To elaborate, the vague feelings of guilt and responsibility in a postmodern reading of Kant serves as a subjective correlative of the fate that befalls Kafka's protagonists -- especially Joseph K. in _The Trial_. For those who don't remember, in _The Trial_, Josef K, a respectable bank officer, gets suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge of which he knows nothing and cannot get any information.
***** Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested....
...K. was informed by telephone that a brief inquiry into his affair would take place the following Sunday. He was notified that such inquiries would now be held on a regular basis, perhaps not every week, but with increasing frequency. On the one hand, it was in the general interest to bring his trial to a rapid conclusion; on the other, the inquiries must be thorough in every respect, yet never last too long, due to the strain involved. Therefore they had selected the expedient of this succession of closely spaced but brief inquiries to avoid disturbing K.'s professional life....
..."But I'm not guilty," said K. "It's a mistake. How can any person in general be guilty? We're all human after all, each and every one of us." "That's right," said the priest, "but that's how guilty people always talk." ... "You misunderstand the facts of the matter," said the priest. "The judgment isn't simply delivered at some point; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgment." "So that's how it is," said K. and bowed his head....
...On the eve of his thirty-first birthday -- it was around nine in the evening, when the streets are quiet -- two gentlemen entered K.'s lodgings.... he stood up immediately and regarded the gentlemen curiously. "So you are meant for me?" he asked. The gentlemen nodded, each pointing with the top hat in his hand toward the other....
..."The only thing I can do now," he [K.] said to himself..., "the only thing I can do now is keep my mind calm and analytical to the last. I've always wanted to seize the world with twenty hands, and what's more with a motive that was hardly laudable. That was wrong; do I want to show now that even a yearlong trial could teach me nothing?... I'm grateful they've sent these half-mute, insensitive men to accompany me on this journey, and that it's been left to me to say myself what needs to be said."...
...They were soon out of the city, which in this direction bordered on open fields with almost no transition. A small stone quarry, abandoned and desolate, lay beside a building which was still quite urban....
...After a brief polite exchange about who was responsible for the first of the tasks to come...one of them went to K. and removed his jacket, his vest, and finally his shirt.... The men sat K. down on the ground, propped him against the stone, and laid his head down on it. In spite of all their efforts, and in spite of the cooperation K. gave them, his posture was still quite forced and implausible. So one of the men asked the other to let him work on positioning K. on his own for a while, but that didn't improve things either. Finally they left K. in a position that wasn't even the best of those they had already tried. Then one man opened his frock coat and, from a sheath on a belt that encircled his vest, drew forth a long, thin, double-edged butcher knife, held it up, and tested its sharpness in the light. Once more the nauseating courtesies began, one of them passed the knife across K. to the other, who passed it back over K. K. knew clearly now that it was his duty to seize the knife as it floated from hand to hand above him and plunge it into himself. But he didn't do so; instead he twisted his still-free neck and looked about him. He could not rise entirely to the occasion, he could not relieve the authorities of all their work; the responsibility for this final failure lay with whoever had denied him the remnant of strength necessary to do so. His gaze fell upon the top story of the building adjoining the quarry. Like a light flicking on, the casements of a window flew open, a human figure, faint and insubstantial at that distance and height, leaned far out abruptly, and stretched both arms out even further. Who was it? A friend? A good person? Someone who cared? Someone who wanted to help? Was there still help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? Of course there were. Logic is no doubt unshakable, but it can't withstand a person who wants to live. Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he'd never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers.
But the hands of one man were right at K.'s throat, while the other thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. "Like a dog!" he said; it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him. *****
Postmodern ethics merely restates the subjectivity of modernist aesthetics, and Lacan gives us an especially conservative version of this restatement.
Yoshie