Outlived by a lesser shamelessness: the inscrutable subject and sensuality before the Law in Augustine, Dostoevsky and Kafka

Abstract

This essay sets up a constellation of Augustine, Dostoevsky and Kafka. The paper will demonstrate how for these figures, self-knowledge is compromised in related, but differing ways. How can the subject maintain their identity as categorically different from its impressions, and what is the role of law therein? For Augustine, self-knowledge becomes a problem due to the structure of time, but also because of the way in which God perceives us. Between Dostoevsky and Kafka, there is a development wherein the role of God is usurped by that of a secular law, and God's judgement is deferred. If for Dostoevsky, secular law can be an instrument of divine law, for Kafka the distinction, and more importantly the hierarchy between them, seems unsustainable. The evidence to examine these hypotheses by has to do with sensuality and sensory perception: how does the subject navigate the world? The trajectory moves from the Augustinian Christian opacity, to Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov and Kafka's The Trial, drawing an arc from a religious and phenomenological ontology to a modern imaginary of an existence increasingly irredeemable. Indeed, this essay joins the contemporary discussions of critically engaging with subjectivity, as a bio- and psycho-political liability.