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ABSTRACT
In several contexts Nietzsche claims that he wants to free humanity of the affect of guilt. He also argues that we are not ultimately responsible for who we are or what we do because libertarian free will is a false belief invented for the purpose of legitimizing judgments of guilt. Combining these related threads of argument, we arrive at what would seem to be an uncontroversial conclusion: Nietzsche does not think guilt is an apt response to wrongdoing, and he therefore thinks we ought to dispense with the feeling of guilt altogether. I argue against this conclusion by offering a comparative analysis of two kinds of guilt Nietzsche discusses in his works, reactive guilt, which is a reaction to an act of wrongdoing, and proactive guilt, which is a drive or desire to make oneself feel guilty. Here I offer an account of Greek guilt as a species of reactive guilt, and I argue that Nietzsche only rejects proactive guilt, which is endemic to Judeo-Christianity.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter, Ken Gemes, Pamela Hieronymi, Eric Schwitzgebel, Coleen Macnamara, Mark Johnson, Tom Hanauer, Iain Morrison, and the attendees at the ISNS conference in Oxford for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Please consult the references for the abbreviated works of Nietzsche. See also HA 114, 132, 133; D 78, 87; TI VI, 8; A 25-6; and, most importantly, GM II.
2 Leiter (Citation2019, 125–146) argues that Nietzsche rejects compatibilist free will as well. The analysis of Greek guilt that I provide in Section 3 will make it clear that I deny the implication that legitimate experiences of guilt require the belief in free will on Nietzsche’s analysis (libertarian or otherwise). For further defence of this claim, see Snelson (Citation2021).
3 Prior to the formation of bad conscience, the indebted agent is of course able to recognize that others judge him to be deserving of punishment, but this is not a judgment the agent makes against himself. The thought ‘I should not have done that’ (GM II, 15) never occurs to the wrongdoer because this reflexive judgment of guilt must result from a ‘pang of conscience’ (GM II, 14). I will expand on these remarks in Section 2.
4 The significance of guilt being ‘personal,’ as opposed to ‘impersonal,’ is that guilt is a feeling an agent experiences after violating obligations she imposes on herself, or that she takes to be legitimate and binding for her. This contrasts with the notion of debt, which is an impersonal obligation because it is imposed on the agent by someone else with the power or authority to punish. For example, if A thinks lying is morally wrong, telling the truth has the status of a personal obligation for A, and it would be natural for A to feel guilty for breaking a promise. If, on the other hand, B feels compelled to keep promises simply because others expect B to, B is only indebted and might feel nervous or fearful for breaking them but would not feel guilt.
5 Zamosc (Citation2011) defends a similar claim.
6 These are generalizations. It is possible that there were some Greeks, perhaps contemplative types, who internalized their aggressive drives to a greater degree and were thus more prone to guilt, as well as some Christians, perhaps warrior types, who internalized their aggressive drives to a lesser degree and were less prone to guilt.
7 This presumably is how wrongdoers reacted to punishment in the early days of that nebulous and lengthy period Nietzsche calls the ‘morality of custom,’ which was initially responsible for the formation of conscience as a memory of rule-prohibitions, ‘I will nots’ (GM II, 3). See Snelson (Citation2019) for analysis.
8 In another context Nietzsche draws an analogy to children. Prior to the ‘consciousness of guilt,’ wrongdoers were ‘punished … as parents even today punish their children, from anger over an injury suffered’ (GM II, 4). Young children do not feel guilty for their actions because they are largely oblivious to moral demands and expectations, just like the criminal.
9 Analogously, they did not relate to obligations or debts as ‘personal’ obligations (GM II, 8), as obligations they imposed on themselves (see note 4).
10 To be clear, Nietzsche thinks the felt discomfort associated with internalized aggression occurred prior to the conceptualization of such feelings as guilt. Feeling bad is prior to judging bad. Nietzsche then argues that these feelings get interpreted by the ascetic priest as guilt for our sins (GM III, 15–20). I will argue in the next section that we should leave open the possibility of interpreting guilt in other ways.
11 Nietzsche makes a similar, and perhaps clearer, point about beauty. ‘For what would be “beautiful” if contradiction had not first come to a consciousness of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself “I am ugly”?’ (GM II, 18). Bad conscience made the self-recognition of ugliness possible as our aggressive drives began venting themselves on those aesthetic features of oneself that one’s society viewed as undesirable or inferior. We can imagine ugly people initially feeling shocked and saddened at being teased for these features, much like Spinoza’s criminal, but after the development of bad conscience they would begin to feel ashamed for possessing them.
12 Risse (Citation2001, Citation2005) explicitly defends this position. Other scholars, including Clark (Citation2015) and Leiter (Citation2015), are committed to it implicitly. Two notable dissenters are Janaway (Citation2007) and Reginster (Citation2011).
13 To be clear, the passage is ambiguous whether the ancient Greeks had a concept of guilt or merely a concept of debt (since Schuld could be translated as either). I address this issue below.
14 Keeping something at ‘arm’s length’ implies that is already present. Perhaps bad conscience was experienced only briefly, dimly, or inchoately, but it must have been there in order to be ‘pushed away.’
15 This just brings the question of his culpability into sharper focus: If the rage was the cause of the kidnapping, and Agamemnon was not the cause of the rage, why would he accept responsibility for the kidnapping? Williams’ answer is that he was ‘immediately the cause of what happened; that is why he must pay’ (Citation1994, 54). This would hardly seem to settle the issue since he was not himself in that moment according to Williams. The example also resembles a Frankfurt-style manipulation case, but according to such an analysis Agamemnon would not be responsible for what he did. It does not seem to be the case that, as Frankfurt would say, Agamemnon has ‘done what he wanted to do, that he did it because he wanted to do it, and that the will by which he was moved when he did it was his will because it was the will he wanted’ (Citation1971, 94). Specifically, the last condition is violated. The will by which he was moved was not the will he wanted; it was a deviant will whose source was Zeus (or so he says after the fact). This would make Agamemnon akin to Frankfurt’s unwilling addict, but then why take responsibility? I favour a Strawsonian analysis of this case for these reasons, according to which Agamemnon is making a plea for temporary exemption (see Strawson Citation1962, 78).
16 The Greeks distinguished between a ‘shame that merely followed public opinion and a shame that expressed inner personal conviction’ (Williams Citation1994, 95–96). Williams defines shame as a response to being seen in a compromised or vulnerable position involving a loss of ‘power’ or control (Williams Citation1994, 220). In the first kind of shame one’s public image or reputation is compromised; in the second kind of shame one’s personal image or integrity is compromised (Williams Citation1994, 96). While outer directed shame might be occasioned by a recognized failure to conform one’s conduct to the expectations or behaviours of others, the source of which might be the ‘herd instinct’ (GS 116–117) and not bad conscience, the inner form of shame would require internalization.
17 At the ISNS conference in Oxford, Brian Leiter countered that Agamemnon might feel shame or take responsibility for reasons of honour without experiencing guilt so long as he lacked free will. In this case Agamemnon would resemble the fated criminal (considered in Section 2) who doesn’t feel guilty because he had no choice in how he acted. I have no decisive objection to this reading – it offers another valid way of interpreting Agamemnon’s reasoning. It is not what Agamemnon means to convey according to Williams, however, and more importantly for my purposes, it’s not the lesson Nietzsche draws in the passage under consideration (GM II, 23). Nietzsche is there making a claim about motives – not free will – and how the Greeks assessed those motives given their beliefs in the gods and their relationship to bad conscience (or lack thereof). To interpret him as making a claim about free will there seems gratuitous.
18 As argued in Section 2, this also means that deeper souls would be those that have harsher stances toward their natural drives, corresponding to more stringent normative standards concerning their expression. Cue the ascetic priest whose ‘gaze is directed greenly and maliciously against physiological flourishing itself’ (GM III, 11).
19 As argued by Janaway (Citation2007, 142).
20 See Snelson (Citation2017) for analysis. I’d also like to thank Ken Gemes for noticing a historical error in an earlier version of the paper, and for the instructive conversation that followed.
21 Janaway (Citation2007, 138) provides further evidence. Nietzsche conspicuously begins referring to Schuldgefühl, which is naturally interpreted as feelings of guilt (as opposed to debt), in the aphorism prior to explaining Schuld’s ‘moralization’ (GM II, 21).
22 Like Gay Science 125, thank you to Brian Leiter for bringing it to my attention.