Nietzsche's Guilt Sparknotes
The Origins of Guilt In both Nietzsche’s book The Genealogy of Morals and Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, both authors address the origins of guilt and the effects it has on society. While they both address these origins, the two philosophers differ in their beliefs. Nietzsche deduces that guilt is a result of a man turning inward. Freud on the other hand relates guilt to the subconscious struggle between the ego and the superego. To understand Nietzsche’s version of the origin of guilt, some background information is necessary. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche introduces the reader to two different types of morality; the slave morality and the Noble morality. These two types of morality are at odds with each other, the slave morality develops specifically as a result of the critique of the master morality.
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This new type is defined as Priestly. The priest considers himself pure, however Nietzsche criticizes the priestly type because they internalize values and turn away from the world, avoiding worldly pleasures as a result. The priestly class introduces thinking to the nobel type and Nietzsche claims that man becomes an interesting animal as a result. It is this introduction of thinking and inwardness that results in guilt. From these feelings of guilt a sense of bad conscience develops. Conscience as defined by Nietzsche is “the proud awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility” and the “power over oneself and over fate” (The Genealogy of Morals, Section 2) meaning essentially that a man with good conscience has an awareness over his abilities and has the power to fulfill the responsibilities he takes upon himself. The man with good conscience is driven by his own measure of self worth, a sort of self reverence; while the man with bad conscience is driven by the fear of guilt, or
This new type is defined as Priestly. The priest considers himself pure, however Nietzsche criticizes the priestly type because they internalize values and turn away from the world, avoiding worldly pleasures as a result. The priestly class introduces thinking to the nobel type and Nietzsche claims that man becomes an interesting animal as a result. It is this introduction of thinking and inwardness that results in guilt. From these feelings of guilt a sense of bad conscience develops. Conscience as defined by Nietzsche is “the proud awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility” and the “power over oneself and over fate” (The Genealogy of Morals, Section 2) meaning essentially that a man with good conscience has an awareness over his abilities and has the power to fulfill the responsibilities he takes upon himself. The man with good conscience is driven by his own measure of self worth, a sort of self reverence; while the man with bad conscience is driven by the fear of guilt, or