analyzation of texts

Guilt and its limits as a positive force upon the human condition -- two texts grappling with this central issue, from Nietzsche the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo and the Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing As Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression by Thomas Szasz

From the hectoring Jewish mother to the penitent pilgrim standing in the Christian confessional, to patient upon the psychiatrist's couch, guilt has proved to be a powerful motivating force in modern society as well as the ancient world of morality. Or thus "sprach" conventional wisdom, to coin a phrase of Frederick Nietzsche, in regards to his famous construction of Zarathustra. In other words, this commonly expressed human sense of guilt has often, across a wide variety of cultures and historical times, been viewed as a positive influence upon human life and human moral society. Nietzsche, in his The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo sees guilt as essentially a Western and Christian construct, imposed upon classical civilization. However, even after the overt emphasis on guilt regarding human life has begun to ebb in terms of its Christian stress, guilt remains a strong strain in even secular, Puritanical societies, from the 9 to 5 grind of the work day, to the alleged obligations one owes to the sacrifices made by one's family for one's success.

Also, the common images of the motivating forces of guilt, it should be noted, existed even in a classical context, in the punishing view of some underworlds, including that of the Greeks and Romans where individuals suffered torments for defying the Gods, and even in non-Christian contexts such as the son of the Jewish joke, the strains of guilt live on within our culture. Guilt drives us, conventional wisdom suggests today, even shorn of Christian iconography, to get up in the morning and go to work to earn enough money to buy our children bread and to honor our obligations as citizens in paying taxes to the government that protects us with its military and system of laws -- protects us against ourselves as well as against others. Conventional wisdom also speaks to us as moral actors, that guilt creates a sense of motivation to do good towards others, according to the golden rule of doing unto others as one would have done to one's self. Guilt even when suppressed is thus a moral force of beneficial influence upon the human condition, says the dogma of American morality.

Nonsense, says the German philosopher Nietzsche in his book The Genealogy of Morals. Guilt has nothing to do with one's true emotional relationship with one's loved ones or one's physical and mental obsequies to a Christian or even a pagan God. Rather, guilt is merely hatred of the self, turned inward. Guilt is all about how one feels about one's self as a son, mother, child of God, or child of the confessional, and has nothing to do with anything larger, more significant, and more beautiful. Such suggestions are merely the lies of a constructed societal -- which, for Nietzsche, meant a Christian -- philosophy with no true psychological truth in its basis. The construction of such a lie of guilt was merely designed to serve the leaders of the church and the leaders of the state.

In other words, guild is only a negative psychological motivating factor, and its motivation is merely to stymie all that is good about the human spirit rather than serving to expand the potential of the individual condition. Thus, Nietzsche suggests that the death of Christian and other sweeping dogmas regarding morality and the cultural death of God thus has the potential to serve the full scope of humanity and the individual human being, rather than to create an immoral universe. Long before patients sat upon the therapist's couch, musing over the minutia of their daily lives that drove them into guilty frenzies, obsessing over the difference between spending quality rather than quantity time with their children, Nietzsche suggested that one must let go of one's inner hatred to become fully realized as an individual self.

In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche suggests that rather than, for instance, the emotion of guilt encouraging people to become better parents, such an instillation of guilt in the hearts of children whom become parents, simply force individuals to act angrily towards their children. Thus individuals personally frustrate themselves, never realizing their full potential as super-humans by selfishly allocating enough leisure time to pursue pleasure. They do not become better parents out of guilt. Rather, the emotions of guilt are simply channeled into unprofitable emotional aims, rather than into profitable emotional aims that might seem selfish, but ultimately would benefit all of human culture.

For instance, the guilty parent is more apt to kick the dog, kick his or her spouse, and yell at the children whom have done no offense other than being born to such guilty parents. By society inspiring such guilt, society creates self-destruction and the harm of others. Individuals are above all forced to turn the ire and anger inspired by guilt inward or against the channels in their life that have no real influence upon the inspiration of that guilt in the cultural fabric. The guilty person is forever found slamming the door and slamming his or her heart to all of the stifled impulses of the soul. Better to be selfish for one's self and for one's society, than to be guilty and selfless.

Lest this seem like too radical an ideal, it is worth reflecting that many feminist philosophers since have reproached women for not being selfish enough as entrepreneurs, writers, or people, out of guilt regarding living up to the feminine ideal, an even more selfless and self-abnegating ideal than that of the male self. By putting their personal dreams into the futures of their husbands and sons, rather than striving to realize their own dreams, women become frustrated because of guilt. The end result has been unhappy husbands, hectored by their wives, children forced to live the dreams of frustrated women, and women whom were not able to fully give the world all that they desired to give it, namely books as well as babies.