Guilt and Its Limits

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Frederick Nietzsche in "The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo" sees guilt as essentially a Western and Christian construct imposed upon classical civilization. In comparison, the paper looks at "The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric and Repression" by Thomas Szasz, which discusses the metaphor of medical treatment through psychiatry as a treatment for guilt.

From the Paper:

"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."

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