The Genealogy of Morality - Essay Example

Analysis of Shame and Guilt through the works of Sigmund Freud- Civilization and Its Discontents and Friedrich Nietzsche - on the Genealogy of Morality Shame and guilt have in time proved to be hard phenomena to distinguish since both come as a result of painful emotions. According to Frank (2006), the experience of shame is directly about oneself with a lot of emphasis on personal evaluation. In guilt, the focus is on the subject or something done based on negative evaluation. Once you examine Frank’s description of the two, it is clear that shame is personal and an eccentric emotion brought about by negative emotions like depression, anger, poor health, domestic violence, suicide and drug abuse. The party affected by shame will try to withdraw from the society and hide in the bid to defend themselves from shame. Having a sense of shame is having awareness in self about the shame and the ability to acknowledge negative acts in a responsible manner. This feeling is accompanied by modesty, humility and deference. The psychodynamic theory of Freud puts it out that guilt comes from our behavior. The theory makes guilt to have a pervasive and persistent character that hides in oneself. It also suggests that we built a defensive mechanism to protect us from the guilt we would go throw if we knew how bad our negative desires are. Freud has widely linked guilt with its related negative emotion of anxiety. Nietzsche links the origin of guilt to the transition period between the ancient society and the modern world where people live in harmony. Societies have been harmonized with the emergence on religion as part of the human life (Maruna, 107). The main idea is that the cruelty and the tough animalistic behaviors that helped mankind survive during the ancient times of hunting and gathering are no longer requited. Guilt has various causes and the most obvious reason that result to guilt is involving a negative act that harm others indirectly of directly causing physical or psychological harm. People may also do harm to themselves by violating their cords of conduct. Because humans are naturally egocentric, guilt makes us assume that others are of great importance in our thoughts and actions than we actually do. Guilt is also sourced from something that one may want to do but still undecided. Freudian defense mechanism of repression states out guilt has denial for hidden desire (Teubert et al 43). This mechanism fails because once an individual fails to accept his or her flaws; it may be easy to fall for them. Guilt also arises from something we think we have done. For instance, a case where one only wishes and perhaps it’s a negative perspective directed to someone. If the event of the wish comes to pass, guilt fills us up because we think the evil wish came as a result of our intention. In the second essay of Friedrich; “Guilt, Bad Conscience and the like”, he suggests there is no moral overtone in the concept of guilt (Greer 99). He uses the word in a pretext showing the similarity of guilt to debt. A person on dept was guilty and the creator could make good on the debt by punishing the debtor. The main aim of the punishment was to bring pleasure to the creditor rather than making the debtor to feel bad. According to Friedrich, the punishment was cruel but cheerful since after the punishment there would be no hard feelings afterwards. A modern society has laws that are set to the basic cord of conduct. According to Friedrich in his comparison of a society to a creditor, once one breaks the set cords of conduct, they will have wronged the society and just like the creditor, the society is set to execute punishment. Nietzsche in the second essay has brought it out that the origin of guilt is in the transition period between the ancient and the contemporary world. Human beings in this modern harmonized with the emergence on religion as part of human life hence cruelty and tough animalistic behaviors like killing, stealing and self survival that helped mankind survive during the ancient times of hunting and gathering are no longer required in the modern society. Sigmund brings in a notion of shame and guilt as being a condition that originated from fear of discipline by close kin, especially one’s father which latter changed to fear of the community. According to Sigmund, shame is enforced by external forces like the witness or the subject of wrong doing while guilt is enforced by internal force which is one’s conscience (Maruna et al 34). The main aim of guilt is to make the society cohere while an individual will feel guilty for going against the cord of the society .one can feel guilty even at the thought of even breaking the rules where the actual event of breaking rules might have not happened. A simpler way of understanding Freud’s theory of guilt is that it’s not the super-ego we must look into but to the Hebraic conception of God. According to many, he is the judge who uses a single standard to judge every man. God, as Freud puts it, is the cause of consciousness and a father figure in an individual mind. and the concept that the father figure as per many religions is omnipresent and follows one around watching your deeds. Guilt builds up because of the state of mind set that someone is watching you. Guilty as per Freud is the ultimate price paid by someone who belongs to society because civilized societies have specific set of rules and norms which at one point of life bone has to break them(Teubert et al 43). The emotion that comes with breaking norms is usually hidden behind anxiety and discontent. The external force behind guilt is mostly on religion basis and Freud ponders on this external force as heavenly powers. Nietzsche brought out master-slave morality which criticizes the claims of traditional morality which include both secular theories like the utilitarianism and religious precepts, tend to favor the ideas and principles the the majority feel pleased with and the majority will make the minority not to freely practice his choice of behavior. This leads to the ultimate corruption of the will of the society and the majority society will term it as a breach to the set cord of conduct. Guilt will build up because of the continuous denial of the set rules. Shame is present because people will fear curtain characteristics that make them feel inferior and the characteristics will make them stand alone not to expose their inferiority. One can view morality systems at best if they are directly compared to like the way Friedrich compared Christians and pagans. For pagans, pride and honor are key traits but in Christianity one with meekness and humility is seen to be on the right side. The two draw their conclusion that pagans face public shame while Christian’s have private guilt. Christians value mercy .forgiveness while pagans value justice and societal hierarchy. Both the values attested in Christianity and paganism, their lies internal self critic which results to guilt. Slave morality has always been a power strategy for the few elites who use guilt and shame channeled to the week and they eventually accept their place in the society unless they struggle to come out of the situation they have been placed. For instance a poor person is looking at this classy rich person, envy develops deep within the poor person then it turns to resentment against them-selves for not being the rich. Morally, the poor feel superior brcause they make a conclusion that the rich are evil. For Nietzsche, moral values show presence of a deep psychological attitude toward general life. Christianity, Muslim and societal ideas like Marxism encourage not their subscribers the will to power but put more emphasis on equality, humility and pity (Greer 99). These virtues restrain people from reaching full potential. For instance the western culture which is builds on democracy and equality because those who express the will to amass power are restrained. The few who try to avoid democracy are termed as bad by the majority hence most dictators and monarchical rulers withdraw from the general society who resent them. Emotions play major role in the daily lives of mediating the competitive nature of modern social interactions. So shame and guilt being moral emotions have great influence and it also links moral standards and moral behavior. Guilt improves your moral direction. When one feels they have done something wrong they have a chance to correct their level of societal sensitivity and the urge to change. Guilt and shame is the best way the human brain to punish human once they wrong. Psychologists presume that people prone to guilt and shame are less likely to involve themselves in activities that may lead to shame or guilt It feels terrible and bad to experience guilt but the truth is that it means your morals are fine according to your society People who have undergone through shame will seek to change the situation and seek power which will help them overcome their shame by trying to be better so as to avoid future shame. For instance Martin Luther King mobilized guilt felt by African Americans and it bore positive results because when the collective guilt became strong, racial segregation was stamped out(Greer 99). Guilt can help prevent wars and conflict. Once one party goes against the moral settings guilt can be a major instrument in compelling them to apologize. For instance if you want to kill someone, guilt comes in and prevents the actual event from taking place. Guilt and shame is a powerful tool although while using it one must be careful because it can be both negative and positive. Shame and guilt can be maladaptive because they easily destroy one’s self esteem and once the self esteem is destroyed a person will have self doubt. This will easily topple every aspect of human life because the heart, body and soul are involved in esteem issues. One can easily develop unhelpful behaviors like taking drugs or forming unhealthy relationships. Shame will make a person to seek to become a perfectionist to avoid future shame while others will continually with or without intention blame others for their faults, problem and mistakes. The extreme is when a victim of shame starts to have self condemning character, talking negatively about themselves and this can lead to an event of suicidal case. Shame is difficult to deal with than guilt because guilt arises on something we are relative to and it’s easy to apologize and let go of the feeling. Shame can be as a result of external pressure that one cannot control like in a rape case. Guilt can make you become fearful and one can dread not to speak publicly or do something because you fear for the unknown. Status quo happens to be the comfort zone because of the withdrawal effects hence life stagnation. The party affected by shame will try to withdraw from the society and will try as much as possible to hide the shame and will defend themselves. Having a sense of shame is having awareness in self about the shame and the ability of one to acknowledge wrong doing in a responsible manner. This feeling is accompanied by modesty, humility and deference. In conclusion, both Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche have contributed a lot on the origin, characteristics and effects of the emotion of guilt. Both have come out with great pieces but Friedrich Nietzsche has explained the origin from a better perspective which is in the master and slave morality which is a theory that explains the source of guilt and that moral values show presence of a deep psychological attitude toward general life, Works Cited Maruna, Shadd, Amanda Matravers, and Anna King. "Disowning our shadow: A psychoanalytic approach to understanding punitive public attitudes." Deviant Behavior 25.3 (2004): 277-299. Teubert, Wolfgang. "When did we start feeling guilty?." Emotions in Dialogic Interaction: Advances in the Complex (2004): 121-162. Frank, Adam. "Some affective bases for guilt: Tomkins, Freud, object relations." ESC: English Studies in Canada 32.1 (2006): 11-25. Greer, Scott. "Freuds “bad conscience”: The case of Nietzsches Genealogy." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 38.3 (2002): 303-315. Read More