Guilt and the conscience in Nietzsche, Freud and Kafka.
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Date
2013
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Abstract
This thesis attempts to examine and clarify the ideas of conscience and guilt through an
examination of the texts of Nietzsche, Freud and Kafka, and to arrive at some conclusions about
the truth of the views of Freud and Nietzsche regarding guilt and conscience. I attempt to show
that there are significant overlaps in the ways in which Nietzsche (in the second essay of On the
Genealogy of Morals), Freud and Kafka (in certain texts) understand the problem of the
conscience, and I argue that Freud’s and Nietzsche’s attempts to answer the question of the nature
and origin of guilt do not succeed. For both of them, guilt – in the form of the bad conscience in
Nietzsche, or in the form of the ego’s experience of the superego in Freud – arises from the
redirection of aggressive instincts or instincts of cruelty away from the normal targets – others –
and towards oneself, and I try to demonstrate that this view is beset by serious problems. Although
I discuss the specific problems with each of their views in detail, the most important general reason
why their views of guilt miss the mark is, I argue, that neither adequately distinguishes between
guilt and the conscience (including the bad conscience), and so they run together phenomena that
in fact call for different explanations. Nietzsche errs in understanding guilt on the basis of debt,
and Freud in his theory of the superego does not take sufficient cognizance of an insight into the
nature of guilt that he himself provides in Civilization and its Discontents (namely that guilt
expresses itself as a need for punishment). Both, however, misunderstand guilt in understanding it
as fear, and Nietzsche’s interpretation of Christianity in line with this conception of guilt fails to
adequately capture the character of Christianity, and its psychological power.
Description
Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2013.
Keywords
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, -- 1844-1900., Freud, Sigmund, -- 1856-1939., Kafka, Franz, -- 1883-1924., Conscience, Examination of., Conscience -- Religious aspects., Guilt -- Religious aspects., Theses -- Religion.