An Evaluation of Risse’s account of the emergence of the guilty conscience in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality

Introduction

Risse gives an account of Nietzche’s Genealogy of Morality that looks at the critical role the Christian God plays in the emergence of the guilty conscience and how even Gods death will not allow us to easily overcome this harmful part of our psychology. The arguments and evidence Risse uses as well as alternative takes and criticisms from Leiter and Ridley are looked at to judge the relative worth of Risse’s account.

Risse’s Account

Figure 1: View of the merging of concepts according to Risse’s reading of the second essay of the Genealogy

Risse when looking at the emergence of the guilty conscience in the second essay of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality (GM) characterised the whole work as a unified theory with complex interactions. That the concepts in each of the essays are connected but the interfaces are not of a high resolution, that they will appear to the reader, in Nietzsche’s own words as ‘among thick clouds’ (Risse, 2001).

Risse’s overall position is established across two key articles, both of which will be considered when evaluating his account as well as some views from his detractors. The nature of Nietzsche’s broad but inexact and Polemic style means that both Risse’s account and the criticisms of it may be hard to hold to a single definitive interpretation. The core effect of this in Risse’s account is grasping at alternative sources such as a postcard from Nietzsche to Overbeck (Risse, 2001).

The foundation for the coming concepts rely on a few key building block that Nietzsche sets up and Risse briefly touches on. We have an inner life, a realm of self-assessment where we can reflect on our actions and thoughts as well as events we experience. Secondly, we are animals, creatures with instincts that are natural to us. Our social nature and need to compete mean that the stronger amongst us, those who would be deemed masters oppress and reduce the freedom of the majority, the slaves. This oppression forces the slaves to focus their cruel instincts inwards (Risse, 2001).

The first phase as outlined by Risse is the concept of bad conscience without the feeling of guilt. This comes about through the feeling of debt, something we feel we owe or are owed by others. It is entirely based on limited contracts that enable the flourishing of a community. Risse remarks that it is completely free of emotional or moral connotations (Risse, 2001).

The emergence of an environment where guilty conscience could manifest begins with communities and individuals success over time. As generations go by they feel greater and greater debts towards their ancestors. At a certain point, which is not clearly defined or explained by Nietzsche or Risse, these ancestors become looked at like gods. These debts do not compel people to pay them off and if they do the punishment should be considered equivalent. The punishment must match the crime (Risse, 2001).

Later it is noted that the punishments are external and for the Greeks and pre-Christians the gods are to blame and the individual is merely a blameless debtor. Although the debtor has performed an action the cause itself lies with the machinations of these deities. All of this allows for moral codes of a simpler sort that are not what Nietzsche is critiquing, such as the Greeks or Hobbes (Risse, 2001).

The ‘pushing back’, which relies on section 21 of GM is the core of Risse’s account and the one he believes introduces the guilty conscience. Its sees the idea of the Christian ‘maximal’ God and with it the idea of eternal punishment. That introduces the concept that our debts are infinite, that we owe so much we could never pay it off. Not only that but this new Christian God gives us the need to repay our debts. When merged with the bad conscience, driven by our cruel animal instincts, this conscience becomes guilty. Not only guilty of having debts but infinite debts that we are to blame for (Risse, 2001).

This section highlights the ambiguity with the German translation of ‘Schuld’, with Risse’s view that before the ‘pushing back’ GM 21 it is meant to mean debt and thereafter guilt.

The final cruel twist according to Risse is that God sees these debts and sacrifices himself for us. This does not, in fact, wipe out the debt but it compounds it further as we now all owe not just our own debts, but each bare the guilt for Gods act of ‘love’. We now find ourselves with guilt with no limit that when internalised eats away at us to the point they are all-consuming and demanding of eternal punishment. That this feeling of guilt comes to dominate and define the bad conscience (Risse, 2001).

Another way is hypothesised, beyond belief in God and post-Christian views such as those of Kant, that will tame the guilty conscience. A way that will allow us to overcome this after the death of God and our full realisation of what this means directed by a pursuit of truth. This pursuit of truth is within the Christian dogma and is the seed of its own destruction. However, Nietzsche although predicting this does not give clear outlines in GM of what this future will be like (Risse, 2001).

Areas of Contention

Figure 2:View of the merging of concepts as argued by Leiter and Ridely’s reading of the second essay of the Genealogy

Risse’s view that a reading of the GM must be internally consistent and that his is such a view is disputed. Ridley claims otherwise, claims that will be explored in more detail, but purely focussing on points of evidence there are reasons to doubt the surety of Risse. Postcards are a weak form of evidence, in as far as they represent a response to a particular question and at a slightly different time in an authors life. They are also not directly part what was ultimately published and therefore should be considered less compelling than arguments based on the text itself (Ridley, 2005).

It should also be noted that within this postcard that supports Nietzsche’s focus on the Christian God he explicitly states that Plato is to blame for everything. This does not mean that Risse’s argument of Gods importance to the guilty conscience does not still hold but indicates the sole focus of his work was not entirely on Christianity (Nietzsche, 1887).

The translation of ‘schuld’ as guilt or debt is also a point of contention in Risse’s account. That by giving a moralised version of guilt prior to the guilty conscience feeds the concept of God in before the birth of the guilty conscience but is this the correct reading. Both Ridley and Leitner reject this articulating that before and during GM 21 this can only be considered as debt and not guilt (Leiter, 2014) (Ridley, 2005). Nietzsche explicitly states that ‘I have so far set aside the actual moralisation of these concepts’ (Nietzche & Diethe, 2017) which indicates that guilt although the word used on Diethe’s translation carries more conceptual weight than Nietzsche seems to have intended based on Leiter and Ridley’s reading.

The real debate between the sides is ‘Guilt before God or God before Guilt’, that Guilty conscience is not reliant on gods or even the Christian god (Leiter, 2014) (Ridley, 2005). The alternative argument that guilt comes about not through the Christian idea of God but the actions of the masters and the internal world slaves are forced into. That the morality of the slaves that emerges as a result of the bad conscious is what pushed judgement inwards and leads to the guilty conscience. It is the guilty conscience that allows for the Christian conception of God and the Ascetic Ideal to manifest. The definition given by both Leitner and Ridley is based on an article by Simon May that has guilt as ‘an experience of reprehensible failure in response to specific actions’ (May, 1999).

Before delving further in this core question Risse, Leitner and Ridley agree that beyond the guilty conscience, Nietzsche holds out hope that soon we can look beyond the guilty conscience, get over the death of God and move towards a morality that is more beneficial to the flourishing of human excellence. However, they differ on the importance of the death of God to the change to the emergence of a new morality that is anti-Christian and anti-nihilism. With Ridley believing this comes about through the rehabilitation of the guilty conscience post the death of God and Risse arguing that we must actually look past a certain kind of guilt (Ridley, 2005) (Risse, 2005).

Risse’s Response and an Alternative

Risse sees his take on the meaning of guilt to be targeted at existential guilt rather than the local guilt, that a reprehensible failure to specific actions is too limited for the scope of Nietzsche’s argument. That Nietzsche also held this broader existential view of guilt based on the European Germanic culture within which he existed (Risse, 2005). That the pervading influence on Nietzsche and the genealogy is Christian thought and belief which is also the focus of the first and second essay’s of the Genealogy looking at slave morality and the ascetic ideal.

The cultural angle similar to the view from Nietzsche’s wider conversations is not something that is ever likely to convince Ridely or Leiter and therefore should be disregarded. This is not to say it is worthless but at the point both sides are trying to find secondary sources that are unlikely to all be consistent and resolve the ‘among thick clouds’ issue caused by the text itself the issue is likely to remain unresolved.

Risse’s comments on how there could be alternative takes on the text but explicitly highlights Risse’s is not one. This is focussed on the means by which debt to ancestors or gods would become existential guilt. That without a Christian God this could not happen (Risse, 2005). I believe along with Ridley and Leiter that the entire goal of GM is to outline the process by which the guilty conscience would emerge along naturalistic lines. That a naturalistic process the overtime combines our instincts and our inner worlds into a bad conscience, that this would make us feel debt to others and our ancestors and over time these debts would accumulate. The result of this and the parallel process of oppression and the ever inward view would lead to a moment when these come to a head and leave us with a guilty conscience that could then be given a narrative in the form of the Christian God. Although the moment of the shift is hard to define, it is harder still to argue that these naturalistic processes would always lead to the Christian God.

The response to this, touched on briefly by Risse is that his and Nietzsche’s work is quasi-historical. That for us the birth of the guilty conscience was as a result of the revelation of the Christian God. On this, it might be the case that both interpretations can coexist. The claim would be that GM lays out a process based on our own experience, that within history and our view of prehistory the birth of the guilty conscience was as a result of the emergence of Christianity. It is also true that the logical steps in the process do not need the specific notion of the Christian God but just a type of Maximal god that brings about the ‘pushing back’ to turn the bad conscience into a guilty one.

It would further be possible that you may not need a god at all, that a profound enough event that creates a feeling of debt alongside the oppression of our instincts would lead to the same result. Both sides agree that there needs to be a change to our conception of our guilty conscience but the nuances of a change in type or looking past a certain kind are not made explicit in the original text and an interpretation of rehabilitation or a view beyond seem to conclude in a similar thought. That what we need is something akin to what the Greek’s had through a new psychological mechanism that allows us to act with a bad conscience that is never dominated by guilt but does not do away with the concept entirely.

The issue is likely to always be, as highlighted by Risse that Nietzsche’s polemical style and grand project are simply beyond conclusions we can all agree on. The irony of the argument is both sides core debate is about God’s place within Nietzsche. It would seem we are still coming to terms with exactly what the death of God means or at least struggling to move on. Maybe we should seek the death of Nietzsche to free us all from our eternal intellectual punishment.

Conclusion

There is general agreement about the fundamentals of, instincts, our inner world and the debt we incur to ancestors and gods that Risse articulates in his account of GM and its conclusion that the death of God and our understanding of it will allow us to find a new better way. The key piece of Risse’s account and the one that is questioned by Ridley and Leiter is if God comes before guilt or guilt comes before God. Here the account and following defence of it relies too much on weaker external sources and unanswerable quirks of language. However, Risse’s reasons alongside that of Ridley and Leiter stand up enough to allow each to disbelieve the other due to the style and mode of thought employed by Nietzsche. Risse’s account is a good account but will never be a definitive account and will remain one among many possible interpretations. The continued debate between these individuals may say more about them than it does about Nietzsche.

Table of Figures

Figure 1: View of the merging of concepts according to Risse’s reading of the second essay of the Genealogy  1

Figure 2:View of the merging of concepts as argued by Leiter and Ridely’s reading of the second essay of the Genealogy

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