First, I really enjoy Kaufmann's writing style.
The Birth of Guilt & Justice
Children are taught to expect certain punishments for certain wrongdoings. If they do something wrong and the promised consequences don't come, the child feels guilty. Kaufmann argues that we develop guilt feelings out of promises made by authority figures when we are young and impressionable. It's an irrational process resulting from our social traditions, and it is preventable.
Against Guilt
Kaufmann talks about guilt like a disease and he's surprised that no one in our civilization has looked for a cure yet. He's so innovative that he has to regularly invent new words.
Guilt feelings make people unhappy. Nice people tend to suffer more from guilt than mean people - not fair. Guilt feelings don't really help victims. People who feel guilty want to spread the blame on others. Feeling guilty does not keep people from feeling self-righteous. In fact, people might feel proud of wallowing in guilt.
He anticipates the question: don't we need guilt for moral reform?
"In intellectual and artistic endeavors and in sports it is obviously possible to be sharply self-critical without harboring guilt feelings. If the desired goal is that one should not be self-righteous and that one should try hard to rise to a higher level of existence, guilt feelings establish no high probability at all that one will move in this direction; what is needed is a fusion of ambition with humility. ... I shall call the fusion of ambition with humility humbition."
Kaufmann speaks of virtues like honesty and humility. He does not seem to question that these are admirable and we should have them. Where does he get the "should" from? And from where does he think people will get the motivation to be morally perfect? Can you have happy feelings about moral accomplishments and just extinguish sad feelings about moral failings?
He differentiates "my guilt" from "my fault." If something is genuinely my fault, then I should do something to make up for it instead of feeling remorseful. I'm not totally sure where to divide self-criticism from guilt. Is he implying that people should live without any emotions? A gymnast feels "upset with himself" if he fails in a competition.
"Those who assume that they must feel guilty until someone else forgives them are clearly not autonomous." Some of us mentioned earlier that we might not want to be autonomous in the Kaufmann sense. Living in community (and dependency) is something I do consciously because I think it is preferable both for myself and those around me. I don't think it makes me weak or incapable of independent thought. Asking for forgiveness is an act of humility and courage and forgiving a debt is an admirable act of generosity.
Forgiveness presupposes that I and the victim of my action both acknowledge that I did something wrong. I admit to being guilty when I ask for forgiveness. Kaufmann may argue that exchanging this intangible forgiveness doesn't really help my victim, but it does for two reasons: I am obliged to forgive him in the future and he doesn't have to hold onto feelings of bitterness (which literally leads to cancer).
Here's where I get to my main question for the chapter. Would Kaufmann allow for healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt? Wallowing in self-hatred is bad and unproductive. I also agree that vague guilt over the pain of others in the liberal activist sense is bad. But if I hurt my sister and don't feel bad about it, I'm a psychopath or a masochist. He thinks he's addressed this concern at the end of the chapter, but I don't feel he has. [I'm not ignoring his point that good and bad are impossible to define precisely, but if we can strive for what we think is morally good I think we can hate what we think is morally bad.]
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