2017-02-02Tu

Lecture 9 Nietzsche (Genealogy of Morality)

Essay II

Feeling of moral guilt

Why do I feel a sense of the devaluation of my worth as a result
of these sins? (especially in the sense of the Christian original sin
and guilt)
What does the ability o make promises have a place in a
discussion of guilt?
Ability to make a promise is a way to bind ourselves and our
actions in the future, creating a future obligation
o Matters: if interested in guilt & the failure to make good on
an obligation we have, we need to know what it means to
HAVE an obligation in the first place (to make a promise)
Promise = something we want to carry forward in the form of an
obligation; its a guarantee
o Memory is essential to this ability to make a promise
continuity is necessary to be able to make a promise and
keep it (you cant just recognize a promise as a desire of
the past, but rather to hold yourself to that desire and
make it your present desire)
o A way to tie together our future selves and past selves
Sovereign individual = free, no longer bound by custom,
recognize responsibility, able to make promises
o 3 separate occasions told how proud this individual is
Should be sceptical of this because we have just
been told that this ability to make a promise was
something that has been trained into people
Shouldnt be proud of sovereigns ability to make
promises because you dont praise someone for
doing something they were trained to do
Training to make promises make people predictable
o Some significance to the sovereign individual
Conscious ability to make promises
o A deep instinct or sense; not rational, not learned that we
are being held to a standard
o How this gets perverted and can become a bad conscious
Pain & suffering
o If you suffer enough you will forced to remember
P. 39 details a number of punishments & tortures
aid of such proceduresin order to enjoy the
advantages of a society
 o Inflicting P & S in people is a way to instil the
consequences of their actions
If someone makes promises and breaks them then
they are unable to make promises P & S ensures
that people will understand the consequences of
their actions and will be able to make promises
Guilt (failing to live up to some standard) now relate it to debt
o Etymology (German) guilt and debt are variations of each
other and share a common history
o A notion of obligation that is material
o The pain that the one who owes is subjected to is either a
way to ensure that the debt is paid or that the pain of the
one who owes satisfies some part of the debt to the one
who is owed
Implies here that there is a part of people that enjoys
seeing the suffering of others (somehow the one who
is owed must get something out of this)
Debt owed to a community rather than to an individual
breaking the law
o You owe a debt to society because you enjoy the
advantages of a society benefits like free movement and
predictable actions of other cost is that you offer your
own conformity to the laws
o Compensation for this kind of debt
P. 50 once the legal codes in place.as a crime as a
violation of the lawthe injured parties
o The victim of the crime isnt the one who is responsible for
charging you, but your actions are not about your victim
but rather about the community because the actions are
illegal and actions in violation of the law are actions
committed against society as a whole
That is why there are punishments for breaking the
law when they are not about revenge
What does punishment mean? Why are people punished?
o Punishment exists for a specific purpose it was designed
to accomplish something (then decide what that is)
o P. 53 with regard to elements of punishment
o Punishment as indefinable cant specify why people are
punished
Built into the concept of punishment is that there is a
purpose and a reason for the punishment and that it
is known
o P. 55 nor must we underestimateas reprehensible as
suchpractice with a good consciousbut only in certain
respects and applications
 What youve done is reprehensible inherently not
because people think that it is wrong
Punishment is a kind of violence the things done by
law enforcement, if they had been done by a private
citizen would be illegal
This makes it hard for criminal to see their
actions as inherently wrong when they see the
same things carried out by people who are not
punished and have the right to do it
Where does bad conscious come from?