Critique of Remorse

Guilt. -- Although the shrewdest judges of the witches and even the witches themselves were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, this guilt still did not exist. This is true of all guilt.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 250

Guilt means the state of having committed a crime or wrong. It also means the feeling of remorse or culpability for a real or imagined wrong. Nietzsche obviously is not denying that people engage in conduct that is against the law or that people often feel remorse for their conduct.

Nietzsche is suggesting that the intellectual foundation for the feeling of culpability is false. Religious people feel remorse for engaging in conduct that they believe has been proscribed by God. This type of remorse is founded on the mistaken assumption that God exists and that God has commanded people to refrain from certain acts.

Nietzsche also is challenging the sense we get that, if we had it to do over again, we would not commit the wrong that's troubling our conscience. This type of remorse is founded on the mistaken assumption that one's conduct is determined by a transcendental core personality that is not constrained by cause and effect. In reality, our behavior is dictated by physiological processes within our brains. If a situation in which we did a wrong presented itself again, with every last atom in the same state it was in the first time around, we would commit the same wrong again.

Guilt causes us unnecessary distress by insisting that we could have lived up to our moral standard and not committed the wrong. Contrary to guilt, we did not commit the wrong voluntarily or lightly. The brute force of cause and effect compelled us to do so.