Abstract
There is danger at hand for both parties whenever philosophy begins giving advice to theology. For theology there is the twofold danger of false humility and false security. It may come to think itself dependent on philosophy, if not for the answers it gives, at least for the questions it asks and for the form in which those questions may be posed. At the same time it may come to think that this borrowing improves its credit rating, somehow mitigating the otherwise unavoidable offensiveness of its positivity. In sacrificing its autonomy for respectability theology risks selling its spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage.
This essay was read to the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy during the 1974 meeting at Vanderbilt University as part of a symposium on phenomenology and theology. I am indebted to Professor Walter Lowe, the commentator on that occasion, as well as to Professors Herbert Spiegelberg, Charles Scott, Peter Fuss, and Marcia Cavell for their helpful suggestions.
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References
See Max Scheler, “Repentance and Rebirth,” in On the Eternal in Man, trans. by Bernard Noble, New York, 1960. The distinction between “done” and “become” will become important in the discussion of Freud below.
“Guilt and Guilt Feelings,” reprinted in Guilt: Man and Society, ed. by Roger W. Smith, Garden City, 1971, pp. 90 and 102.
If there is any important distinction between guilt and shame it is not that only the former involves internalization, so the difference may not be pertinent to the present discussion. See Margaret Mead, “Some Anthropological Considerations Concerning Guilt,” in Smith, op. cit., p. 125.
Scheler, op. cit., p. 49f.
See his commentary on Psalm 51, especially verse 4. Luther’s Works, ed. by Jaroslav Pelikan, St. Louis, 1955, Vol. 12, p. 336f.
These are from the 1535 Lectures on Galatians (my italics). Luther’s Works, ed. by Jaroslav Pelikan and Walter A. Hansen, St. Louis, 1963, Vol. 26, pp. 36, 126, 314.
In addition to the last two quotations above, see Vol. 26, pp. 131, and 148.
“Punishment is not pain in and for itself; the same pain or suffering can happen to another merely as a vicissitude of life. Punishment is the conception that this particular suffering is punishment.” Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. by Hong and Hong, Bloomington, 1970, Vol. II, p. 52.
The Symbolism of Evil, trans. by Emerson Buchanan, New York, 1967, pp. 25–46, especially pp. 42–43.
It would be begging important questions simply to label guilt masochistic on account of this.
The Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Section 14.
This is suggested in a study of rehabilitation by Lloyd W. McCorkle and Richard Korn, who argue that “much as he protests bad prison conditions, the adaptive inmate requires them, because his system of adaptation creates in him a need to protest.” The reason for this is that “in many ways, the inmate social system may be viewed as providing a way of life which enables the inmate to avoid the devastating psychological effects of internalizing and converting social rejection into self-rejection.” “Resocialization Within Walls,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 293 (May, 1954), pp. 95 and 88.
See Luke 10:29.
See Galatians 3:24. These biblical references aren’t really necessary but are inserted as a kind of indirect way of asking theologians whether they really wish to remain silent on the problems of our criminal justice system. L. Harold Dewolf has begun to break the silence with his Crime and Justice in America.
This phrase is from an essay by Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza entitled “Techniques of Neutralization: a Theory of Delinquency.” What follows is drawn from that essay along with “The Ache of Guilt” by J. Glenn Gray about soldiers. The two essays are found in Smith, loc. cit. When the Sioux Indians return from the warpath they paint their faces black, for, as their wise man Black Elk explains, “By going on the warpath, we know that we have done something bad, and we wish to hide our faces from Wakan-Tanka.” The Sacred Pipe, recorded and edited by Joseph Epes Brown, Baltimore, 1971, p. 92. Cf. Freud’s treatment rites of appeasement of slain enemies in Chapter Two of Totem and Taboo.
We are reminded not only of Eichmann but also of the para-military organization of the crime “families” known popularly as the Mafia, where those who do the dirty work are always carrying out the orders of others.
Sykes and Matza, op. cit., p. 145.
See the splendid interpretation of “What! do I fear myself? there’s none else by:” from Shakespeare’s Richard III in Michael Gelven, Winter, Friendship, and Guilt, New York, 1972, p. 181f.
At the end of C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces Orual, Queen of Glome, has the opportunity to present her complaint against the gods. As she reads her brief it turns into a confession, “and the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice.” Part II, Chapter 3.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words, trans. by Bernard Frechtman, Greenwich, 1964, p. 57.
Cf. Shakespeare’s use of ghosts in Hamlet and Richard III.
The Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Section 16.
Ibid., Second Essay, Section 18.
Ibid., Second Essay, Sections 21–24.
Ibid., Second Essay, Section 1.
Ibid., Second Essay, Section 4. Cf. Freud’s discussion of atonement rituals in Totem and Taboo, Chapter Two, Section 2.
Ibid., Second Essay, Section 8.
Civilization and Its Discontents, Chapter VIII.
The same is implicit in The Problem of Anxiety, Chapters VII-VIII, where guilt is discussed in terms of “social anxiety” and “loss of love.” But since the latter phrase is interpreted in both The Ego and the Id and Civilization and Its Discontents as loss of protection rather than loss of recognition, respect, and approval, the implication tends to get counteracted.
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Lecture XXXI.
Kierkegaard argues that in God’s case alone we can speaking of forgetting. “It is the Deity’s joy to forgive sins; just as God is almighty in creating out of nothing, so he is almighty in—uncreating something, for to forget, almighty to forget, is indeed to uncreate something.” If man is not able fully to forget he is at least to have the faith “to believe that sins is entirely forgotten, so that memory of it brings no anguish.” The corollary for a human forgiver is that the memory of another’s fault brings no anger. Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 53 and 47.
Buber’s discussion is in I and Thou. For a parallel discussion of the tension between personalism and certain powerful tendencies in mysticism, see Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York, 1961, pp. 4–14.
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© 1978 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Westphal, M. (1978). The Phenomenology of Guilt and the Theology of Forgiveness. In: Bruzina, R., Wilshire, B. (eds) Crosscurrents in Phenomenology. Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9698-4_13
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