The Relation between Sovereignty and Guilt in N ietzsche's G enealogy

This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in N ietzsche's G enealogy . I argue that, contrary to received opinion, N ietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse N ietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre‐moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to N ietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of a ‘conscience’, defining the enduring element as the practice of forming self‐conceptions. I show that for N ietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to N ietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience.