In today’s world self-demeaning notions of insecurity, shame, and self-violation are nothing new. We hear about the rising incidenc
es of mental health on a daily basis through social media. Although we are often told that such suffering has risen sharply over the recent decades, the 20th century philosopher Nietzsche disagrees.
Let’s dive into what Nietzsche deems ‘Bad Conscience’ and how it relates to modern notions of suffering and depression. Bad conscience is the “instinct of freedom forced back, repressed, incarcerated within itself and finally able to discharge and unleash itself only against itself”. For Nietzsche one’s sense of free will and power are closely intertwined with their perception of themselves. Many of us feel a pressure to conform to societal norms which leads us to suppress our natural spirit. This process strips us of our internal freedom, and freedom ultimately manifested in a frustrated sense of the self. Freedom of thought and perception become an outlet for the lack of freedom we experience in our lives which often leads to self-inflicted mental suffering.
Nietzsche argues that humans feel a sense of twisted joy and satisfaction from this self-inflicted suffering. Nietzche summarizes this longing as “this uncanny, terrible but joyous labour of a soul voluntarily split within itself, which makes itself suffer out of the pleasure of making suffer”. The soul becomes its own worst enemy because it seeks to split itself and reflect upon itself, leading to judgement. Suffering becomes a pleasure to the soul, but at the cost of creating the ‘bad conscience’ that haunts us all. Nietzsche believes that his state of self-inflicted suffering is because we feel indebted to God. This debt leads to existential anxiety since we struggle to pay back out debt to our creditor which is God. Nietzsche elegantly summarizes, “God as the only one able to redeem man from what, to man himself, has become irredeemable”. Humans cannot redeem themselves to God and so we feel badly about ourselves and question our own worth. Life becomes an eternal and impossible quest of redemption under God.
As a result of this relationship between religion and consciousness, Nietzsche unsurprisingly begins to praise atheism a potential cure for the ‘bad conscience’. When we relieve ourselves of the entire notion of God, or any type of higher power, our debt is instantly settled. God instills insecurity in those who compare themselves to him/her and believe themselves to be under God’s scrutiny. Nietzsche frames God as a more accomplished older sibling in many ways. Human’s live in God’s shadow highlighting their shortcomings rather than their beauty.
What can we do with all this information? We can use it to change our perspective on ourselves! By becoming aware of our own ‘bad conscience’ we can take steps towards calming some of that existential insecurity that follows all of us around. We can choose to judge ourselves only against our prior selves, rather than God.