Velleman, Guilt and Love

David Velleman defines guilt as anxiety about being in an indefensible position which means one might be cut off from social interaction. In this posting I will examine this definition. Freud says guilt is anxiety about being punished by the superego. Velleman thinks Freud is on roughly the right lines and seems to suggest that guilt might be connected to the loss of love of one’s conscience (1). I accept guilt is connected to the loss of love but will argue it is not connected to the loss of love of one’s conscience but rather to an inability to love oneself.

Velleman’s definition of guilt, as anxiety about social exclusion, means guilt is not necessarily concerned with morality. Intuitively guilt is not solely concerned with moral matters. If we accept the above it becomes difficult to differentiate between Velleman’s concepts of guilt and shame. Moreover accepting Velleman’s definition would mean excluding guilt from some situations in which we would intuitively feel the feeling of guilt would be appropriate. Because Velleman’s definition does not include these situations I will argue his definition is an inadequate one. My argument is much the same one as the one I employed in discussing his concept of shame; see Velleman and Shame 11/05/10. Let us consider someone on diet who secretly eats a lot of chocolates. Intuitively we feel such a person might feel guilty. Indeed it would seem be completely natural for us to say she has a guilty secret. However she need have no anxiety about social exclusion on account of her guilty secret. If it is accepted our dieter does indeed have cause to feel guilty then because Velleman’s definition of guilt fails to account for this his definition is an inadequate definition.

Even if our dieter is not in the danger of social exclusion due to her secret chocolate eating none the less I would suggest her position seems in some way to be indefensible. I would further suggest it might seem indefensible to her. What is indefensible in this context? Does Velleman’s suggestion that guilt is connected the loss of love of one’s conscience help us to understand what our dieter finds indefensible? In my previous posting I suggested shame might be simply seen as an unease or dissatisfaction with our sense of self as moral persons. My example of our dieter shows guilt is not simply restricted to moral matters. I believe Velleman is correct in connecting love and guilt. However I would not connect guilt to the loss of the love of one’s conscience as Velleman does. I would connect guilt to not loving oneself. As in previous postings I will accept Frankfurt’s position that love is ‘caring about’ when caring about is defined as someone persistently making herself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what she ‘cares about’ is diminished or enhanced (2). I will also accept Frankfurt is correct when he argues that here could not be a person whose self is of no importance to her (3). If something is important to me I must ‘care about’ it, I must love it, it follows if someone must be important to herself she must care about, love, herself to some degree. It is of course true persons need not totally care about themselves, indeed some people often talk of hating themselves, never the less I contend all persons must care about themselves to some degree. If the above is accepted guilt might be defined not as anxiety about social exclusion but rather as anxiety about being unable to truly love oneself. Such a definition might explain the secret chocolate eater’s guilt and as a result is a more complete definition than that of Velleman.

However even if we reject Velleman’s concept of guilt and accept my definition it does not follow that anxiety about being in an indefensible position with regard to society is unimportant. Such anxiety might explain why the secret chocolate eater worries about being unable to love herself. This anxiety might be explained in two ways. Firstly her anxiety may be due to the breaking some accepted social norms even if this breaking is unobservable and done in private. This anxiety might arise because she is breaking social norms which she personally accepts. Secondly her anxiety might arise as her actions are contrary to her image of herself and as a consequence of this image how she should act. This image would I suggest must be partly based on society’s expectations.

1. David Velleman, 2009, How We Get Along, Cambridge University Press, page 101)
2. Harry Frankfurt, 1988, The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge University Press page 83.
3. Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press, page 90.