Some Jumbled Thoughts on Nietzsche, Conscience, the Soul, and Angel

Like my post about fractals, this was originally part of a conversation on Tea at the Ford. (I miss that place, and those days…) The main difference is at this point in time both shows were finished and I’d seen all the episodes.
Anyway, it’s a bit of a fragment, not intended as a standalone piece of writing. Lightly edited to make some kind of sense, maybe.

While reading an interesting article about Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, I came across some stuff that I found fascinating, especially when viewed in relation to the Buffyverse. Disclaimer: I have not actually read OGM, so my comments on it are necessarily filtered through the lens of the article in question. (Which, if you’re interested, is: “The Second Treatise in On the Genealogy of Morality: Nietzsche on the Origin of the Bad Conscience,” by Mathias Risse of Yale University, published in the European Journal of Philosophy 9:1 (2001), pp. 55–81.)

According to the (one assumes) esteemed Dr. Risse, what Nietzsche identifies as the bad conscience begins in one form, which has nothing to do with guilt until it is combined with both a sense of indebtedness towards gods and a set of moral precepts that Nietzsche ascribes to Western culture generally as the result of Christianity, but applicable even to those who have rejected religion or at least the Christian God. Of course, it may be debatable to what extent a vampire victim consciously rejects Christianity, but quite obviously Christianity rejects the vampire, considering the fact that its symbols and trappings cause pain and injury (crucifix, holy water, etc.).

“No matter how good a boy you are,” Darla tells Angel, “God doesn’t want you” (A2.05 Dear Boy).

(Actually, one could write an entire essay about Angelus’/Angel’s relationship with Christianity, considering his “thing for convents” and such — but that’s another topic for another day.)

Risse explains that Nietzsche was trying to figure out just where guilt comes from, and trying to place its origin in the framework of a (rather vague) history of mankind. Here’s how he explains it:

The idea seems to be that people are living more or less by themselves, following their instincts for food, shelter, sex, and, as Nietzsche emphasizes, their drives for aggression. […] Then some groups get organized, and start oppressing others that do not. Nietzsche insists that these conquests happen abruptly. […] The oppressed are prevented from letting their instincts act against others, and Nietzsche must have in mind here the instincts for aggression, i.e., ‘enmity, cruelty, the lust for pursuit, for raid, for change, for destruction’ (sec. 16) The oppressed are forced to redirect these instincts inward since otherwise they are threatened with severe punishment. (p. 57)

What’s really funny is that at this point, I made a note in the margin of the paper, Angel is oppressed by the soul! And just a few lines later, I read this:

Nietzsche presents the image of an incarcerated animal that beats itself raw on the bars of its cage […] He calls this inward-direction of previously outward-directed instincts the internalization (Verinnerlichung) of man, and regards it as the origin not only of the bad conscience, but also of what should come to be called the soul. (p. 57)

Hee. So, to restate in Buffyverse terms: the vampire is id-boy, expressing all of his instincts including — especially — those for aggression and destruction. Forcing a soul onto such a creature sublimates those instincts, essentially “oppresses” the vampire’s true nature and causes him to develop what Nietzsche refers to as bad conscience.

So far nothing particularly new in all of this. But here’s what I found especially fascinating, and such a perfect fit with what we know of Angel that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the writers based at least some of their characterization on Nietzsche’s writings: the bad conscience does not bring guilt along with it. That part only comes later.

First, though, think about what we know about Angel right after he regained his soul, and for a few decades more. For the most part he represses his violent instincts. He stops causing mayhem and messing around with convents, and feeds on vermin or their human equivalent, “rapists and murderers, thieves and scoundrels” (Darla in A2.07 Darla). He understands that he can’t go back to behaving as he did before, but he exhibits no particular guilt or sense of obligation toward the human race. Mostly he just keeps to himself and tries to cause no direct harm, but he isn’t moved to help anyone in need. We see this clearly in Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been (A2.02), when he tries not to get involved with Judy and her problems, and is generally uninterested in what goes on around him. Again in Why We Fight (A5.13), set a few years before AYNOHYEB, Angel has to be, er, persuaded to join the war effort. Atonement is clearly not something that has occurred to him just yet.

So, what changed? According to Nietzsche (via Risse): “Guilt arises when this older form of the bad conscience merges with an indebtedness to ancestors or gods.”

Huh.

It isn’t until Whistler shows up, tells him he has a chance to have a destiny — that there are Powers That Be interested in the vampire with a soul — that Angel begins to make an effort. Even more interestingly, it isn’t until after Amends (B3.10) that Angel’s atonement efforts begin in earnest — after they’ve saved his (un)life with the Miracle Snow, after he’s incurred a debt with the god-like powers.

Nietzsche sees guilt as a reflection of the debtor-creditor relationship, and according to Risse plays a lot with the dual meaning of the German word Schuld, which is both “debt” and “guilt” (a very interesting concept in itself, that): “namely, the idea that every damage has its equivalent and can be paid off in some way” (Risse, p. 62).

For a while, Angel appears to be filling up a scorecard, hoping to pay off his moral debt. In Judgment (A2.01) he starts to change his outlook:

(Cordelia’s apartment — Angel takes down the whiteboard where the gang had been listing all of their cases with goals and outcomes.)
Wesley: Good idea. Start over with a fresh slate.
Angel: Actually, we’re starting over with no slate.
Wesley: Of course. We shouldn’t be keeping score. We’re not running a race, we’re doing a job, one soul at a time.

(Honestly, to me, “doing a job, one soul at a time” still sounds like they’re keeping score, but that’s neither here nor there. Maybe. Perhaps it’s Wesley who’s still stuck in the morality framework that Angel is gradually moving beyond.) The problem he faces, though, plagues him essentially from that point on, all the way to the end of the season: once he has abandoned the idea of evening out his perceived moral debt, once he has rejected what Nietzsche views as morality, he has a hard time finding meaning in his existence, a continuing purpose. Again, that’s really an essay for another time.

To sum up, if we want to use Nietzsche’s thoughts to explain Angel’s development, we can see it as something of a parallel to the development of mankind (in the West, anyway) according to Risse. First he was a vampire, a bundle of unbridled urges, violent and destructive. He was then abruptly reined in by the reinstitution of his soul by the Romani people, forcing him to sublimate his base instincts and urges. At this point he has a bad conscience, in Nietzschean terms, but does not yet possess any particular morality, sense of guilt, or desire to atone. Then in the 90s he was introduced to the Powers That Be — and Buffy, who may as well be a god(dess) considering the role she plays in his journey — and he is given a sense of purpose, accompanied by indebtedness (or Schuld, in both senses). How he works his way past that sense of guilt and indebtedness is essentially the tale of the last four seasons of his show.

Well, I thought it was cool, anyway. — (Sat 2004.07.10 at 04:49 pm EST)