Living Free of Guilt

Olavo de Carvalho
Jornal da Tarde, May 13th, 1999

“That’s what I searched for my whole life: someone who would tell me that it is possible to live free of guilt.” (Marilena Chauí, Dialogue with Bento Prado Jr., Folha de São Paulo, March 13th, 1999.)

“Living free of guilt” is an objective that all progressive culture offers to humanity. The feeling of guilt is condemned as the residue of old repressive traditions, which must be abandoned at the gates of a new era of happiness and self-realization. This is a point of agreement among the adepts of the most opposite trends. Crystallized by consensus, the condemnation of guilt has so many varied justifications that, actually, none of them is necessary anymore and people live perfectly well with something self-evident that needs no argumentation.

But, what is, precisely, living free of guilt? Above all, which is the precise tone intended by those who suggest such an objective?

There are only three senses in which a human being can be said to be free of guilt. The first hypothesis is that of innocence, the effective innocence of Adam in Paradise, of the Good Savage or of childhood in a Disney movie. Both the Bible and Rousseau, being very careful, put that hypothesis in a mythic past. Saint Augustine confessed to have been perverse since the cradle and what little credibility could be given to the image of childlike innocence was mercilessly demoralized by Dr. Freud.

The desire to “live free of guilt” would not be the least bit attractive to the soul if it appealed to a discredited idea. It is not possible, therefore, that it is primordial innocence that modern progressism has in mind when it invites us to “live free of guilt”. Complete and absolute innocence is a myth, a divine quality no one can achieve in this world.

A second sense in which is possible to “live without guilt” is that of the relative innocence, arduous and unstable, which man manages to maintain when he consciously abstains from doing evil and, if he does, tries to remediate it with devoted goodwill. It is a norm of reasonable perfection at the reach of many human beings.

But that cannot be the meaning of “living free of guilt”, for the possibility of a person rectifying any harm done is entirely based on the feeling of guilt that comes over him when he sins; and to prevent his doing new harm, he must conceive in imagination the guilt he would feel if he actually did it.

In that sense, relative innocence is in no way living free of guilt; it is precisely, giving value to the feeling of guilt as a compass that guides us away from evil.

But “living free of guilt” can mean still a third thing: it can mean the pure and simple abolition of the concept of guilt. In that case, whatever the individual does, his acts will not be examined under the category of guilt, repentance, of penalties and reparation. Since the nature of such acts and their consequences to others do not matter, they will always be approached in a way that strives to avoid the embarrassing constraint of a moral remediation. They can then be explained sociologically, psychologically, pragmatically, they can be evaluated in terms of advantage or disadvantage, described in terms of wish, gratification and frustration. They just cannot be judged.

This last meaning is, with all the evidence, the only one in which it is possible, in practice, to “live free of guilt”. It is this meaning, clearly, that the modern ideologists have in mind when they offer to humanity this ideal for the future.

But, in the present, we already have people who live without guilt, who do not submit to the examination of moral consciousness, who are not constrained by what harm their actions might cause to others. They are called sociopaths. They are not mentally ill or retarded. They are intelligent individuals, not rarely gifted with a certain geniality and impressive social ability, who merely lack the moral sensibility to feel guilty for their actions. Among them are muggers, drug dealers, gang leaders – and all the leaders of totalitarian movements, without exception. Anyone who wishes to be like them feels his heart beat faster, full of hope, when he hears someone announce that it is possible to live free of guilt.

Our civilization started when Christ said to the apostle: “Take up thy cross and follow me”. Two millennia after, the ideal that is announced is to throw the cross away, not being important who it may fall on, for we should rush to jump on the bandwagon of History, not being important who it will crush on the way.

Translation: Fábio Lins - Proof Reading: Jacqueline Baca