Nietzsche's Punishment and Guilt

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When we talked about Nietzsche in class we discussed how a lot about the second essay, which is about Guilt and Punishment. Here are two quick overviews of what Nietzsche describes punishment and guilt as. Guilt is being accountable and responsible for the action you have done. You have guilt because you could have done something in the right direction instead. Nietzsche says that if free will is attached to accountability and responsibility then it cannot be connect with guilt. It is based off a debt that you have acquired and needs to be paid back. Punishment is dependent on the offender’s decision to act the way that they do. The reason this person deserves a punishment is because they have the ability to act differently off the start, they chose to act in the wrong and they have to take the punishment they get. Nietzsche says that if someone is not acting freely (accident, insanity, etc.) then they are seen as being exempt from punishment. Below I attached two articles on the same story, the story is about a Medical Technician named David M. Kwiatkowski, who traveled to a few states and stole syringes of fentanyl. Then he would inject himself with the syringes and replace the fluid inside with saline and put them back to be used on patients. Kwiatkowski is infected by the Hepatitis C which made this one of the biggest outbreaks of the disease in recent decades. He was given a sentence of 39 years because of the impact of what he did and the many people it affected. Some facts from the article to know the extent of what happened are that 45 total people were infected by these syringes, and one of them has already died. Linda Ficken said in the trial to Mr. Kwiatkowski, “You handed down to us a potential death sente... ... middle of paper ... ...bligation. In this case Mr. Kwiatkowski was obligated to be punished for what he did even if it wasn’t in a malicious way to harm other and just to satisfy his drug addiction. Mr. Kwiatkowski said to an investigator while discussing his plea agreement, “I'm going to kill a lot of people out of this." This is a very serious case to show what Nietzsche’s punishment and guilt are. I am sure we have all had a situation when we were young or recently that we did something that we didn’t asses the consequences of what would happen. Then when more people go involved because of something you did and it affected them you start to feel yourself getting nervous and feeling guilty for what you did. Just the guilt can leave a memory in year head and make you not do that same thing twice. The punishment was a big statement to make sure the memory or message will stick.

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