Guilt, Gaze, and the Self: From Nietzsche to Foucault

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Introduction

What does it mean to be seen? In the animal kingdom, eye contact often signals threat, dominance, or the prelude to aggression. Yet in human culture, to be looked at is charged with meaning: it evokes shame, vulnerability, and, paradoxically, the sense of being real. The gaze has evolved from a reflex to a metaphysical event, a transformation of perception into subjectivity. This article traces a philosophical lineage from Nietzsche's concept of the "bad conscience" to the gaze theories of Sartre, Lacan, and Foucault. Each thinker, in their own way, explores how internalized vision—whether moral, existential, symbolic, or disciplinary—participates in the construction and alienation of the modern self.

Bad Conscience, the Birth of Shame and and the Possibility of Overcoming

In On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche offers a radical re-evaluation of the moral development of humankind. Master morality, in his account, arises spontaneously: the noble defines “good” through the affirmation of strength, vitality, and instinct. Slave morality, by contrast, emerges from ressentiment—the reaction of the weak, who, unable to act, redefine the virtues of the powerful as “evil” and elevate their own condition as morally superior. In this inversion, Nietzsche locates the genesis of guilt.

The decisive shift occurs when instincts once expressed outwardly are redirected inward. “All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization of man.”¹ This inward turn produces what he terms the “bad conscience”: a self-punishing force born not of divine revelation but of social repression. The noble, once free, becomes ensnared in an economy of guilt. What was once instinctive action becomes moral transgression, judged by an imagined Other.

Yet Nietzsche’s account is not merely diagnostic—it is anticipatory. If guilt and moral conscience are historical products, they can also be overcome. The bad conscience is not the final form of human subjectivity, but a transitional phase, a crucible from which something higher might emerge. Nietzsche imagines this transformation in the figure of the Übermensch—the “overman” or “beyond-man”—who affirms life without resentment, who creates values rather than inherits them, and who redirects the forces of internal repression into acts of artistic, philosophical, or existential creation. In this sense, Nietzsche offers not only a genealogy of guilt but also a vision of redemption—one that depends not on absolution, but on transformation.

Sartre: Shame and Exposure

Jean-Paul Sartre deepens Nietzsche’s insight by dramatizing the moment of self-objectification. In Being and Nothingness, he famously analyzes the situation of a voyeur caught at the keyhole. The act of looking is unproblematic until the voyeur hears a creak behind him. In that instant, he imagines himself seen—and is overtaken by shame. “Shame is shame of oneself before the Other,” Sartre writes². Crucially, the shame does not arise from the act, but from being turned into an object for another consciousness.

The Sartrean gaze is not merely observational—it constitutes the self as seen. Under the look, the subject is no longer sovereign; it is frozen, objectified, alienated. This echoes Nietzsche’s bad conscience: both reveal the self fractured by an internalized Other, whether moral or existential. To be free, for Sartre, is to struggle perpetually against this objectification, to reclaim one's status as subject.

Lacan: Symbolic Alienation and the Gaze of the Other

Jacques Lacan, drawing on both Freud and structural linguistics, relocates the gaze within the symbolic order. In Seminar XI, he recounts a childhood memory: on a fishing trip, a companion points to a floating sardine can and remarks, “You see that can? Well, it doesn’t see you!”³. Lacan confesses that he nonetheless felt seen. This small episode discloses a deep truth: vision is never neutral. We are always potentially on display, implicated in the gaze of an Other we cannot fully grasp.

For Lacan, the gaze is not the eye’s activity but a structural position in language and desire. “The gaze I encounter… is not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other”⁴. This imagined perception is formative: the subject becomes split, alienated, never coinciding with itself. Like Nietzsche’s bad conscience and Sartre’s shame, the Lacanian gaze imposes a form of self-estrangement—but now within the architecture of the symbolic, not just moral or existential.

Foucault: Internalized Surveillance and the Disciplinary Gaze

Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, translates these psychological dynamics into institutional terms. His analysis of the panopticon—a prison structure allowing a single observer to watch all inmates without being seen—becomes a metaphor for modern power. “Visibility is a trap,” Foucault declares⁵. Under this regime, individuals begin to monitor themselves, acting as if they are always being watched.

Unlike Sartre’s sudden experience of shame or Lacan’s symbolic alienation, Foucault’s gaze is administrative, normalized. It is woven into schools, hospitals, barracks, and offices. Its power lies not in presence but in possibility. The subject internalizes the observer, becoming both surveyed and surveyor. Here, Nietzsche’s genealogical critique finds its terminal consequence: the instinctual being, once vital and expansive, is now thoroughly disciplined.

The Gaze in the Animal Kingdom: Evolutionary Precursor

Across animal species, gaze often functions as a survival mechanism. Wolves stare to assert dominance; primates interpret eye contact as aggression; even domesticated dogs may respond defensively to a fixed look. The gaze evolved as a means of threat detection—a primal function.

In human culture, however, this logic is overturned. Eye contact becomes a sign of sincerity, vulnerability, or connection. Children are taught to "look someone in the eye" to show respect or truthfulness. How did a signal of confrontation become a medium of trust—and, in philosophy, a vehicle of existential and symbolic dislocation?

The transformation suggests not a rupture, but a sublimation. Biological alertness becomes interpersonal shame; threat-detection mutates into symbolic alienation; peripheral awareness is refigured as self-policing. Nietzsche’s account of instincts turned inward finds its echo here: a natural reflex has become a site of psychic production.

Conclusion: From Reflex to Reflexivity, and Beyond

The gaze, once a tool for survival, has evolved into a crucible for the making—and unmaking—of the self. Nietzsche diagnosed the beginning of this process: the noble animal, once free, becomes guilty, inward, moralized. Sartre reveals how the Other’s look destabilizes the subject; Lacan shows how the gaze embeds us in symbolic networks of desire; Foucault maps how it is codified into systems of surveillance and self-regulation. Each thinker, in their register, describes a profound metamorphosis: the gaze becomes not just something we do or receive, but something that constitutes us. From the animal stare to the disciplinary eye, the history of being seen is also the history of becoming human—but also, perhaps, the history of forgetting how to be free.

Yet Nietzsche, alone among these thinkers, leaves open a path forward. If guilt is not eternal but historical, then subjectivity itself may be open to transformation. The bad conscience that gives rise to shame and self-surveillance is not the end of the human story, but a threshold. Through self-overcoming, Nietzsche proposes that the internalized gaze—the source of our guilt, our self-alienation—can become the engine of new creation. The Übermensch does not evade the gaze, but absorbs and transfigures it, turning surveillance into sovereignty, and guilt into affirmation.

 In this light, the gaze is not merely a trap but a challenge. It alienates, but also invites metamorphosis. To be seen is to be split—but perhaps also to be called. The question is not only how we became subjects of the gaze, but whether we might become something else—something freer, more creative, more affirmative—in response to it.

 Notes

¹ Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (Cambridge University Press, 2007), II.16.

² Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (Routledge, 2003), p. 289.

³ Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (Norton, 1978), p. 95.

⁴ Ibid., p. 84.

⁵ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Vintage, 1995), p. 200.