I.
Who can feel guilt today, anyway?
The Kierkegaardian notion of "Anxiety" is of not one but three concepts, although in principle there are but two. We consider anxiety "before the fall" (knowledge of good and evil) and anxiety "after the fall" (anxiety which burdens any thought of doing either ill or good, the latter appropriately named also "demonic").
Anxiety before the fall is an anxiety in the face of an unknown which one knows to be yet lacks knowledge of the the content of. I know that there is some "good" and some "evil" out there, yet I am unaware of what these mean. Much the same as I may know that "elephants" exist, yet be entirely unaware of what such an animal is. Except, of course, I have also been told that I must not know of evil (and good). Consequently, one becomes anxious.
II.
Freedom is manifested in the real and active decision between these two options - good and evil. Freedom before the fall is thus freedom in unrealised form, freedom as pure potential without any actuality. It is a freedom without reality.
After the fall, having now sinned and thus come to know the difference between good and evil, I am faced with a wholly new dimension of freedom. Having now once already been actualised, made real as actuality, there looms now in the horizon of my being, at every turn that I take and every decision I make, a threat both of wrong-doing and of change. These are the two instantiations of anxiety which we face after the fall; an anxiety that I might do wrong, and an anxiety that I might do well and thus be forced to change, become someone else than that person I believe myself to be and hold myself comfortable in being. More will be said of the latter at another time.
III.
The wrong-doing done by us, as sinful creatures essentially (insofar as we are normative and must confront our own wrongdoings), carries with it the equally essential occurrence of guilt. There can be no sin without guilt, we might say, insofar as we know that we sin.
This language, the moral language of Christianity, may be foreign to some. Nevertheless, I believe the point stands regardless of Christianity. The truth spoken here is an existential truth, not a strictly theological one.
IV.
And so we return to that first question: Who can feel guilt today, anyway?
Shame is not simply guilt manifested socially. Guilt and Shame are, in truth, not at all related. Facing my guilt, I face my wrong-doing, a genuine matter of good and evil, of having done what I ought not have done, and ought not have done for the simple reason that what I did was wrong. Shame is not just some twisted version of this, it is an entirely different beast. Confusing the two is a fatal error, yet it is one which we commit to and replicate on a social level, repeating the lie that Shame, in fact, is the greater of the two. And so we say, in the media or to one another or on social media, that perhaps, some people "should feel more shame".
Shame is, of course, social. But it is not guilt, for it carries no genuine moral commitments. Being ashamed is not some expanded or different form of guilt, as is commonly said. Their single commonality is that they carry a negative import. And so the difference must naturally lie in the nature of said import.
Why am I ashamed? Not for my wrongdoings, but for its being perceived as such. Shame is not a socially oppressive shape of guilt, it is a sui generis event which occurs only where guilt cannot get a grasp of the actor, and so the shameful person must retreat to coming to terms with the way people look at them. The shameful person does not recognise what they have done as essentially wrong; their concern is not with a wrongdoing, but being seen as doing wrong. Shame is essentially narcissistic. The guilty person, by contrast, ought not care for shame - the burden they carry as a sinner is great enough that shame becomes unnecessary.
This is not to say that Guilt is subjectivised. Quite the contrary. He who is guilty knows mightily well that what they have done was not just wrong because they did it, but because anyone did it, and that no one else ought've done what they did. And this marks thus the difference between shame and guilt once again. The guilty does not require shame, and feeling shame in addition to guilt would simply be a diminishment of guilt.
Much the same, it hardly seems accidental that, in speaking of guilt, I say that I am guilty, whereas Shame is only "felt". While guilt might also only be felt, the feeling of guilt implies a skeptic uncertainty, wherein the guilty person asks his peers to confirm or deny the right-feeling of the guilt (from whence guilt transforms from a feeling to a way of being). By contrast, shame can never cross that bridge. In being "shameful", I have not conferred upon my own being any normatively different status, and the same can be said of my action.
In feeling shame, my shame would be gone if only others would not view what I did as wrong. The true nature of the action remains opaque, unconsidered. This opaqueness (or lack of transparency) is cause for great concern.
V.
For if, indeed, we live in a society capable only of feeling shame, does this not make us unfree?
This should seem to be the great implication of the Kierkegaard conception mentioned above. For insofar as Shame has replaced quilt, it has clouded our view of genuine morality, of the genuine and dead-serious difference between good and evil. Good and evil are covered not by clouds but by the great fog-machine of postmodern society. For the sinner aware of their own sin knows in truth what it means for something to be wrong, and know as such therefore that knowledge of good and evil does not, in truth, leave one with any choice. I have no choice but to desire to do good. It is exactly this lack of choice which constitutes the freedom present in us as we fear wrong-doing. I know that I have, in principle, a choice to make - yet I know also that in truth, there are wrong answers and that it is imperative that I do not make such a wrong choice. I must do what is right, yet what if I was wrong - another option - in thinking something to be right which turned out to be wrong? Anxiety in the face of evil repeats itself. Yet there is also always that demonic anxiety of actually doing good. The thought that if I do good, things might change. That the static me-induced controlled-seeming world which I have built might cease to be. More can and must be said - another time.