Infinite Desire: A Guide to Modern Guilt

In a rather pedestrian manner, poet and novelist Oppenheimer (who also teaches medieval literature and English at CCNY) examines the prevalence of guilt in a society that is largely irreligious. Once upon a time, he argues, Western culture, founded largely on the myths of original sin and the Fall, conveniently described guilt as the result of sinning against God. Such a view of guilt entered history through Augustine--who repressed his own lustful childhood in his Confessions with idealized versions of sin and salvation--and held sway in the West until the 19th century. By that century's end, Nietzsche had condemned the Christian religion for enslaving its followers through a doctrine of guilt that weakened them and robbed them of their will to power. In addition, Hegel and Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, while Feuerbach, Marx and Freud declared that God was simply a projection of humankind. The 20th century opens, according to Oppenheimer, on a moral wasteland bereft of God--and yet, he notes, the guilt remains. Writers as diverse as Kafka, Dostoyevski, T.S. Eliot and Maupassant, he says, express lucidly the anguish and despair of the modern conscience when it lacks the contours and context to define its inchoate guilt. As the 21st century unfolds, guilt lingers on and begins to take a new shape. Oppenheimer contends that our unending material desire provides the foundation for our current guilt. Oppenheimer's slim study purports to show the superficial and shallow character of contemporary moral consciousness, but his thesis about material desire differs little from Augustine's notion that concupiscence, or sexual desire, is the root of all guilt. This complex subject requires a more extensive examination than the lightweight treatment Oppenheimer gives it. (Jan.)