Perhaps even the “purest” guilt is a device whereby ontological anxiety escapes from its dread of nothingness by finding an object to worry about — in this instance, one’s own objectified sense of self. If so, even ontological guilt can be deconstructed back into something more primordial — anxiety (an issue taken up in the next section). If depth of ontological guilt is proportional to sense of self, such pure unprojected anxiety may be so difficult to endure because it consumes the sense of self; even ontological guilt is preferable, for to feel bad about the sense of self is another way to
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