The tyranny of guilt : an essay on Western masochism
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Bibliographic Information
The tyranny of guilt : an essay on Western masochism
Princeton University Press, c2010
- : cloth
- Other Title
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La tyrannie de la pénitence : essai sur le masochisme occidental
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism - the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War-II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has become a pathology, and even an obstacle to fighting today's atrocities. Bruckner, one of France's leading writers and public intellectuals, argues that obsessive guilt has obscured important realities. The West has no monopoly on evil, and has destroyed monsters as well as created them - leading in the abolition of slavery, renouncing colonialism, building peaceful and prosperous communities, and establishing rules and institutions that are models for the world. The West should be proud - and ready to defend itself and its values. In this, Europeans should learn from Americans, who still have sufficient self-esteem to act decisively in a world of chaos and violence. Lamenting the vice of anti-Americanism that grips so many European intellectuals, Bruckner urges a renewed transatlantic alliance, and advises Americans not to let recent foreign-policy misadventures sap their own confidence.
This is a searing, provocative, and psychologically penetrating account of the crude thought and bad politics that arise from excessive bad conscience.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 Chapter One: Guilt Peddlers 5 The Irremediable and Despondency 6 The Ideology That Stammers 9 The Self-Flagellants of the Western World 13 A Thirst for Punishment 22 Chapter Two: The Pathologies of Debt 27 Placing the Enemy in One's Heart 28 The Vanities of Self-Hatred 33 One-Way Repentance 40 The False Quarrel over Islamophobia 47 Chapter Three: Innocence Recovered 57 How Central Is the Near East? 59 "Zionism, the Criminal DNA of Humanity" 62 Unmasking the Usurper 67 A Delicate Arbitrage 74 America Doubly Damned 80 Chapter Four: The Fanaticism of Modesty 87 A Tardy Conversion to Virtue 88 The Empire of Emptiness 90 The Pacification of the Past 93 The Guilty Imagination 96 Recovering Self-Esteem 100 The Twofold Lesson 106 Chapter Five: The Second Golgotha 111 Misinterpretations of Auschwitz 113 Hitlerizing History 117 The Twofold Colonial Nostalgia 127 Chapter Six: Listen to My Suffering 139 On Victimization as a Career 140 Protect Minorities or Emancipate the Individual? 148 What Duty of Memory? 157 Chapter Seven: Depression in Paradise: France, a Symptom and Caricature of Europe 167 A Universal Victim? 168 The Wild Ass's Skin 176 Who Are the Reactionaries? 179 The Triumph of Fear 183 Metamorphosis or Decline? 186 Chapter Eight: Doubt and Faith: The Quarrel between Europe and the United States 193 To Be or to Have 194 The Troublemakers in History 199 The Archaism of the Soldier 203 The Swaggering Colossus 207 Conclusion 215 Postscript to the English Translation 223 Index 229
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