Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Power of Silence (European Horizons Series) - Hardcover

Schwan, Gesine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803242808 ISBN 13: 9780803242807

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2001

Synopsis

 

Politics and Guilt sheds new light on our understanding of the pervasive psychological and cultural effects of Nazism by examining the power of guilt in modern Germany. Usually seen as a psychological and intensely personal phenomenon, the effect of guilt on the collective arena of politics has been downplayed or misunderstood by many political scientists. Taking issue with Hannah Arendt, Daniel Goldhagen, and Hermann Lübbe, Gesine Schwan argues that Germans must confront their Nazi past because the repression or lack of acknowledgment of guilt damages modern democracies. The Nazi perpetrators were not above the norms of good and evil, she asserts, but were conscious of their guilt and silent about it. The widespread psychological guilt in them and their descendents has adversely affected perceptions of political responsibility, marriage, and child rearing in modern Germany.

At a moment when past crimes are being exposed, reparation demands are increasingly common, and world leaders are apologizing and making amends for past mistakes and injustices, Schwan's analysis is timely and thoughtful, standing as the most sophisticated consideration of guilt in politics to date.

Gesine Schwan is a professor of political science at Freie Universität Berlin. Thomas Dunlap's translations include Ute Deichmann's Biologists under Hitler.

About this title

About the Author

Gesine Schwan is a professor of political science at Freie Universität Berlin. Thomas Dunlap's translations include Ute Deichmann's Biologists under Hitler.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803242808
• ISBN 13: 9780803242807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248