Guilt About the Past

For those readers captivated by the extraordinary prose and gift for relating involving stories ('The Reader', 'Flights of Love: Stories', 'Self's Punishment', 'Self's Deception', 'Homecoming', 'Self's Murder') this book of essays from the writer who also happens to be a professor law. Presented as a series of lectures in 2008, they are such fine reading and deserve publication in book form. These six short but pungent essays explore Guilt - both as a personal feeling and as a collective shroud. Grouped together they comprise some of the more enlightening book on the subject, using of course the German people and the aftermath of WW II.In both his introduction and the first essay Schlink appropriately delves into history going back to the 1300s when law were in force that punished members of families for something one member of a family did; entire families could be by law put in a sack and drowned for the malfeasance of one person. He then rather quickly reminds us of the collective guilt of the British in India, of Americans and slavery, of Canadians and First Nations and so on. According to Schlink 'when some members of a collective commit crimes, its other members have a duty to identify them and expel them from the group. If they don't, they become "entangled" in the perpetrators' crimes and share their guilt; the behavior of the few is then credited to the many. After 1945, Germans should have identified the Nazis in their midst and severed ties with them. When they didn't - when they preferred to forget Nazism - they became guilty as a collective for what had been done.' It is the courage to accept the past and at the same time investigate how to restore pride in a nation bludgeoned by the world for atrocities for the past.Schlink discusses moral consequences in his fourth essay addressing how ridiculous for politicians to apologize for things done in the past 'when it's not them who should bear any guilt for anything, and perhaps those being apologized to are not there to offer forgiveness. Given racial slaughters, of course, some reconciliation is always beneficial.' When members of a collective (such as Germany in WW II) commit crimes as in the Holocaust it is the onus, the obligation to identify the perpetrators and segregate them from the collective: those who did not come forth share the guilt and become equally guilty as a collective.In the final chapter of this book the author addresses the books and films that he believes to be accurate and responsible and also points out those he considers inferior and misleading. Being a writer of one of the more popular of these books gives him an edge in critiquing the writings of others. And even in this role Bernhard Schlink remains a figure of fairness, a man of opinions that matter. This book is a reliable survey of Guilt about the Past, whether that be counted in centuries, in decades or in days. It is pertinent information for us as well as a fine documentation of the philosophy of collective guilt. Grady Harp, June 11

Having read Schlink's book The Reader a while back, I decided to see whether he had written anything else and I am happy to say that this book offers both some insight into the personality of the author as well as a better understanding of the ethical questions he is interested in. In addition, I found his exposition of the German legal system and its limitations in dealing with Nazi war crimes very interesting and a little disturbing. Schlink is an accomplished writer but he is above all a conscientious thinker who has taken the time to explore the at time uneasy relationship between the (German) legal system, justice and existential questions.

A very intellectual treatment of post-war guilt. This puts the book above the realm of screaming and yelling "why did it all have to happen??!!".

The six essays contained in this book were originally presented as the Weidenfeld Lectures by Bernhard Schlink at Oxford University in 2008. Bernhard Schlink is a professor of law, and a writer. Professor Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt based on the German experience after World War II.`The lesson we drew from the past was a moral one rather than an institutional one.'Professor Schlink argues that when some members of a collective commit crimes, other members have a duty to identify and exclude them. By not doing so, they become caught in the crimes themselves and share their guilt. However, responsibility for not punishing a crime is not the same as being responsible for the crime in the first place and this guilt should be confined to their inaction about identifying and expelling Nazis not an assumption of the guilt for the original actions of the Nazis.This is an important distinction: it is up to the original perpetrators to seek (and perhaps be refused) forgiveness. Those who were not directly involved cannot be contrite for acts they did not commit. The children of perpetrators may not owe the children of victims an apology but respect is essential. How else is it possible (and it is surely desirable) to seek reconciliation as a way of acknowledging and moving on from the past.These six brief essays raise a number of different issues, perspectives and possibilities, including:How does the legacy of the past impact on different generations?Can the past be dealt with through law, is retroactive punishment a possibility? (And, should it be?)What are the problems surrounding literary representations of the past, especially fictional treatments of the Holocaust?I found these essays thought-provoking and far broader in application than to post-war Germany. We each live in some form of tribal society and thus thinking about the possibility of collective guilt in some circumstances and its consequences is worthwhile.`The future of the presence of the past is history.'Jennifer Cameron-Smith