Tagged: communal responsibility

Unoriginal Sin

November 18, 2014
Filed under Ethics, Theology

The Conceptual Foundations of Shared Human Responsibility (Communal Guilt Part 2 of 7)

Non-individualistic understandings of guilt are fundamental to both Judaism and Christianity. This is part of what makes both religions as counter-cultural today as they ever have been. Yet often the worldviews of particular Jewish and Christian individuals are more defined by their respective cultures than by the religions they profess to embrace. For many, it is not evident that we should be our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers.

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Concepts of Collective Guilt

November 12, 2014
Filed under Autobiographical Reflections, Ethics

The Benefits and Limits (Communal Guilt Part 1 of 7)

We in the West often fail to think in terms of “we.” Individualism has defined the post-Enlightenment European experience and, perhaps to an even greater extent, the U.S. American experience. By “individualism” I mean a pervasive perspective of the world in which personal autonomy is the ultimate good; each individual can and should define for themselves what is right and even what is true, every woman for herself, every man for himself.

There is so little middle ground in American political life in large measure not merely because of seemingly irreconcilable positions but because of a shared commitment to individualism. The moral individualism on the Left stands in a perpetual stand-off with the socio-economic individualism of the Right.

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