Word: guilts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...must discuss the abominable injustice that has been meted out to the Jewish people. We must ask . . . are we, because we lived in Germany, also guilty of this diabolic injustice? . . . The phrase 'collective guilt' is an oversimplification. It is a distortion, in fact the kind of distortion that the Nazis tried to pound into us in regard to the Jews; for the Nazis taught that the fact of being a Jew was sufficient to prove guilt...
...loyalty quiz was objectionable even before it was "clarified" by the Bureau of Naval Personnel. The questionnaire is based on a list drawn up by one man, the Attorney General; it asks questions based on the principle of guilt by association; and it is then sifted by loyalty boards, which in recently publicized instances have shown irresponsibility...
...Epics. But the congestion and confusion, Berlin decided, had also a more sinister cause. U.S. universities, he found, were plagued by an enervating sense of guilt-a "state of mind of academic persons . . . whom war service or some other sharp new experience has made painfully aware of the social and economic miseries of their society. Like the youthful Kropotkin ... a student or professor in this condition wonders whether it can be right for him to continue to absorb himself in the study of, let us say, the early Greek epic at Harvard, while the poor of south Boston go hungry...
This enemy, Berlin disclosed in a recent article in Time and Tide, British weekly, is the over-emphasis on social and economic miseries of our times. This gives a sense of guilt to the student or professor who wonders whether he is justified in absorbing himself in the study, "let us say, of the early Greek epic at Harvard while the poor of South Boston go hungry and unshed and Negroes are denied fundamental rights in the deep South...
Referring to the guilt complex of many intellectuals who are "painfully aware of the social and economic miseries of their society" Berlin admits that the claims of social welfare are "indeed urgent, yet they must not be allowed to absorb the whole of life...