Collective Guilt; Individual Shame

Abstract

I start with a problem that has received some attention in the literature, and which usually arises in the context of serious past wrongs such as the genocide of the Tasmanians, various massacres, and the sustained attempt to destroy Aboriginal culture and language. (As an Australian I use Australian examples to avoid appearing to be censorious.) The problem is also of considerable importance in the philosophical understanding and evaluation of religious traditions. For instance one of the themes of Christianity is that, in the words of the New Guinea preacher, "Long time ago we bugger up big time." Another is that we have and are still fixing it, where the we that did the buggering up are long dead and the we that fixed it fixed it only because one of us was Jesus the Christ.