The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism »

Pascal Bruckner is the award-winning author of eighteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel "Bitter Moon", which was made into a film by Roman Polanski. His other books include "The Temptation of Innocence" and "The Tears of the White Man" (Free Press) and the novels "The Divine Child "(Little, Brown) and "Evil Angels" (Grove).

"With eloquence, relish, and confidence, Pascal Bruckner confronts those whose morbid addiction to self-blame has begun to flirt with the suicidal. It's not necessary to concur with him about what constitutes faith or the lack of it. More useful and surprising (and educational) is to compare his authentic quotations from Fanon with the currently received opinion of that author. This is a book that issues a challenge in every chapter, and in some chapters on every page."--Christopher Hitchens

"With controlled anger, Pascal Bruckner scrutinizes European civilization and unsparingly tells the truth, no matter how congenial: Europe is worth admiring and emulating. Its spirit of critical inquiry has produced a culture of tolerance, liberalism, and learning. Its historical sins of omission and commission are legion, yet its values have allowed us to supersede them. In attacking a republican heresy of guilt without accountability, Bruckner chooses the right target and to great effect. This is a bracing call for the universality of republican ideals."--Oliver Kamm, columnist and editorial writer for The Times (London)

"In telling the West not to die of guilt, Pascal Bruckner has laid himself open to attack from all those who think it should. But this essential book, subtly argued and scholarly though it is, has a simple formulation at its heart that would be enough by itself to convey the power of his case: the West didn't invent slavery, the West invented its abolition. His ability to focus light on propositions like that makes him one of the indispensable philosophers of our time."--Clive James, novelist, poet, and essayist

"Bruckner's writing combines wit, learning, and savage indignation. The result is a brilliant defense of liberalism and a deservedly contemptuous assault on all those intellectuals who have betrayed its best values."--Nick Cohen, author of What's Left?: How the Left Lost Its Way

"Pascal Bruckner might well be the most distinguished essay writer in France today. He is both inordinately talented and prodigiously politically incorrect. No one better unmasks the pieties of the reigning intellectual cant. Whether one agrees or disagrees with him, he does the life of the mind an invaluable service."--Richard Wolin, author of The Wind from the East

Publishers Weekly

In a critique of the West’s postcolonial self-flagellating tendencies that is both fascinating and repellent, prize-winning French novelist and essayist Bruckner (Tears of the White Man) offers a broad defense of neoliberal democracy as a force for progress, enlightenment, and emancipation. In polemical tones, the author identifies how the aftermath of WWII and postcolonial liberation movements spawned a pathology of remorse and guilt corrupting the European self-image that was maintained by its own intelligentsia and by a variety of immigrants, Islamists, and Arabs. Though the book offers insightful analyses of how discourses of guilt and self-hatred can serve to mask self-glorification and assertions of cultural superiority, it is marred by a monolithic, often Franco-centric view of Europe, a tendency toward overgeneralization, and an almost total disregard for how global economic concerns and practices are linked to international dissatisfactions with the behavior of Western democracies. Nonetheless, as a work that takes seriously the challenges posed by multiculturalism and the changing face of Europe, it is a worthy attempt to resuscitate the ideals of progressive enlightenment, political action, and civic pride. (Mar.)

Introduction 1
Chapter One: Guilt Peddlers 5
The Irremediable and Despondency 6
The Ideology That Stammers 9
The Self-Flagellants of the Western World 13
A Thirst for Punishment 22

Chapter Two: The Pathologies of Debt 27
Placing the Enemy in One's Heart 28
The Vanities of Self-Hatred 33
One-Way Repentance 40
The False Quarrel over Islamophobia 47

Chapter Three: Innocence Recovered 57
How Central Is the Near East? 59
"Zionism, the Criminal DNA of Humanity" 62
Unmasking the Usurper 67
A Delicate Arbitrage 74
America Doubly Damned 80

Chapter Four: The Fanaticism of Modesty 87
A Tardy Conversion to Virtue 88
The Empire of Emptiness 90
The Pacification of the Past 93
The Guilty Imagination 96
Recovering Self-Esteem 100
The Twofold Lesson 106

Chapter Five: The Second Golgotha 111
Misinterpretations of Auschwitz 113
Hitlerizing History 117
The Twofold Colonial Nostalgia 127

Chapter Six: Listen to My Suffering 139
On Victimization as a Career 140
Protect Minorities or Emancipate the Individual? 148
What Duty of Memory? 157

Chapter Seven: Depression in Paradise: France, a Symptom and Caricature of Europe 167
A Universal Victim? 168
The Wild Ass's Skin 176
Who Are the Reactionaries? 179
The Triumph of Fear 183
Metamorphosis or Decline? 186

Chapter Eight: Doubt and Faith: The Quarrel between Europe and the United States 193
To Be or to Have 194
The Troublemakers in History 199
The Archaism of the Soldier 203
The Swaggering Colossus 207

Conclusion 215
Postscript to the English Translation 223
Index 229