guilt, in the proper sense, turns on deliberate wrongdoing, it seems that no one can be guilty for the act of another person—there can be no shared or collective or universal guilt. Guilt is incurred by the free choice of the individual. . . . But many have questioned this. Among them are some sociologists who misrepresent in this way the dependence of the individual on society. [At their urging we delight in shouting ‘We should all feel guilty about the conditions of our schools. We should all feel guilty about our dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.’] But the main location of the idea of
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