The Tyranny of Guilt
2006 book on politics
The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism (French: La tyrannie de la pénitence. Essai sur le masochisme occidental) is a book by Pascal Bruckner about the origin and political impact of the contemporary political culture of Western guilt. It was published in French in 2006 as La Tyrannie de la Pénitence: Essai sur le Masochisme Occidental and in English in 2010, translated by Steven Rendall.
Roger Kimball regards Tyranny of Guilt as a sequel to Bruckner's 1983 book The Tears of the White Man. Richard Wolin preferred to describe it as a "pendant," a revisiting of the theme of Tears of the White Man.
Themes
The book describes what Bruckner claims is disproportional self-criticism of the West. "Nothing is more Western, he writes, than hatred of the West." Crimes which constituted the perennial dynamic of history, in the European context were elevated to a new order of evil. As Bruckner put it, "every Westerner is presumed guilty until proven innocent." He characterized the Euro-American: "Thanks to him, everything becomes clear, evil acquires a face, the dirty rat is universally designated."
Bruckner acknowledges Western sins including racism and slavery, but points out that the West is also responsible for the creation of such things as civil liberties, modern democratic government and abolitionism. "There is no doubt," Bruckner writes, "that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters." Europe engaged in slavery but it also stopped it. The latter nuance is not heard, nor the subject of Arab slave trade.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30694552. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2010 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Tyranny of Guilt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.