Guilty but Free: The Experience of Guilt and the Problem of (Non) violence

The essay is devoted to the ethics of experiencing guilt in those moral situations where the question of opposition to mass violence is inseparable from the question of involvement in it. In today's Russian-language public discussions, guilt is labeled as both an expected and avoided feeling. By conceptualizing the notion of experience and examining it from a historical point of view, the author identifies various cultural patterns and models that regulate the experience of guilt and are relevant today. In particular, cultural contexts are noted in which the feeling of guilt itself is interpreted as a means of suppression and violence (this is how guilt is predominantly understood in modern "pop psychology"). Tracing the Christian etymology of the feeling of guilt and the close connection of the idea of repentance with the idea of Divine forgiveness as a gift of grace, the author of the essay raises questions about the extent to which secular practices of repentance are possible; the extent to which attempts to instrumentalize the concepts of guilt and responsibility undertaken within the humanist tradition after the Second World War remain workable today; ultimately, how the problematic of guilt and the problematic of (non)violence are related.