"Guilt has to be understood not only as a way of checking one’s own destructiveness, but as a mechanism for safeguarding the life of the other, one that emerges from our own need and dependency, from a sense that this life is not a life without another life. Indeed, when it turns into a safeguarding action, I am not sure it should still be called “guilt.” If we do still use that term, we could conclude that “guilt” is strangely generative or that its productive form is reparation."
Guilt

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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Judith Butler,

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guilt