Abstract

Revisiting Jaspers’ critique of the idea of collective guilt, the author proposes to consider the category of shame not as an individual moral experience, but as a sensus communis. Using the Kantian interpretation of the sensus communis to understand the collective character of shame allows us to draw attention to the fact that modern democracy (in contrast to war-oriented fascism) has lost its own main mobilizing resource and that which embodies the energy of community and the establishment of equality: revolution.