A great movie

Last night we watched a great movie on TV: The Reader, with several very good actors playing the leads.

We had both read the book before we saw the movie in the theatre a few years ago, and liked both.

It is a haunting story. And it raises one issue that I have been thinking about off and on for roughly fifty years: to what extent do I share the guilt for the Holocaust?

The twentieth century, my century, was blown apart by two massive catastrophes in Europe, where my heritage came from: the first symbolised by Passchendaele, the second by Auschwitz.

Who was to blame? and even more important what can I do to make amends for what looks to the rest of the world like a massive failure of Western philosophy, politics, religion, and humanity?


The film traces the halfhearted efforts of the "hero" to answer this question in his own way, but the conclusion does not satisfy the question.

I have never found an answer. Although strongly attracted by pacifist arguments I have never been completely happy with them when applied to the Second World War.

Why did the German nation allow the Nazis to do what they did? Why were there so many Nazi sympathisers in the UK and America?

The nearest to an answer I have found is Richard Rorty's definition of morality: the process of finding mutually acceptable ways of protecting the weak from the strong.

For the last decade or so, I have asked myself if we are meeting Rorty's standard: when opening a new protocol in the Ethics Committee, or a new case for Restorative Justice, or a new application for the Lotteries Distribution Committee.

Sitting down and talking about it is the only way to do what Rorty suggests; Chamberlain tried that with Hitler,  but Churchill had to bring in the big guns and bombers to get a result, or so it appears still.

Anyway, when you get a chance, have another look at the film and think about it again!