The Happy Burden of History

In order to act as a responsible self (responsible to the preservation of human beings), believe the authors, it is necessary to act as the responsible self in history, and as scholars of Germany (from the fields of history, literary criticism, philosophy, and theology), the question of the responsible self thus leads to the question of responsibility in relation to the Nazi Holocaust. In this work, they adopt an existential viewpoint to exploring strategies of selfhood--myths, lies, non-conformity, and irony--found in the oral history of ordinary Germans and in the writings of such figures as Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir as they engage this question of responsible selfhood in relation to living in the history of the Third Reich. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrew Stuart Bergerson, K. Scott Baker,and Clancy Martin, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, USA;Steve Ostovich, College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota, USA.