inherited guilt
Sin passed down
Inherited guilt is moral responsibility passed down through generations—the idea that descendants bear blame for their ancestors' actions.
The concept appears in religious contexts (original sin) and debates about historical injustices: Do modern Germans inherit guilt for the Holocaust?
Critics argue guilt requires personal wrongdoing; defenders distinguish guilt from responsibility to address inherited advantages or harms.
- original sinInherited spiritual corruption
- ancestralOf one's forebears
- bloodlineAncestry through generations
- curseInvoked harm through words
- family curseMisfortune plaguing a lineage
legacy · shame · transgression · generational · generational trauma · burden · atonement · collective · collective responsibility · sins of the father · stain · taint · lineage · reparations · penance · blame · complicity · descendant
- guiltremorseful, contrition, remorse, culpability, mea culpa
- theological anthropologyimage of God, divine image, divine likeness, likeness, fall of man
- sinoriginal sin, mortal sin, venial sin, deadly sins, seven deadly sins
inherited guiltclean slate
Record wiped clear
tabula rasa · blank slate · presumption of innocence · blamelessness · guiltlessness
inherit, inherited, inheriting, inherits, inheritance, inheritances, inheritor, inheritors, inheritable