Abstract

This study is about American public cultural conceptions of self and their correlated moralities from the end of WW II through 1979. Those conceptions are studied in American discourse as it examines moral atrocities in literate, public journals, magazines, and a few other similar resources. The specific moral atrocities generating the body of literature examined are the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Gulag, the massacre at My Lai, and the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. ;As authors reflect on and react to these events their diatribes and arguments reveal assumptions of self and morality. The self is challenged by events inexplicable to former views. Morality is revealed as authors ground their claims finally in goods for which they apparently see no need for further justification. Assumptions of both self and morality are most thoroughly disclosed at points of conflict---where authors who disagree about particular claims appeal to the same foundations of individuality and subjectivity or of teleological purpose. ;Despite the reasonable assumption that self should change dramatically through such tumultuous times, it does not. The psychological self, along with the conflict between determinative psychical causes and essential autonomy, persists. The modern self, conceived as rational and improving both historically and personally, also survives. The discourse material examined supports the interesting claim that the more varied are the descriptions of self and corresponding ends the more apparent it is that the one characteristic most common to every self is the yet unachieved completion of his particular end. That is to say, the more varied, inconsistent, conflicted, and irreconcilable the teleology described by different aspects and perspectives of self, the more evident is the inescapably teleological and therefore moral context of the self