Gianluca Cavallo’s book Das falsche Leben: Schuld, Scham und die Grenze moralischer Freiheit has been published in German and is available from Campus (Frankfurt, New-York). Click here to access the book from the publisher’s website.

Here is a translation of the publisher’s blurb:

“There is no right life in the wrong one”: Adorno’s famous saying expresses our own entanglement in evil and bad. The subject feels guilty because he knows what he could do differently and better. But at what price? Is this price morally acceptable? Can the wrong life perhaps be justified? These are the questions that this book raises on the basis of Adorno’s reading. Since they do not allow for a clear answer, another one soon arises: How does the subject deal with this moral uncertainty? Gianluca Cavallo reconceptualises guilt and (moral) shame so that they are no longer experienced as failures, but as feelings that make the limit of our moral freedom perceptible – a limit that we should learn to accept.