"Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent"
About this Quote
Indifference is not a neutral pose here; it is a form of participation. Steiner’s line has the snap of an ethical trap: the moment you decide something is “not your problem,” you have already taken a side. The phrasing matters. “Accomplices” belongs to crime and conspiracy, not to the polite vocabulary of bystanders. Steiner drags passivity into the dock and treats it as complicity with consequences.
The subtext is aimed at comfortable spectatorship, the cultured self-image that says reading, thinking, and appreciating are sufficient responses to atrocity or injustice. As a critic, Steiner spent a lifetime pressing on the scandal that high culture and high barbarism can coexist in the same society, sometimes in the same person. The line echoes postwar European moral panic: after the Holocaust, “I didn’t know” and “I wasn’t involved” became both common defenses and, in Steiner’s view, evasions. Indifference is the social lubricant that lets institutions keep moving while harm accumulates in the margins.
“Leaves them indifferent” also implies something active on the world’s side: systems and events don’t just happen; they produce numbness, fatigue, a curated overload. Steiner is warning that modern life manufactures the conditions for ethical sleepwalking, then offers that sleep as innocence.
The intent isn’t to demand constant outrage; it’s to insist on responsibility for attention. What you refuse to notice doesn’t stay pure. It recruits you.
The subtext is aimed at comfortable spectatorship, the cultured self-image that says reading, thinking, and appreciating are sufficient responses to atrocity or injustice. As a critic, Steiner spent a lifetime pressing on the scandal that high culture and high barbarism can coexist in the same society, sometimes in the same person. The line echoes postwar European moral panic: after the Holocaust, “I didn’t know” and “I wasn’t involved” became both common defenses and, in Steiner’s view, evasions. Indifference is the social lubricant that lets institutions keep moving while harm accumulates in the margins.
“Leaves them indifferent” also implies something active on the world’s side: systems and events don’t just happen; they produce numbness, fatigue, a curated overload. Steiner is warning that modern life manufactures the conditions for ethical sleepwalking, then offers that sleep as innocence.
The intent isn’t to demand constant outrage; it’s to insist on responsibility for attention. What you refuse to notice doesn’t stay pure. It recruits you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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