German Guilt Diffusion Early Consideration Jaspars

The Question of German Guilt, by Karl Jaspers, E.B. Ashton (Translator), Joseph W. Koterski (Introduction). 2001

Collective German Guilt Rejected. Collective German Liability Accepted. The Long and Deep Nazi Roots, in Centuries of German Thinking, Completely Ignored

The following review is based on the original (1947) English-language edition. Karl Jaspers has, correctly or incorrectly, been considered an existentialist. In either case, his work includes a considerable emphasis on personal moral reflection.

IN NO SENSE ARE GERMANS A “BAD PEOPLE”: JASPARS

Oddly enough, Jaspers has been accused of advocating collective German guilt. This is manifestly incorrect. He writes: “It is nonsensical, however, to charge a whole people with a crime. The criminal is always only an individual. It is nonsensical, too, to lay moral guilt to a people as a whole. There is no such thing as a national character extending to every single member of a nation…Morally one can judge the individual only, never a group…A people cannot perish heroically, cannot be a criminal, cannot act morally or immorally; only its individuals can do so. A people as a whole can be neither guilty nor innocent…” (pp. 40-41)

Going further, Jaspers comments: “Lastly, the phrase [You are the guilty] may mean: `You are inferior as a nation, ignoble, criminal, the scum of the earth, different from all other nations.’ This is the collective type of thought and appraisal, classifying every individual under these generalizations. It is radically false and itself inhuman, whether done for good or evil ends.” (p. 50)

GERMAN COLLECTIVE LIABILITY EMBRACED

Valid “collective guilt”, according to Jaspers, is actually collective liability: “Every German is made to share in the blame for the crimes committed in the name of the Reich. We are collectively liable. The question is in what sense each of us must feel co-responsible.” (p. 61) Notions of collective liability also originate from within: “We feel something like a co-responsibility for the acts of members of our family…because of our consanguinity we are inclined to feel concerned whenever something wrong is done by someone in the family…Thus the German–that is, the German speaking individual–feels concerned by everything growing from German roots.” (p. 79)

A MAJOR IGNORED ISSUE: PEOPLES CAUSE A CULTURE, AND THE GERMAN CULTURE GAVE RISE TO NAZISM

Jaspars completely ignores the fact that Nazism did not arise in a vacuum. It was an outcome of centuries of German chauvinistic and racist thinking. Large numbers of Germans always thought themselves superior to all others, and when Hitler came along, he only had to harness something that the Germans had long already believed.

The long-term Nazi-like antecedent German thinking introduces an unavoidable dimension to the question of German guilt.