Product Description

Shortly after the Nazi government fell, a philosophy professor at Heidelberg University lectured on a subject that burned the consciousness and conscience of thinking Germans. "Are the German people guilty?" These lectures by Karl Jaspers, an outstanding European philosopher, attracted wide attention among German intellectuals and students; they seemed to offer a path to sanity and morality in a disordered world. Jaspers, a life-long liberal, attempted in this book to discuss rationally a problem that had thus far evoked only heat and fury. Neither an evasive apology nor a wholesome condemnation, his book distinguished between types of guilt and degrees of responsibility. He listed four categories of guilt: criminal guilt (the commitment of overt acts), political guilt (the degree of political acquiescence in the Nazi regime), moral guilt (a matter of private judgment among one's friends), and metaphysical guilt (a universally shared responsibility of those who chose to remain alive rather than die in protest against Nazi atrocities). Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) took his degree in medicine but soon became interested in psychiatry. He is the author of a standard work of psychopathology, as well as special studies on Strindberg, Van Gogh and Nietsche. After World War I he became Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he achieved fame as a brilliant teacher and an early exponent of existentialism. He was among the first to acquaint German readers with the works of Kierkegaard. Jaspers had to resign from his post in 1935. From the total isolation into which the Hitler regime forced him, Jaspers returned in 1945 to a position of central intellectual leadership of the younger liberal elements of Germany. In his first lecture in 1945, he forcefully reminded his audience of the fate of the German Jews. Jaspers's unblemished record as an anti-Nazi, as well as his sentient mind, have made him a rallying point center for those of his compatriots who wish to reconstruct a free and democratic Germany.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #986905 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-01
• Released on: 2001-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
"One must respect the profundity of [Jasper's] approach to the problem and his freedom from all evasions." -- Nation

Review
"One must respect the profundity of [Jaspers's] approach to the problem and his freedom from all evasions."

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Customer Reviews

Karl Jaspers Returns to his Homeland
Most philosophy books deal with trying to find the axiom of uniting reality & thought. To Plato the axiom was the "Good" or "Ideal", to Descartes the "Thinking Self", to Kant the "Categories of Thought" etc...this book is completely different. Karl Jaspers started out with a psychiatry degree but after World War I became Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, but during the mid 1930's with the raise of Hitler & Nazi Germany, he had to leave his post due to his Jewish wife & anti-Nazi stand. After World war II, he returned to Heidelberg to give a series of lectures dealing with "The Question of German Guilt", this book being a written version of those lectures. Karl Jaspers writes very clean & precise while not using the difficult words like Kant's "Transcendental Manifold" or Heideger's "Dasein" etc...therefore sit back, get a cup of coffee & enjoy another very well written, easy to read philosophy book. Within these lectures Karl Jaspers tries to help his fellow German people to struggle through their current defeat & the Nuremberg trials by giving the reasons behind the raise of Nazi Germany, the dates when certain people either left or were trapped within the new social system, & the defeat & current responsibility of certain individuals or the German people as a whole. Karl Jaspers then lists 4 categories of guilt & degrees of responsibility: Criminal guilt (the commitment of certain acts & judgment by trial), Political guilt (how involved one is within one's government), moral guilt (your own private or circle of friends consciences), & metaphysical guilt (an universally shared responsibility to choose to live rather than protest evil). Each category is then explain in great detail of its pros & cons of legality, & which categories have more of a proof of guilt. I enjoyed the book, I hope you will too.

Collective Liability but No Collective Guilt, According to Jaspers
The following review is based on the original (1947) English-language edition. What Karl Jaspers means by guilt, in all of its types (see pp. 31-32), has already been discussed by another reviewer, and will not be repeated here.

Jaspers has, correctly or incorrectly, been considered an existentialist. In either case, his work includes a considerable emphasis on personal moral reflection.

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)

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)