The Question of German Guilt

THE QUESTION OF GERMAN GUILT

PERSPECTIVES IN CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY

John D. Caputo, series editor

1. John D. Caputo, ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida.

2. Michael Strawser, Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard—From Irony to Edification.

3. Michael Barber, Ethical Hermeneutics: Rationality in Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy of Liberation.

4. James H. Olthuis, ed., Knowing Other-wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality.

5. James Swindal, Reflection Revisited Jürgem Habermas’s Discursive Theory of Truth.

6. Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Postmodern Second edition.

7. Thomas W. Busch, Circulating Being: From Embodiment to Incorporation—Essays on Late Existentialism.

8. Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics. Second edition.

9. Francis J. Ambrosio, ed., The Question of Christian Philosophy Today.

10. Jeffrey Bloechl, ed., The Face of the Other and the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.

11. Ilse N. Bulhof and Laurens ten Kate, eds, Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Theology.

12. Trish Glazebrook, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science.

13. Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign. Second edition.

14. Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard. Second edition.

15. Dominique Janicaud, Jean-François Courtine, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, and Paul Ricoeur, Phenemenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate.

The QUESTION of GERMAN GUILT

By KARL JASPERS

TRANSLATED BY E. B. ASHTON

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY

JOSEPH W. KOTERSKI, S.J.

Originally published as Die Schuldfrage in 1947. © 1965 Piper Verlag GmbH, München, Germany.

Translation © 1948 by The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a Division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction © 2001 by Fordham University Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, No. 16

ISSN 1089-3938

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jaspers, Karl, 1883-1969.

[Schuldfrage. English]

The question of German guilt / Karl Jaspers ; translated by E.B. Ashton, with a new introduction by Joseph W. Koterski.

p. cm.—(Perspectives in continental philosophy ; no. 16)

Originally published: New York: Dial Press, 1947.

ISBN 0-8232-2068-0—ISBN 0-8232-2069-9 (pbk.)

1. National socialism. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Germany. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Atrocities. 4. Germany—History—Philosophy. 5. Antisemitism—Germany—History—20th century. I. Ashton, E. B., 1909-II. Tide. III. Series.

DD256.48 J3713 2000

943.086—dc21

00-029375

Printed in the United States of America

00 01 02 03 04 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction to the 2000 Edition

“Ladies and Gentlemen”

Introduction

Scheme of Distinctions

The German Questions

Differentiation of German Guilt

Possible Excuses

Our Purification

Introduction to the 2000 Edition

More than half a century has gone by since the fall of the Nazi government, but neither the simple passage of time nor the crossing of a threshold as symbolic as the new millennium has yet extinguished the question of responsibility for the carnage of the Second World War.¹ Certain Swiss banks are only now disclosing the records of looted gold, and we still hear of attempts to extradite and prosecute some war criminals. In all likelihood, even when the last of those then alive have passed away, the echoes of the tragedy will linger, in much the way that the effects of the Civil War are still felt long after those who were but children then have perished. History is like that.

THE QUESTION OF GUILT