The German As Pariah

The German as pariah Karl Jaspers and the question of German guilt Anson Rabinbach A great deal has been written about Heidegger's For Arendt, 'what Jaspers represented then, when he was involvement with National Socialism, and still more entirely alone, was not Germany but what was left of about his notorious silence about the crimes of the regime humanitas in Germany. It was as if he alone in his to which he lent his support and enthusiasm. Much has inviolability could illustrate that space which reason been and will continue to be said about the connections creates and preserves between men. '2 Unlike Die geistige between his early philosophy and his political attitudes. Situation der Zeit (The Spiritual Situation of the Age), But, apart from Habermas' s scant references to his role Jaspers' 1931 jeremiad against the 'despiritualization of after 1945, Karl Jaspers has received hardly any the world', Die Schuldfrage (The Question of German attention. This is especialy odd, since in the 1950s Guilt) was the first contribution to what Habermas called Jaspers and Heidegger were the undisputed giants of the postwar consensus of the Federal Republic, postwar German existentialism, conjoined in numerous establishing the connection between a collective German depictions linking Heideggerian Dasein to the responsibility (Verantwortlichkeit) and a democratic irreducibility of man's existence brought into relief by political identity.3 Jaspers later recalled .that Die the limit situation described by Jaspers' Existenz Schuldfrage was written at the moment that the crimes of philosophie. Jaspers' name was so often coupled with National Socialist Germany were first made 'apparent to Heidegger's that he once considered writing a book about the entire population'.4 But he was practically alone in their differences under an epigram from Cicero' s De publicly acknowledging that fact. Moses Moskowitz, oratore: 'People are always used to thinking about both who reported on conditions in Germany for Commentary of us together, and whenever people talk about us, they Magazine in the summer of 1946, wrote that 'To date no feel they must render judgement about us through one (except the philosopher Jaspers) has arisen in comparisons. But how dissimilar is each from the other.' I Germany to exhort his people to repentance and Nevertheless, before 1933 such comparisons were expiation for the mass graves of Jews dotting half the not entirely arbitrary. In the early 1920s Heidegger and European continent. '5 Jaspers regarded themselves as a Kampfgemeinschaft, a After the war Jaspers, who was by then in his sixties, kind of philosophical duo resolutely struggling together abandoned the traditional reticence of the Germany against the official Kantianism of the day. Heidegger's academic philosopher to enter the public realm. As 'the Being and Time (1927), like Jaspers' early work on the symbol of changed times and attitudes' , during the 1950s Psychology of Worldviews (1919) and his Reason and and 1960s he intervened forcefully in the great contro Existence (1935), are - despite their disparities - versies over Germany rearmament and reunification. explorations of how being is encompassed by what Jaspers was no longer a philosophical outsider, but had Jaspers called the 'immanence of the world'. Only their become the 'Preceptor Germaniae' of a new postwar earlier intimacy and fidelity to each other explains why Germany, the public advocate of moral reversal and a Heidegger's commitment to the Nazi revolution was repudiation of the 'national state thinking' that had experienced by Jaspers as so total a betrayal. characterized previous generations of German During the Nazi years Jaspers steadfastly chose to philosophers.6 In postwar Germany Heidegger's silence remain in Germany, despite his well-known antipathy to was a political statement; that Heidegger chose silence, the regime and his removal from the University in 1937. while Jaspers spoke often, and to as broad a public as Radical Philosophy 75 (JanlFeb 1996) 15 possible, is of enormous political significance. When formulation of this consensus - not only for the purposes Jaspers noted that in postwar Germany 'no one can in of defending its original intent, but also to inquire into honesty withdraw from political activity and some of its weaknesses. cooperation', he seemed to be speaking of Heidegger's militant silence.7 Moreover, his advocacy of the 'European Spirit', of the unity of Western and non A cursory comparison of the text of Jaspers' Die Western metaphysics, was clearly directed against Schuldfrage (The Question of German Guilt), published Heidegger's continued insistence on the 'German' roots by Piper Verlag in 1979, with the first edition that of his thought. In his fateful report to the Freiburg appeared with Lambert Schneider Verlag in Heidelberg University Senate Committee in December 1945, which in 1946 reveals that a preface has been deleted in the led to the teaching ban imposed on Heidegger in January later version. This absence is understandable, since 1946, Jaspers noted that Heidegger 'certainly did not see Jaspers' opening remarks, directed at his audience in the through the real forces and purposes of the National Alten Aula of Heidelberg University, would have been Socialist leader'.8 Their philosophical divergence was superfluous twenty years ago. But the fact that they were emblematic of a wider disjuncture between speech and necessary in 1945/46 makes us aware of the geistige silence in postwar German society: between the larger Klima (spiritual climate) that surrounded Jaspers' words: private world of silence and the public world of official mistrust, scepticism, and the cynical attitude that after declarations - what Ernst Nolte derisively referred to as the collapse of the Nazi regime the occupation authorities the gap between the pays reel of the Stammtisch (pub were now imposing their ideological and political table) and the pays legal of officially sanctioned requirements on Germany. Such requirements, though ritualistic commemorations of the crimes of Nazism. 9 they claimed to be the opposite of those commonly Jaspers' association with the postwar revival of spoken and heard in the same room for the past twelve humanism, and the linking of political freedom and years, were in essence the same - a kind of spiritual democracy with the rhetoric of 'guilt', 'atonement' and diktat; this time, however, from the West. 'It is not the 'penalty' (reparation) in Germany, was a way of re way of thinking, but only the direction of the aggression, establishing what Jaspers called the 'unconditionality' or fraudulent glorification, which has altered.' To of good and evil in politics. In contrast to Adorno's confront this mood directly Jaspers remarked: undifferentiated reading of Jaspers as the ideologue of All thought and research is, of course, dependenf postwar existentialist vapidity, Habermas stresses the on political circumstances. But the important break in Jaspers's thought, above all his insistence on a distinction is whether thought and research are communicative concept of reason, and, more coerced by political power and employed for its importantly, his view that only under the conditions of own ends, or whether they are left in peace because free communication among political equals could a new the authorities want to preserve the freedom of German polity be created. to research. 11 If theoretical or practical reason proved powerless to prevent politically sanctioned murder, how then, Jaspers What primarily interests me in these and other asked, can the nihilistic threat be removed without either remarks directed at the military government is the fact opting for some illiberal volonte general, or entirely that Jaspers did not hide the way his own thoughts giving up on modernity and returning to some more conformed to the 'political circumstances'. This, traditional framework, for example, that of religion? His however, can be interpreted as both conformity and, to a answer was an unambiguous embrace of the values of certain extent, refusal to accommodate to circumstances. the 'West', that is, of Anglo-Saxon democratic Jaspers was certainly sympathetic to the American liberalism. Jaspers' response thus helped produce what authorities to a degree. He was present at a meeting of Habermas has called the 'basic consensus' of the Federal 'reliable' dignitaries organized by the CIC (Counter Republic, the implied connection between political Intelligence Corps) in 1945 that included Alfred Weber, 'responsibility' and political identity in the framework Gustav Radbruch, Regenbogen and Alexander of a neo-Kantian ethics. This connection, which Mitscherlich, and he had the trust of Edward Hartshorne, Habermas has called 'postconventional identity', has the man responsible for German 're-education' at the been - and will no doubt continue to be - called into university level. However, in the complicated intrigues question as Germany enters a new era of national and conflicts between the university (and its rector, Karl reconstitution - of reunification. For this reason it is of Heinrich Bauer) and the CIC, Jaspers sided with Bauer interest to return to the conditions of the original in his efforts to restrict the extent of denazification at the 16 University of Heidelberg, which was still closed. 12 Unschuld) law and grace (Recht und Gnade), evasion Jaspers called Germans to a new 'organization of and purification (Ausweichen und Reinigung), contribute responsibilities',

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