Guilty Subjects and Political Responsibility: Arendt, Jaspers and the Resonance of the ‘German Question’ in Politics of Reconciliation

Abstract

The post-war question of German guilt resonates in contemporary world politics, framing the way actors and observers conceptualize collective responsibility for past wrongs in diverse polities. This article examines the responses of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers to the ‘German question’: in what sense are ordinary citizens collectively accountable for state crimes and how should they respond to the legacy of past wrongs? Arendt and Jaspers agree on conceiving collective responsibility in terms of a liability predicated on political association that does not impute blame. However, they disagree on the value of the sentiment of guilt in politics. For Jaspers, a spreading consciousness of guilt through public communication leads to purification of the polity. But Arendt rejects guilt in politics, where publicity distorts it into a sentimentality that dulls citizens' responsiveness to the world. These contrasting responses are employed to consider how members of a ‘perpetrating community’ might be drawn into a politics of reconciliation. I suggest that Arendt's conception of political responsibility, conceived in terms of an ethic of worldliness, opens the way for understanding how ‘ordinary citizens' might assume political responsibility for past wrongs while resisting their identification as guilty subjects by a discourse of restorative reconciliation.

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