The Question of German Guilt

If at this close of our discussions of guilt we ask what purification consists in, no concrete reply is possible beyond what has been said. If something cannot be realized as an end of rational will but occurs as a metamorphosis by inner action, one can only repeat the indefinite, comprehensive figures of speech: uplift by illumination and growing transparency—love of man.

As for guilt, one way is to think through the thoughts here expounded. They must not only be abstractly, mentally thought, but actually carried out; they must be recalled, appropriated or rejected with one’s own being. Purification is this execution and what comes out of it. It is not something new, tacked on at the end.

Purification is the premise of our political liberty, too; for only consciousness of guilt leads to the consciousness of solidarity and co-responsibility without which there can be no liberty.

Political liberty begins with the majority of individuals in a people feeling jointly liable for the politics of their community. It begins when the individual not merely covets and chides, when he demands of himself, rather, to see reality and not to act upon the faith—misplaced in politics—in an earthly paradise failing of realization only because of the others’ stupidity and ill-will. It begins when he knows, rather, that politics looks in the concrete world for the negotiable path of each day, guided by the ideal of human existence as liberty.

In short: without purification of the soul there is no political liberty.

Our progress with inner purification on the basis of guilt consciousness can be checked by our reaction to attacks.

Without guilt consciousness we keep reacting to every attack with a counterattack. Once we have been shaken by the inner tremors, however, the external attack will merely brush the surface. It may still be offensive and painful, but it does not penetrate to the interior of the soul.

Where consciousness of guilt has been appropriated, we bear false and unjust accusations with tranquillity. For pride and defiance are molten.

If we truly feel guilt, so that our consciousness of being is in transformation, reproach from others seems to us like harmless child’s play, unable to hurt where the real guilt consciousness is an indelible prick and has forced a new form on self-consciousness. Reproached like this, we rather feel sorrow at the other’s unconcern and unawareness. If an atmosphere of trust prevails, we may remind him of the guilt potentialities in every human being. But we can no longer get angry.

Without transillumination and transformation of our soul, sensitivity would only increase in helpless impotence. The poison of psychological transpositions would ruin us. We must be ready to put up with reproaches, must listen to and then examine them. We must seek out rather than shun attacks on us, because they enable us to check up on our own thought. Our inner attitude will stand the test.

Such purification makes us free. The course of events lies not in man’s hand, though man may go incalculably far in guiding his existence. There remains uncertainty and the possibility of new and greater disasters, while no new happiness is guaranteed by the awareness of guilt and the resulting transformation of our being. These are the reasons why purification alone can free us so as to be ready for whatever comes. For only the pure soul can truthfully live in this tension: to know about the possible ruin and still remain tirelessly active for all that is possible in the world.

In regarding world events we do well to think of Jeremiah. When Jerusalem had been destroyed, state and country lost, the prophet forcibly taken along by the last few Jews who were fleeing to Egypt—when he had to see those sacrificing to Isis in the hope that she would do more for them than Jehovah, his disciple Baruch despaired. And Jeremiah answered, “The Lord saith thus: Behold; that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up, and seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not.” What does that mean? That God is, is enough. When all things fade away, God is—that is the only fixed point.

But what is true in the face of death, in extremity, turns into a dangerous temptation if fatigue, impatience, despair drive man to plunge into it prematurely. For this stand on the verge is true only if borne by the unswerving deliberation always to seize what remains possible while life endures. Our share is humility and moderation.