The Question of German Guilt

This again does not mean that we have freedom to engage in propaganda. Propaganda might perhaps be tolerated if in line with the political aims valid today. At the university it would even then be a calamity. We do not have to capture truth by quick statements. We have to test, to weigh, to reflect, to debate to and fro and pro and con, to question our own assertions. Truth does not exist as merchandise ready-made for delivery; it exists only in methodical movement, in the thoughtfulness of reason.

What I have said so far applies to our university as such, to its doctrine and research. For our present course the suggested problems of tension are especially acute.

I want to speak to you about our situation, and so I shall constantly skirt the immediate actuality of concrete politics, which is not and should not be our theme. Yet what we want to ponder is a condition precedent for our judgment in politics as well.

I want to speak from philosophical motives, for our own enlightenment and encouragement. Truth shall help us find our way.

For these considerations we shall first visualize two necessities, the consciousness of which I deem particularly indispensable to Germans in our present situation. We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences. These differences are so great that in borderline cases we appear to each other like people of different nations.

TALKING WITH EACH OTHER

We have to get our spiritual bearings in Germany, with one another. We have no common ground yet. We are seeking to get together.

Talk from the platform is necessarily one-sided. We do not converse here. Yet what I expound to you has grown out of the “talking with each other” which all of us do, each in his own circle. The manner in which this takes place everywhere is the ethos of the atmosphere we live in.

Everyone must deal in his own way with the thoughts I expound. He is not simply to accept as valid but to weigh, nor simply to oppose but to test, visualize and examine.

We want to learn to talk with each other. That is to say, we do not just want to reiterate our opinions but to hear what the other thinks. We do not just want to assert but to reflect connectedly, listen to reasons, remain prepared for a new insight. We want to accept the other, to try to see things from the other’s point of view; in fact, we virtually want to seek out opposing views. To get at the truth, an opponent is more important than one who agrees with us. Finding the common in the contradictory is more important than hastily seizing on mutually exclusive points of view and breaking off the conversation as hopeless.

It is so easy to stand with emotional emphasis on decisive judgments; it is difficult calmly to visualize and to see truth in full knowledge of all objects. It is easy to break off communication with defiant assertions; it is difficult ceaselessly, beyond assertions, to enter on the ground of truth. It is easy to seize an opinion and hold on to it, dispensing with further cogitation; it is difficult to advance step by step and never to bar further questioning.

We must restore the readiness to think, against the tendency to have everything prepared in advance and, as it were, placarded in slogans. One requirement is that we do not intoxicate ourselves with feelings of pride, of despair, of indignation, of defiance, of revenge, of scorn, but that we put these feelings on ice and perceive reality. We must suspend such sentiments to see the truth, to be of good will in the world.

Yet this, too, applies to talking with each other: it is easy to think everything tentatively and never to come to a decision; it is difficult to make the true resolve in the lucidity of universally open thought. It is easy to shirk responsibility by talking; it is difficult absolutely, but without obstinacy, to maintain a resolution. It is easy always in a situation to take the line of least resistance; it is difficult, led by the absolute resolution through all mobility and pliability of thought, to stay on the determined path.

These difficulties let us go astray in opposite directions. We make no headway if we play off the aberrations on one side against those on the other. Nor is there a middle way. Rather, man’s way to truth lies in the realm of the causes to which those aberrations are due. There we go when we can really talk with each other. To that end something must constantly remain in us that trusts the other and deserves his trust. Then, amidst discussion, that silence is possible in which men listen together and hear the truth.