There is a false pathos in this application of ideas from Isaiah and Christianity, serving in turn to divert men from the sober task of doing what is really in their power—from improvement within the sphere of the comprehensible and from the inner transformation. It is the digression into “estheticism” which by its irresponsibility diverts from realization out of the core of individual self-existence. It is a new way of acquiring a false collective feeling of our own value.
(4) We seem as though delivered from guilt if in view of the vast suffering among us Germans we cry out, “It has been atoned for.”
Here we have to differentiate again. A crime is atoned for; a political liability is limited by a peace treaty and thus brought to an end. As far as these two points are concerned, the idea is correct and meaningful. But moral and metaphysical guilt, which are understood only by the individual in his community, are by their very nature not atoned for. They do not cease. Whoever bears them enters upon a process lasting all his life.
Here we Germans face an alternative. Either acceptance of the guilt not meant by the rest of the world but constantly repeated by our conscience comes to be a fundamental trait of our German self-consciousness—in which case our soul goes the way of transformation—or we subside into the average triviality of indifferent, mere living. Then no true search for God awakens any more in our amidst; then the true nature of existence is no longer revealed to us; then we no longer hear the transcendent meaning of our sublime poetry and art and music and philosophy; then all of this may, as past, perhaps become a memory of other nations—nations capable still of hearing the voice of what Germans, once upon a time, brought forth and what Germans were but are no more.
There is no other way to realize truth for the German than purification out of the depth of consciousness of guilt.
THE WAY OF PURIFICATION
Purification in action means, first of all, making amends.
Politically this means delivery, from inner affirmation, of the legally defined reparations. It means tightening our belts, so part of their destruction can be made up to the nations attacked by Hitler Germany.
Besides the legal form assuring a just distribution of the load, such deliveries presuppose life, working ability, and working possibility. The political will to make amends must inevitably flag if political acts of the victors destroy these premises. For then we should not have a peace aimed at reparation but continued war aiming at further destruction.
There is more to reparation, however. Everyone really affected by the guilt he shares will wish to help anyone wronged by the arbitrary despotism of the lawless régime.
There are two different motivations which must not be confused. The first calls on us to help wherever there is distress, no matter what the cause—simply because it is near and calls for help. The second requires us to grant a special right to those deported, robbed, pillaged, tortured and exiled by the Hitler regime.
Both demands are fully justified, but there is a difference in motivation. Where guilt is not felt, all distress is immediately leveled on the same plane. If I want to make up for what I, too, was guilty of, I must differentiate between the victims of distress.
This way of purification by reparation is one we cannot dodge. Yet there is much more to purification. Even reparation is not earnestly willed and does not fulfill its moral purpose except as it ensues from our cleansing transmutation.
Clarification of guilt is at the same time clarification of our new life and its possibilities. From it spring seriousness and resolution.
Once that happens, life is no longer simply there to be naively, gaily enjoyed. We may seize the happiness of life if it is granted to us for intermediate moments, for breathing spells—but it does not fill our existence; it appears as amiable magic before a melancholy background. Essentially, our life remains permitted only to be consumed by a task.
The result is modest resignation. In inner action before the transcendent we become aware of being humanly finite and incapable of perfection. Humility comes to be our nature.
Then we are able, without will to power, to struggle with love in discussing truth, and in truth to join with each other.
Then we are capable of unaggressive silence—it is from the simplicity of silence that the clarity of the communicable will emerge.
Then nothing counts any longer but truth and activity. Without guile we are ready to bear what fate has in store for us. Whatever happens will, while we live, remain the human task that cannot be completed in the world.
Purification is the way of man as such. There, purification by way of unfolding the guilt idea is just one moment. Purification is not primarily achieved by outward actions—not by an outward finishing, not by magic. Rather, purification is an inner process which is never ended but in which we continually become ourselves. Purification is a matter of our freedom. Everyone comes again and again to the fork in the road, to the choice between the clean and the murky.
Purification is not the same for all. Each goes his personal way. It is not to be anticipated by anyone else, nor can it be shown. General ideas can do no more than alert, perhaps awaken.
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.