of the German people for the Holocaust, with the need to acknowledge their guilt and
the duty of her redemption.
Public opinion of Germany after the war illuminated two cardinally excellent
positions. On the one hand, defeat in the war was perceived as a humiliating surrender,
suppression of German cultural and political aspirations. The supporter of this point
was the philosopher Martin Heidegger. On the other hand, the liberation of Germany
with the help of the Allies was seen as an opportunity for spiritual and political renewal
and revival. This idea was followed by Carl Jaspers. It was he who led the socio-
political debate, aimed at developing a unified approach to the totalitarian past and
ways to overcome it.
The most consistent proponent of the purification of the nation through the
confession of his guilt, K. Jaspers, was called "Teacher of Germany", "a symbol of the
times and evaluations that have changed". In his lectures and philosophical works, he
defended the idea of repentance, humiliation, and responsibility for the Nazis. Not all
Germans would decide at that time to openly support the unpopular occupation policy
of the Allies, the need for enormous reparations and deportations. "People behind me
are denigrating me: communists call me a desperate supporter of national-socialism;
nationalists - a traitor to their country and, according to writer Karl Schmitt [20, 101],
- in initiating the officially sanctioned allies of the culture of guilt"- described his own
position Jaspers. In a secret report, Capt. American counterintelligence Daniel
Pennham described how Jaspers' performance was met at a university audience in
February 1946: "During the lecture by Professor Jaspers, students began to ridicule,
kick their feet on the floor in remembrance of democracy, in connection with the
spiritual situation in Germany , which could not remain unnoticed by all parties" [7,
87].
In the opinion of Jaspers, the "problem of misconduct" from the philosophical
point of view requires a profound spiritual and moral rethinking and analysis of
awareness, connected not only with physical punishment for crimes, but also with the
internal updating of man. In public lectures on "Is there a German people guilty?" And
in the book "The question of misconduct" [7], he advocated the idea that the formation
of the consciousness of the German nation was the answer to the identity crisis in the
first post-war years. "Misconduct it is not what others consider guilty - this is what the
Germans have to admit to themselves. However, people do not want to hear about
misconduct, about the past, they are not worried about world history. They just want
to stop suffering, they want to escape from poverty, they want to live and not to think"
[8, 37].
At the same time, personal awareness of moral and ethical and metaphysical
responsibility opens opportunities for a real revival of society. From moral misconduct,
consciousness is born, and from it - repentance and renewal. And this seemingly purely
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