Karl Jaspers: History and German Guilt
This paper will discuss the historical philosophy of German historian Karl Jaspers and its relationship to his views concerning the "German guilt" surrounding the Second World War. These latter ideas were presented in his book, The Question of German Guilt, published in 1947 and discussed in some of his other books published in the 1950s and 1960s.
In Jaspers' view, history, as commonly understood, is inextricably linked with mankind; the history of mankind is the manifestation of self-awareness on the part of human beings. Nature's history is "devoid of consciousness, constantly repeating the same thing through aeons of time;" In contrast, human beings produce historical phenomena which never repeat; instead, human history constantly proceeds forward. Thus, Jaspers implicitly rejects the theories which hold that human history tends to follow cycles, repeating major themes.
Jaspers' scheme of world history contains three phases. The first phase is that of prehistory. This is the longest phase, so far, encompassing the entire period prior to any written record. During this phase, mankind evolved from a state similar to that of the primate species (to which he is related) to a state which eventually saw his becoming a self-conscious being with the power to verbally communicate ideas. Prior to this evolution, however, man was no different from the other animal species which inhabited the planet; his actions repeated themselves, as with others in nature, until he became a self-aware being. It was during this prehistoric phase, though, that self-awareness somehow entered the collective and individual mind of mankind and our species made itself unique in nature.
The second phase is that of history. This phase roughly encompasses the last five thousand years in China, India, the Near Orient, and Europe. During this time, the ancient civilizations developed and written language made its debut....