Guilt and responsibility: a dialogue between Karl Jasper & Eric Weil

Abstract

This article aims to draw a dialogue between Karl Jaspers and Eric Weil through the concepts of political guilt and political responsibility. Our proposal is to analyze the type of violence that Weil describes as the work of Nazism and that can be compared with the context of political guilt presented by Jaspers. After working on the concept of pure violence, as defined by Weil, the next step is to discuss Karl Jaspers’ four concepts of guilt and relate political guilt to the political responsibility described by Eric Weil. Finally, an attempt is made to outline some considerations about the dangers of pure violence. For that, we use, mainly the thought of Karl Jaspers and Eric Weil, however, eventually resorting to other philosophers that are suitable for the purposes of the article. Since pure violence always remains a possibility, democracy must be strengthened to avoid it.

Keywords: Responsibility, guilt, politics, violence.