Jaspers demanded genuine communication as Germany’s post-war moral reckoning

Evidence

Jaspers’ inner ‘voice’ calls to mind Heidegger’s authentic voice of Dasein, calling from within and demanding answerability. But Heidegger was now refusing answerability and keeping his own voice to himself. He had told Marcuse that he did not want to be one of those who jabbered out excuses, while carrying on as though nothing had changed. Jaspers similarly felt that facile or hypocritical excuses were no good. But he would not accept Heidegger’s silence either. The language he considered necessary was not that of ritual disavowal, but that of genuine communication. Jaspers felt that Germans had forgotten how to communicate during the twelve years of hiding and silence, and had to relearn it. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 611

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Jaspers’ ‘metaphysical guilt’ with Heidegger’s authentic voice of Dasein — a live cross-link between their philosophies. — connects to: Post-Nazi Germany needed fifty years of resocialization to acquire liberal political culture — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 24; Jaspers held that genuine philosophical truth requires shared communication and communion — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 277

Broader Connections

• Post-Nazi Germany needed fifty years of resocialization to acquire liberal political culture #expands (0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 24