Jaspers held that even Nazi resisters bore metaphysical guilt for surviving

Evidence

Every German, he wrote, must ask the question ‘how am I guilty?’ Even people who had defied the Nazis or tried to help their victims still shared in some deep ‘metaphysical’ guilt, he thought, for, ‘if it happens, and if I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 610

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Jaspers’ concept of ‘metaphysical guilt’ — the idea that mere survival when others died constitutes guilt.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broad interest in sacrifice, and to the ‘responsibility’ theme running through existentialism (Sartre’s radical responsibility).