Guilty Subjects and Political Responsibility: Arendt, Jaspers and the Resonance of the ‘German Question’ in Politics of Reconciliation Andrew Schaap University of Edinburgh The post-war question of German guilt resonates in contemporary world politics, framing the way actors and observers conceptualize collective responsibility for past wrongs in diverse polities. This article examines the responses of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers to the ‘German question’: in what sense are ordinary citizens collectively accountable for state crimes and how should they respond to the legacy of past wrongs? Arendt and Jaspers agree on conceiving collective responsibility in terms of a liability predicated on political association that does not impute blame. However, they disagree on the value of the sentiment of guilt in politics. For Jaspers, a spreading consciousness of guilt through public communication leads to purification of the polity. But Arendt rejects guilt in politics, where publicity distorts it into a sentimentality that dulls citizens’ responsiveness to the world. These contrasting responses are employed to consider how members of a ‘perpetrating com- munity’ might be drawn into a politics of reconciliation. I suggest that Arendt’s conception of political responsibility, conceived in terms of an ethic of worldliness, opens the way for understanding how ‘ordinary citizens’ might assume political responsibility for past wrongs while resisting their identification as guilty subjects by a discourse of restorative reconciliation. ‘YOU ARE GUILTY’. In 1945, these words appeared on posters around towns and cities in occupied Germany as part of the denazification programme instituted by the Allies. Above the words was an image of Buchenwald. Alongside them, an accusing finger pointed at the observer. For many, this was the first confirmation that the death camps really did exist. Consequently, the charge of collective guilt was met with widespread indignation and cynicism (QG, p. 47; Arendt, 1950, pp. 348–9). 1 How could ‘ordinary people’ be considered guilty of such terrible crimes? ‘We did not know’ and ‘what could we have done, anyway?’ were common defensive responses to the accusation of collective guilt. The extent to which citizens should acknowledge and assume collective respon- sibility for grave wrongs perpetrated by their state remains a controversial and pressing political issue in countries such as South Africa and Australia where a political project of ‘reconciliation’ is presently being promoted. Despite the dif- ficulties inherent in conceptualizing collective responsibility within a liberal moral vocabulary, some kind of collective accounting for past wrongs and responding to the suffering of those wronged is widely perceived as a necessary condition for achiev- ing reconciliation in these societies. In the moment of transition invoked between a violent-repressive past and a peaceful-democratic future, past and future oriented responsibilities of a ‘perpetrating community’ are conjoined in the declaration ‘never again’. In order to underscore a break with the past and secure a future in POLITICAL STUDIES: 2001 VOL 49, 749–766 © Political Studies Association, 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA