Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Memoriale di Potočari © Nr-stock/Shutterstock
“Following Jaspers’ reflections, evidence and common sense, we can conclude that the Serbs are not a genocidal people, even if genocide was committed in Srebrenica.” A comment on the eve of the vote in the UN Assembly on the resolution on Srebrenica
(Originally published by the newspaper Today April 28, 2024)
Speaking about the Serbian national team’s chances of success at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said: “I am one of the few people in Serbia who has read all of Jaspers, we are talking about thousands of pages […] I believe we can reach the semi-finals.”
For those who don’t know, “Jaspers” is not an athlete or a football expert, but Karl Jaspers, a well-known German philosopher, existentialist and humanist.
Well, if Vučić was very wrong about the semi-final (the Serbian national team had finished last in its group), he was right about the immense work of the German philosopher.
Over the course of his life, Jaspers (died in 1969) had published over thirty books, also leaving behind a collection of unpublished texts of over thirty thousand pages and a substantial and very important collection of letters.
The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences initiated a project lasting eighteen years to publish Jaspers’ complete works in fifty volumes. By the way, even the most stubborn nerds and PhD students writing a thesis on the German philosopher have in all likelihood not read “all of Jaspers”.
In any case, it would have been useful if President Vučić had at least read The question of guilt [La questione della colpa] of Karl Jaspers.
This famous essay, published in 1946, is based on a series of lectures, which Jaspers held after the war, dedicated to the question of Germany’s guilt and political responsibility.
The Serbian edition came out in 1999, in the midst of the war in Kosovo (publisher Samizdat/FreeB92, translation by Vanja Savić).
Jaspers had openly opposed Nazism since 1933 [anno dell’ascesa al potere di Hitler], which is why he was removed from Heidelberg University where he taught philosophy. However, together with his wife (of Jewish origins), he decided to remain in Germany during the war, living under the constant threat of deportation.
Somewhat disappointed by the situation in post-war Germany, he left his country in 1948 to teach philosophy in Switzerland, where he remained until the end of his days.
Before leaving Germany he shared with his compatriots, and with the whole world, his reflections on guilt, enriching the history of ideas with the extraordinary essay we mentioned earlier.
The question of guilt is still relevant, also in light of the proposed United Nations resolution on the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide”.
Serbia and Republika Srpska launched a joint diplomatic campaign to challenge the resolution and prevent it from being adopted, while calling on “all Serbs” to fly the Serbian flag should the resolution be approved. “After they have defined us as a genocidal people, we will display our national symbols, our most beautiful tricolor,” said Vučić.
This was echoed by Ivica Dačić, Serbian Foreign Minister, stating that “the intention [dei promotori della risoluzione] is to mark a people and, obviously, to tailor a genocide to them, so the Serbs, in addition to the Hutus, will be the only people in the world to have been defined as genocidal”.
The truth, however, is that no one – apart from nationalists and Serbian tabloids – talks about a genocidal people. The concept of the collective guilt of an entire people simply does not exist in international law, or even in the minds of well-meaning people.
Are white Americans “a genocidal people” because of the crimes committed against blacks during the period of slavery and racial segregation?
Are the English perhaps because of the colonial crimes of the British Empire, or the Belgians because of the genocide in the Congo?
The Turks because of the genocide against the Armenians? The Japanese because of the crimes and genocide against the Chinese?
The Germans because of the Holocaust? So also Max Planck, Thomas Mann and Karl Jaspers himself? The Hutu because of the genocide against the Tutsi?
No, none of these peoples are genocidal, just as the Serbs are not.
This is why Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, immediately after reading the sentence against Ratko Mladić, underlined that this was not a condemnation of the Serbian people.
On the other hand, however, there is the idea of ”collective guilt”. An idea that has its roots in ancient times and is still widespread in public opinion, because no one wants to feel a sense of national guilt or responsibility, the only acceptable national feeling is pride (“People don’t want to hear about of guilt, of facts of the past. They simply don’t want to suffer anymore; they want to get out of this misery, to live, without reflecting on what happened”, writes Jaspers.)
But if we feel a sense of collective pride for the sporting achievements of Novak Đoković or for the inventions of Nikola Tesla, shouldn’t we also feel collective shame (and guilt) for the war crimes committed by Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević?
Since the time of Sophocles and Greek mythology, humanity has been asking itself similar questions.
The plague had struck the entire city of Thebes, all its citizens, because of one individual act – the incest of King Oedipus. The entire Jewish people found themselves having to bear the weight of a collective guilt, that is, a stigma due to the murder of Jesus of Nazareth.
Even after the Holocaust, many thinkers argued sensibly, asking whether the German people could be held collectively responsible for the Nazi crimes.
“All of us, Germans, without exception, have the duty to face the question of guilt clearly and to draw the consequences,” writes the “autochauvinist” Jaspers.
The German philosopher distinguishes four types of guilt.
First of all, naked criminal guilt, i.e. criminal actions that can be objectively proven, such as those dealt with by the Nuremberg tribunal (and that of The Hague).
Political guilt instead consists in the criminal actions of a state and its leadership, for which even the citizens of that state – as political animals and governed subjects – are forced to suffer the consequences because “each bears a part of the responsibility for the way which is governed.”
Moral guilt concerns the actions we take as individuals regardless of whether “we are forced to do it” or “we are simply doing our job,” like Eichmann. “Crimes – writes Jaspers – remain crimes even when they are ordered”.
Finally, metaphysical guilt. Every individual, as an integral part of humanity, is responsible for all the injustices and crimes that occur in the world if he does not do everything possible to prevent them. So the question is: are we guilty?
“The way we respond to it in our most intimate interiority establishes our present awareness of being and ourselves. It is a vital issue for the German soul.”
Thus, the concept of guilt is neither monolithic nor simple.
For example, criminal and moral guilt weighs on those who actively participated in the planning or physical execution of a war crime. Those who passively tolerated these actions are guilty from a political and metaphysical point of view.
For Jaspers, only critical self-reflection by Germans could lead to a genuine cultural and political rebirth of Germany after the Second World War.
In the same way, Serbia must deal with its past, with that burden of war crimes that does not allow us to be reborn and effectively progress as a state and nation. Rather than take individual and moral responsibility, we choose to be collectively “guilty” in the eyes of others.
Goodness, why?
The day after the announced vote on the UN resolution on Srebrenica [il voto, inizialmente previsto per il 2 maggio, è stato posticipato] it was the first anniversary of the massacre that took place in the “Vladislav Ribnikar” school.
We don’t necessarily have to read Jaspers, it would be enough to read an extraordinary text on guilt and responsibility (So far no good answer [Ancora nessuna risposta adeguata]) written by Slobodan Negić, father of Sofija Negić, one of the victims of the massacre. Because Jaspers’ “metaphysical guilt” is actually nothing more than responsibility.
Following Jaspers’ reflections, evidence and common sense, we can conclude that the Serbs are not a genocidal people, even if genocide was committed in Srebrenica.
Therefore, our republic should be among the first countries to support, morally and politically, the UN resolution on the Srebrenica genocide. If “we” also condemned members of our people who committed crimes, we would help break the stigma towards the Serbian people that persists in international public opinion and the popular imagination. So both the Serbian leadership and opposition, like all of humanity – to which we still belong? -, they would remember that infamous July 11th.
For Jaspers, accepting responsibility is a necessary precondition for freedom and democracy.
“Being aware of one’s responsibility is the first sign of a reawakening of political freedom. This freedom is authentic, therefore it is something more than a mere request imposed from outside on unfree people, only to the extent that that awareness exists and is recognized.”
In the absence of internal political freedom, man submits and, at the same time, feels no sense of guilt. “Knowing that we are responsible is the beginning of an internal upheaval that aspires to political freedom.”
So, have we really read Jaspers?
We don’t have to know all his works, just reading would be enough The question of guilt.
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