treatise by the greatest thinker of the 20th century, the German philosopher, psychologist and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, written by him after the defeat of German fascism, during the days of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals. At that time, defeated Germany lay in ruins, and society was in turmoil and the deepest depression. The German people were faced with the task of reassembling themselves, developing a new national identity - "to be melted down, reborn, to discard everything that is harmful." Jaspers raises the painful question of whether all Germans are responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime, and for the first time distinguishes four types of guilt: legal, political, moral and metaphysical. The treatise is published in the classic translation of Solomon Apt.
