Responsibility and the metaphysics of justice

In this chapter, I consider the problems of guilt in connection with genocide discussed after the Second World War by Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Primo Levi and Jean Améry. I look at the different forms of guilt: of perpetrators, bystanders, victims who became perpetrators, and of collective guilt. The way in to understand the structure of guilt is to consider the idea of survivor guilt, and the chapter link this to an underlying metaphysics of guilt. It considers primarily Levi’s account of survivor and accomplice guilt, and the ‘grey zone’ where judgment becomes problematic. The aim is to consider the ethical structure that supports our understanding of specific guilt categories, and this links Jaspers and Levi to Roy Bhaskar’s philosophy of metaReality. There he argues for a sense of metaphysical unity or identity that operates at a deeper level than the difference, conflict and change that occupy his dialectical critical realist philosophy. The philosophy of metaReality rounds out and deepens his thought, and I explore it for the first time in this chapter, arguing that it represents a key to understanding the philosophical thoughts and thoughtful experiences of Jaspers and Levi. The chapter considers the shape and structure of ethical enquiry, and what it is that makes ethical enquiry possible. From that point of view, it becomes possible to understand better our concepts of guilt and justice