On diachronic justice

Abstract

This text is drawn from autobiographical notes and published here for the first time. It addresses the complex question of what stance members of later-born generations should adopt as fellow citizens toward the moral and political (as opposed to the criminal legal) guilt of survivors of the recent historical past who are burdened by their conspicuous support for a now defeated criminal regime. The specific question it deals with is what role the passage of time plays when it comes to assessing the problematic behavior. The guiding assumption is that, given unchanged moral standards, the retrospective judgment of past behavior made by members of later-born generations may be different—namely, less severe—than the judgement of exculpating circumstances made by surviving contemporaries in face-to-face encounters with the figures in question. This is because, when applying the same moral principles, historical circumstances, which may have been weighted differently at the time, have to be taken into consideration. A case in point is when the standards of political culture and how citizens’ moral and political responsibility is understood have changed in the meantime as a result of political learning processes.