National Narrative and National Responsibility

Abstract

Ethical validity of the question of national responsibility is considered in the paper. The significance of the theme is determined by the need to overcome the totalitarian legacy and pressing moral evaluation of the Soviet past. The precedents of taking responsibility for the crimes committed in the past by other people are discussed. Classification of guilt undertaken by K. Jaspers is considered to clarify the concept of responsibility. Particular attention is paid to the concepts of moral and metaphysical guilt. The issue of national ownership is considered in correlation with the concepts of national identity and national narrative. The totalitarian regime creates its own narrative, using the potencies of the national narrative. However as the narrative created by the totalitarian regime legitimizes a criminal practice, taking it represents both moral and metaphysical guilt. The article clarified the concept of a national narrative itself. Consideration of this concept relies on the theories of Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner. We describe the social and existential significance of the national narrative, define connection between the national narrative and ideology. The article shows that the responsibility of the nation could be to revise the national narrative, and, perhaps, and rejection of it. Necessity of this revision is due to the fact that the criminal totalitarian practices, using the capabilities of the national narrative, reveals its original predisposition to the justification of the totalitarian regime and thus reveals that it is morally and metaphysically (in the sense of Jaspers) invalid. However, the lack of the national narrative means abandoning the principle of life of person and puts he/she in the hardest existential situation. This implies morbidity in relation to any criticism of the past, which is manifested both in German and in Russian mass consciousness.