On the question of guilt

While guilt is one of the fundamental ethical questions, its sensitivity an d its scope ranging over various disciplines have made it one of the least popular areas of social research, This study arose out of a critical analys is of certain relevant points of Jaspers' classic The Question of Guilt, an d attempts to use it to reflect more closely and precisely on this primaril y political-philosophical subject, taking concrete examples from the Czech moral and political situation in the last decade, Slavik tries to validate Jaspers' schematic distinction of guilt (the most important change here bei ng the introduction of ecological guilt, the inclusion of which is justifie d by the gravity of the global environmental crisis) and to find a more ade quate definition and distribution of political guilt in particular (giving priority to the use of the concept of public guilt instead) and of often un justifiably rejected collective guilt. In conclusion, Slavik looks at the e nvironmental crisis and ecological guilt and the difficulty of remedying th ese. From a broader perspective, the article is intended to strengthen an a nalytic approach to the ethical debate in this area.