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Criminal Law Guilt and Ontological Guilt: A Heideggerian Perspective

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Abstract

The paper deals with the notion of guilt according to Heidegger’s philosophy and its repercussions for the understanding of guilt according to criminal law doctrine and theory. Heidegger’s notion on guilt is tantamount to Dasein’s incapacity to exhaust all its existential possibilities, whereas legal guilt has to do only with man’s legal indebtedness, which is an aspect of inauthenticity, a deficient mode of ontological responsibility. This does not mean, though, sheer amoralism or apologetics to violence. In late Heidegger one may discern traces of an ontological ethics, which refers to Dasein’s attunement to Being and especially to the sparing and healing of the Fourfold as these are coming to presence through poetic dwelling; through, that is, an authentic contact with the Uncanny, meaning a radical exposure to Being’s enigmatic hiddenness, the endurance in front of the abyss of Nothingness. In this framework there remains no space for assuming any moral-juridical responsibility, because Dasein is predestined to err constantly due to the ruptures and turnings of Being’s history. Legal blameworthiness is thus obsolete because, injustice being according to Heidegger the dis-jointure of Being’s order, there is ontologically no imputable ‘legal’ crime; there is only Dasein’s eventful projecting-opening within errancy. Whether though this notion of ‘Being’ is a new ‘arche’ to be superseded emerges then as the crucial question. To regain any non-metaphysical notion of guilt is after Heidegger only possible through a theoretical move which cannot ignore his legacy but also has to go beyond the Master.

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Notes

  1. With ‘Turn’ one denotes the change of viewpoint under which Heidegger deals with the very question of his philosophy, i.e. the question of Being; whereas within a first stage of development of his thought (expressed mainly in ‘Being and Time’) this question is worked out through the lenses of existential analytic, meaning the understanding of Being via Dasein, late Heidegger is supposed to understand Being from out of Being itself and especially via its history (‘being-historical thinking’); such a Being has Dasein now to be attuned to. Analysis is now replaced through responding to the immediate call of Being. Therefore poetics become crucial for the philosopher.

  2. One cannot repress the feeling that the refutation of deontology runs the risk of ushering in power apologetics. The risky exposure to totalitarian political manipulation of such an attitude is again present here, as long as deontology is not enriched through substantial ethics but rejected in favour of some kind of militant existentialism, which forecloses critique.

  3. See respectively (Critchley 1999, pp. 224–225); on Levinas’ negation of a personal death, see also Wall (1999, pp. 59–62).

  4. Cf. a thorough analysis of the law as irresponsibility imposing mechanism, Veitch (2007), passim and especially at pp. 7–73.

  5. For further details on these topics, which cannot be presented here, see: Heidegger (2003, Parts II, IV, V, VII, VIII).

  6. Steiner (2009, pp. 190–196), Fried (2000, pp. 191–192); on Heidegger’s ethical–political ambivalence, see the excellent analyses of De Beistegui (1998, passim and especially at pp. 146–157); cf. in favour of the view that Heidegger came progressively into conflict with the bestial Nazi regime, Tietjen (2001, pp. 303–305).

  7. See on the private nature of Heideggerian Nazism also Fried (2000, p. 174).

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Acknowledgements

This is an elaborated version of my Birkbeck College lecture on 27 November 2019. I would like to express my best thanks to Elena Loizidou for her kind invitation, as well as to her and Marinos Diamantides, Craig Reeves, Stewart Motha and Patrick Hanafin for their valuable comments during the discussion following the presentation. As to the author’s responsibility for the text, the usual caveats apply.

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    Charis N. Papacharalambous

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Papacharalambous, C.N. Criminal Law Guilt and Ontological Guilt: A Heideggerian Perspective. Law Critique 33, 149–173 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09289-9

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