## 1. Positive law: failure to render assistance *is* a criminal offence In many legal systems, including those most relevant to Arendt’s audience, **failure to render assistance** (*Unterlassene Hilfeleistung*) **is criminalized**. Examples: * **Germany**: § 323c StGB (*Unterlassene Hilfeleistung*) Criminal liability arises if someone fails to give reasonable assistance in an accident, common danger, or emergency **when assistance is necessary and can be provided without significant risk**. * **Switzerland**: Art. 128 StGB (*Unterlassung der Nothilfe*) Similar structure: duty arises only in concrete emergency situations and under feasibility conditions. * **France**: *non-assistance à personne en danger* (Code pénal, art. 223-6). So empirically and legally: **yes**, omission *can* be punishable.
--- ## 2. Why Arendt’s statement is nevertheless precise (not mistaken) Arendt’s sentence: > *„Es ist gut und richtig, dass es kein Gesetz gibt, das Unterlassungssünden unter Strafe stellt, und dass kein menschlicher Gerichtshof dazu berufen ist, darüber zu urteilen.“* is **not** a claim about *any* omission whatsoever. It rests on three tacit but crucial distinctions: ### (a) Ordinary omissions vs. *moral* omission Criminal law punishes only **highly specified, narrowly defined omissions**: * concrete emergency, * clear capability to help, * no disproportionate risk, * immediate causal relevance. Arendt is talking about **moral omissions in the broad sense**: * not resisting, * not helping *enough*, * not acting courageously, * not sacrificing oneself, * not becoming a hero. These cannot be codified **without collapsing law into moral absolutism**.
--- ### (b) Juridical responsibility vs. moral responsibility Arendt’s core distinction (explicit throughout *Was heißt persönliche Verantwortung in einer Diktatur?*): * **Courts judge acts**, not character. * **Law requires external criteria**, not inner motives. * **Moral responsibility** concerns *living with oneself*, not legal blame. Failure to render assistance statutes do **not** contradict this: they define *minimum duties*, not moral excellence. --- ### (c) Totalitarianism as the decisive context Under totalitarian conditions: * emergencies are **systematic and ubiquitous**, * helping one person may endanger many others, * law itself is criminalized or instrumentalized. To legally punish “Unterlassung” *as such* under these conditions would mean: * enforcing heroism, * retroactively criminalizing survival, * turning moral conscience into a legal weapon. This is precisely what Arendt rejects.
--- ## 3. How to reconcile the apparent contradiction You can state the reconciliation cleanly as follows (FedWiki-ready formulation): > Modern legal systems rightly criminalize narrowly defined failures to render assistance in concrete emergency situations. Arendt’s claim does not deny this. Her point is that **there can be no law that criminalizes moral omission as such**, no tribunal competent to judge whether someone *should have done more*, *should have resisted*, or *should have sacrificed themselves*. Under totalitarianism, turning moral failure into a legal category would itself be a totalitarian move.
--- ## 4. Conceptual payoff for our ongoing work This distinction aligns tightly with our broader moves: * **Against values-talk**: law cannot enforce moral heroism. * **Against collective guilt**: omission is not infinitely expansible. * **For judgment**: responsibility survives only as *self-judgment*, not legal compulsion. * **Against moral inflation**: expanding omission liability collapses the moral/legal boundary.