Karl Jaspers
1883-1969 · German · Existential Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Psychopathology, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of History
To philosophize is then at once to learn how to live and to know how to die.
Karl Jaspers came to philosophy through psychiatry — his General Psychopathology (1913) was the first systematic phenomenological account of mental illness, leaving him convinced something essential about human beings escaped clinical categories. When the Nazis stripped him of his Heidelberg chair because his wife Gertrud was Jewish, he refused to divorce her and waited out the occupation in hidden retreat, then wrote The Question of German Guilt (1946): four tiers — criminal, political, moral, metaphysical — that Germany could not rebuild without confronting.
Topics Karl Jaspers addresses
- existenz
- existenzerhellung
- grenzsituationen
- das umgreifende
- the modes of being
- kommunikation as liebender kampf
- scheitern
- philosophical faith
- ciphers of transcendence
- periechontologie
- vernunft and verstand
- revealed religion and the leap into authority
- the axial age
- the four tiers of guilt
- the german question and self-examination
- the atomic bomb and nuclear weapons
- philosophical world citizenship
- radical evil
- limit situations
- existenzphilosophie
- phenomenological psychiatry
- verstehende versus erklärende psychiatry
- the unconditional imperative
- the great philosophers project
Questions to put to Karl Jaspers
Existenz and the Limit Situations
- What do you mean by Existenz, and how is it different from just being a person?
- What are the Grenzsituationen, and why do you call them limit situations?
- How does confronting death help me become myself?
- Why do you say guilt is inescapable rather than something I can avoid by acting rightly?
- Can I understand Existenz through psychology or science, or does that miss the point?
The Encompassing and Transcendence
- What do you mean by das Umgreifende — the Encompassing?
- How do the seven modes of Being work together?
- What's the difference between Vernunft and Verstand — reason and understanding?
- How do I read the world as a cipher of Transcendence?
- What does it mean that all our attempts at complete knowledge must founder?
Communication and the Loving Struggle
- What do you mean by communication as liebender Kampf — loving struggle?
- Why can't I become myself alone through reflection?
- How is philosophical communication different from just debating or agreeing?
- What makes communication between two people genuinely existential rather than functional?
- How do you practice this kind of communication in your own life?
Philosophical Faith and Revealed Religion
- What is philosophical faith, and how is it different from religious faith?
- Why do you call accepting revealed propositions a leap into authority?
- Can someone hold both philosophical faith and commitment to a revealed religion?
- What's at stake for you in the debate with Bultmann about Christianity?
- How do you respond to the claim that philosophy can't reach what revelation offers?
The Axial Age and World History
- What is the Achsenzeit — the Axial or Pivotal Age?
- Why do you think Greece, Israel, India, and China all had breakthroughs around the same time?
- How does the Axial Age thesis challenge Spengler's view of civilizations?
- What does the Axial Age mean for how we think about world citizenship today?
- Are we living through a second Axial Age now?
Guilt, Germany, and Political Conscience
- Can you explain the four tiers of guilt — criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical?
- What is metaphysical guilt, and why does it matter for Germans after the war?
- Why did you write that the Federal Republic was drifting in the wrong direction?
- What's the moral case against nuclear weapons?
- How should a philosopher speak to their own nation's crimes?
Converse with Karl Jaspers on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Karl Jaspers's own writing, cited to the page.