Grenzsituationen and Existenz: are the ultimate situations of death, suffering, struggle, guilt, and historical situatedness the constitutive structure through which Existenz comes to itself, or only psychological occasions a thinker can interpret or process away?

Karl Jaspers, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The five Grenzsituationen — death (one's own, not death-in-general), suffering as the inescapable accompaniment of finite existence, struggle as the structure of social and material life, guilt as the inevitable failure to fulfill all demands made on me at once, and the historical situatedness from which no thinking escapes — are not selected from a longer list and are not stages of psychological development that mature thinking moves past.¹

They are the situations in which the worldly horizon discloses itself as not-the-whole, and Existenz as that which neither subsists in the world nor can be exhausted by any objective description of the human being.² Authentic Existenz becomes itself only through them.³

Sources

1. I exist in certain social circumstances at a certain time in history; J am a man or a woman, young or old, directed by opportunities and chances. The boundary situation of being subject to the singular constraint of my data derives its poignancy from the contrasting thought of man at large and of his due in any state of perfection.

   Philosophy Volume 2, p. 192

2. My undaunted conquest of the blind helplessness of existence now makes me fear for what counts in existence, what the boundtuations jeopardize. ary Having tried to know regardless of my situation, I thus turn it into my object again, only to learn that there are indeed situations I cannot get out of, situations I cannot sce through as a whole.

   Philosophy Volume 2, pp. 188–189

3. He is made aware of himself by his suffering. He will not dodge it, will see it, will fight it to the best of his ability. Reduced to impotence, he will bear it until he perishes— until in going down he will keep his poise, at least, or will lose even that when the incomprehensible vortex drags him down to levels on which the strongest self-being finds itself relativized and subjected to unknown forces.

   Philosophy Volume 2, p. 212

Where the argument is made

• Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919), Sections II-III on the limit situations as boundaries of worldview
• Philosophie II (1932), the entire treatment of Existenzerhellung especially Book II Chapters 4-6 on the Grenzsituationen
• Vernunft und Existenz (1935), Lecture 2 on Existenz in the situation
• Way to Wisdom (Einführung in die Philosophie, 1950), Chapters IV-V on the encompassing and the philosophical life
• Philosophy Is for Everyman (Kleine Schule des philosophischen Denkens, 1965)

How the argument was received

The doctrine was first published in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919) as the structural core of an existential philosophy of worldviews, sharpened into its systematic form in Philosophie II (1932) as the framework for the entire account of Existenzerhellung, and maintained without retraction through the late authorship (Reason and Existenz 1935, Way to Wisdom 1950, Philosophy Is for Everyman 1965). It is the position most cited as my signal contribution to twentieth-century philosophy and the position most often challenged from therapeutic-modern or analytic angles that wish to translate the existential structure into psychological states amenable to technique.