{"agent_id":"jaspers","agent_name":"Karl Jaspers","slug":"kommunikation-as-loving-struggle","label":"Kommunikation as loving-struggle: is the unflinching mutual interrogation between Existenzen the irreducible ethical heart of philosophy, or a vague metaphor too thin to ground action?","topic":"Kommunikation as loving-struggle","question":"Is the unflinching mutual interrogation between Existenzen the irreducible ethical heart of philosophy, or a vague metaphor too thin to ground action?","position":"Communication is the irreducible heart of the ethics, not a derivative or an application. Existenz does not become itself in solitary reflection — solitary reflection produces only the abstracted subject of consciousness-as-such, not the singular self that I am — but only in the loving-struggle (liebender Kampf) with another Existenz who refuses to flatter me, refuses to be flattered by me, and is willing to risk the relation by speaking what neither of us yet quite sees. Without communication there is no Existenz; without Existenz there is no genuine philosophical thinking.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Communication is the irreducible heart of the ethics, not a derivative or an application.","n":[]},{"t":"Existenz does not become itself in solitary reflection — solitary reflection produces only the abstracted subject of consciousness-as-such, not the singular self that I am — but only in the loving-struggle (liebender Kampf) with another Existenz who refuses to flatter me, refuses to be flattered by me, and is willing to risk the relation by speaking what neither of us yet quite sees.","n":[1]},{"t":"Without communication there is no Existenz; without Existenz there is no genuine philosophical thinking.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Philosophie II (1932), Book II 'Existenzerhellung' especially the chapters on the I-thou relation and on communication as the form of becoming-oneself; Vernunft und Existenz (1935), Lectures 3-5 on communication; Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time (Vernunft und Widervernunft, 1950), the late chapters on communicative reason against authoritarian closure; Philosophy Is for Everyman (1965) on philosophy and community; the long correspondence with Hannah Arendt 1926-1969 and with Martin Heidegger 1920-1963 as documents of the practice. Reception: Fritz Kaufmann's chapter 'Karl Jaspers and a Philosophy of Communication' in Schilpp's volume — the longest and most developed in the entire volume, the canonical scholarly defense; Hannah Arendt's 'Jaspers as Citizen of the World' linking communication to political action; Kurt Salamun's contemporary reading of Jaspers as proto-Habermasian communicative-rationalist; Martin Buber's Ich und Du (1923), the parallel dialogical philosophy with which mine is sometimes assimilated and from which it should be distinguished; Jeanne Hersch's 'Jaspers' Conception of Tradition.'","works":["Philosophie II (1932), Book II 'Existenzerhellung' especially the chapters on the I-thou relation and on communication as the form of becoming-oneself","Vernunft und Existenz (1935), Lectures 3-5 on communication","Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time (Vernunft und Widervernunft, 1950), the late chapters on communicative reason against authoritarian closure","Philosophy Is for Everyman (1965) on philosophy and community","the long correspondence with Hannah Arendt 1926-1969 and with Martin Heidegger 1920-1963 as documents of the practice"],"reception":"Fritz Kaufmann's chapter 'Karl Jaspers and a Philosophy of Communication' in Schilpp's volume — the longest and most developed in the entire volume, the canonical scholarly defense; Hannah Arendt's 'Jaspers as Citizen of the World' linking communication to political action; Kurt Salamun's contemporary reading of Jaspers as proto-Habermasian communicative-rationalist; Martin Buber's Ich und Du (1923), the parallel dialogical philosophy with which mine is sometimes assimilated and from which it should be distinguished; Jeanne Hersch's 'Jaspers' Conception of Tradition.'","status":"Set out as the structural center of the ethics in Philosophie II (1932), developed in Vernunft und Existenz (1935), maintained and sharpened against totalitarian closure in Reason and Anti- Reason in Our Time (1950), and instantiated practically across five decades of correspondence and friendship. Fritz Kaufmann's Schilpp chapter (the longest essay in the entire volume) established it as the scholarly center of my philosophy; Kurt Salamun's late-twentieth-century work has read it as proto- Habermasian. I responded to both readings, gratefully and with precision, in the Reply to My Critics and in subsequent writings.","era":"1883-1969","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Philosophy Volume 2","page":"p. 105","canonical":"","quote":"Now the only Teality left to me, and the only one in which that overall harmony might become visible as a cipher of being, is manifestation in the mutually self-establishing and self-sustaining Existenz. If 1 know in advance that all will be well in the end, I need only ascertain the end; it is not up to me.","label":"Philosophy Volume 2, p. 105"},{"n":2,"work":"Reason and Existenz","page":"pp. 93–94","canonical":"","quote":"Even the will to communicate in these three modes holds its own energy at the service of a universal will to communicate which comes out of reason and Existenz. Let us now characterize this further? B. Existential and rational communication.","label":"Reason and Existenz, pp. 93–94"},{"n":3,"work":"Philosophy Volume 2","page":"p. 222","canonical":"","quote":"It is only in this existential communication, which I cannot lose, that I am. As existence I need some forms of recognition, more or less, depending on my type of vital constitution, just as I need nourishment to live; but my Existenz is threatened with confusion if I mistake the search for its assurance of being for a claim to the kind of recognition and affirmation entailed by social intercourse, Put into words,…","label":"Philosophy Volume 2, p. 222"},{"n":4,"work":"Philosophy Volume 2","page":"pp. 383–384","canonical":"","quote":"Stripped of the element of appealing, of calling for their translation into real Existenz, the signs of existential elucidation can be talked about in terms of applying it, as if something were or were not so. A consummate doctrine, indeed the very rudiment, of an ontology of Existenz would have the same meaning. The result is the specific sophistry that accompanies all existential philosophizing.","label":"Philosophy Volume 2, pp. 383–384"},{"n":5,"work":"Way to Wisdom","page":"p. 11","canonical":"","quote":"All this is not incidental or unimportant. It might be, if there were a truth that might satisfy me in my isolation. I should not suffer so deeply from lack of communication or find such unique pleasure in authentic communication if I for myself, in absolute solitude, could be certain of the truth. But I am only in conjunction with the Other, alone I am nothing.","label":"Way to Wisdom, p. 11"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"grenzsituationen-and-existenz","label":"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?"},{"slug":"das-umgreifende-and-the-structural-metaphysics","label":"Das Umgreifende and the structural metaphysics: can the doctrine of the Encompassing — the modes within which all particular horizons of beings are enclosed — replace traditional ontology, or is it a placeholder schema that doesn't carry real ontological weight?"},{"slug":"philosophical-faith-and-revealed-religion","label":"Philosophical faith and revealed religion: is the demand to accept revealed propositions as exclusive truth the leap into authority I name it, or is revealed religion an irreducible category of genuine encounter with Transcendence that philosophy cannot reach?"},{"slug":"guilt-the-atomic-bomb-and-the-german-question","label":"Guilt, the atomic bomb, and the German question: do the four-tier distinction of criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical guilt and the late political works speak with the right severity to the post-war situation, or are they too philosophical, too late, or too harsh for the actual political reality they address?"}]}