In his mature philosophical writings, Karl Jaspers juxtaposes his own theory of reason with what he considers irrational and dogmatising tendencies in the works of Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth. On ...Jaspers's view, both Bultmann and Barth construct theologies that serve as a priori frameworks through which to understand all the contingencies of existence. In opposition to such dogmatisms, Jaspers advances a hermeneutics that forbids, in advance, any permanent conclusions by proposing that we understand religious, artistic, and other approaches to transcendence as ciphers. Such ciphers, Jaspers holds, offer no fixed and final interpretation of transcendence but offer a way to remain non‐dogmatically open to a wide range of possible understandings of it. As opening up a non‐dogmatic form of communication, cipher‐reading is guided by reason's will to openness and communication. However, as I ultimately point out, Jaspers's own effort to develop a non‐dogmatic hermeneutics is beset by some of the very difficulties he identifies in the theologies of Barth and Bultmann.
Karl Jaspers considers four varieties of guilt—criminal, moral, metaphysical, and political—and whether Germans are collectively or individually guilty for the crimes of the Nazis. What influence did ...Jasper's thinking about guilt have on his former pupil Hannah Arendt? What was the impact of such thinking on the political development of Germany in the period after World War II and up to contemporary times?
Filiz Peach provides a clear explanation of Jaspers philosophy of existence clarifying and reassessing the concept of death that is central to his thought.
Swidler discusses how humans become human. He claims that everything is somehow a development of what preceded it. There are times and situations where it is possible to perceive that not just ...another step has been taken in a seemingly endless series of steps, that a breakthrough has happened. Poeple know so far that the cosmos began 13,800,000,000 years ago with the so-called Big Bang and people increasingly learned what happened afterward. The next exponential leap forward happened in the four ancient civilizations (Greece, Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, and the Yellow River Valley) at about the same time, 800-220;200 B.C.E., which German scholar Karl Jaspers named the Axial Age that ushered people in a radically new form of consciousness. It is in the gradual but increasingly massive wake of that growing insight that knowledge/truth is ineluctably changing, expanding, and deepening and that, therefore, no one person or combination of persons can have a singular lock on truth. Thus, people must freely engage in dialogue, in Deep- Dialogue, to keep moving constantly toward the horizon of reality.
Karl Jaspers did not belong to any philosophical school when he took up his chair of Philosophy in Heidelberg. He was a doctor of medicine and the founder of psychopathology as a scientific field. He ...developed a kind of appropriation of the existential substance found in the great philosophers, out of which he constructed his own doctrine, periechontology, as an antidote to all and any forms of reductionism and dogmatism. Existential contemplation and communication became the foundations on which a philosophical lifestyle was to be built, the aim of which was to reach one's own philosophical faith. This article is intended to demonstrate how the existential appropriation of philosophy can contribute to helping any individual to confidently acquire a philosophical faith, and thereby, helpimg to form human beings in an age in which insecurity is rife.
Karl Jaspers Wallraff, Charles Frederic
2015, 2015., 20150308, 1970, Letnik:
1805
eBook
The thought of the late Karl Jaspers, co-founder of the existentialist movement, has long exerted a powerful influence on world opinion. But, surprisingly, though translations of his writings have ...appeared in over 160 editions in 16 countries, his strictly philosophical work has hitherto been largely inaccessible to American audiences. Even where adequate English translations exist, the difficulties imposed by Jaspers' involved reasoning, intricate style, and ingenious neologisms are such that few unfamiliar with Continental philosophy can hope to acquire an understanding of his ideas on their own.
To overcome these barriers, Professor Wallraff as mediator, interpreter, and translator provides a clear exposition of the main themes of Jaspers'Existenzphilosophieand prepares the reader for effective study of his writings. As the first book-length introduction to Jaspers' philosophy in English, this will be an indispensable companion for anyone desiring to take up the challenge of the "loving struggle" toward the truth that Jaspers invites us all to engage in.
Originally published in 1970.
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This 2007 book analyzes how West German intellectuals debated the Nazi past and democratic future of their country. Rather than proceeding event by event, it highlights the underlying issues at ...stake: the question of a stigmatized nation and the polarized reactions to it that structured German discussion and memory of the Nazi past. Paying close attention to the generation of German intellectuals born during the Weimar Republic - the forty-fivers - this book traces the drama of sixty years of bitter public struggle about the meaning of the past: did the Holocaust forever stain German identity so that Germans could never again enjoy their national emotions like other nationalities? Or were Germans unfairly singled out for the crimes of their ancestors? By explaining how the perceived pollution of family and national life affected German intellectuals, the book shows that public debates cannot be isolated from the political emotions of the intelligentsia.
The question on guilt that Jaspers poses to the Germans was not only valid after the Holocaust, it can be raised to other peoples who must answer for the crimes committed by the state which act on ...behalf of the people that gave support to them. In this paper, I elaborate a notion of citizens' political responsibility in order to argue to what extent—and under what circumstances—the citizens of a political community must respond for the deeds of the political institutions that govern them. For that purpose, I try to explain Spinoza's notion of political authority in relation to Jaspers' notion of political guilt. This Spinozistic approach has the advantage of freeing us from moral guilt—a misleading notion in political arena as I will argue—but it demands from us a genuine self-reflective and therapeutic procedure that if applied to politics would reveal a diiferent path from Jaspers' guilt. The aim of this therapeutic is to bring about a profound change in the personal and political identity of both citizen and political community.
Examinamos los alcances de la intuición en el pensamiento de Karl Jaspers, para lo cual nos apoyamos especialmente en su Psicología de las concepciones de mundo, de 1919. Lo que le preocupa allí al ...pensador es cómo se conforma una concepción de mundo (Weltanschauung). Pues bien, ella se conforma, por el lado del sujeto, de actitud (Einstellung) y, por el lado del objeto, de imagen de mundo (Weltbild). Lo decisivo, en todo caso, es la actitud, ya que es ella la que se da a sí misma una imagen de mundo. Entre actitud del sujeto e imagen de mundo objetual hay las posibilidades de fisión-fusión-superación. A la actitud racional la caracteriza la fisión, ya que tiene una relación distante de oposición con el objeto, a la actitud mística la superación de la relación sujeto-objeto, y nuestra actitud intuitiva la fusión y una máxima cercanía con el objeto, en cierto modo, un hacerse uno con él. Al mismo tiempo, a la intuición la caracteriza la captación inmediata e instantánea de lo esencial de algo, y la acompaña el supuesto de la verdad que se devela con el descubrimiento, o más bien, la capacidad descubridora que también le sería propia.
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