Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969)

Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German existential philosopher whose initial profession had been psychiatry. In later life he attained an international [Page 727]reputation owing to his highly publicized statements as a political philosopher in postwar Germany and received several honorary doctorates and prestigious awards honoring his philosophical work for peace, freedom, and humanity.

Jaspers was born into a middle-class family in Oldenburg, northern Germany, on February 23, 1883. The liberal democratic mindset in his family deeply shaped his way of thinking. Jaspers first studied law, but partly owing to pulmonary disease contracted in his youth, he switched to the study of medicine. Due to his illness Jaspers was forced to live a calm and retiring life. Notwithstanding, he passed his exams in Heidelberg with distinction. In 1910 he married the nurse Gertrud Mayer, daughter of a Jewish merchant and sister of his fellow student Ernst Mayer.

Jaspers received his medical degree in 1908. He obtained his second doctorate from the philosophy faculty of Heidelberg University for his book General Psycbopatbology, still considered an important psychological work today. Beginning around 1910 Jaspers gradually had moved toward philosophymainly inspired by his readings of Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Soren Kierkegaard. His first predominantly philosophical book was Psychology of World Views (1919). By 1922 he had became full professor of philosophy in Heidelberg University.

In 1909 Jaspers made the acquaintance of Max Weber, one of the most important liberals, economists, and sociologists of prewar Germany. Weber was to play a guiding role in Jaspers's personal and academic development. During the same period Jaspers also met Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukcs, Friedrich Naumann, and Georg Simmel.

Jaspers dissociated from the neo-Kantian philosophy that prevailed at this time and was one the first researchers who fought with insistence for a widening of the scope of philosophical sciences. Jaspers's main work is chastely tided Philosophy (1932) (Philosophical World Orientation, The Illumination of Existence, Metaphysics). Some further prewar works are Man in the Modern Age (1931), Reason and Existence (1935), and Philosophy of Existence (1938). Jaspers investigated the influences of borderline situations on the human being's attitudes and described a transcendental theory of the encompassing (das Umgreifende). Jaspers's attitude toward religion, however, was critical, and he did not consider it essential to philosophy.

Jaspers became deeply involved in the history of philosophy, which he understood as a facet of existential philosophy. He was among the first to think of history beyond the notion of a path of time or a path of ideas. Thus, when considering the heritage of the great philosophers, he replaces the link through time with the link through reason. One could say Jaspers widened the dimensions of history and time by ignoring their strict chronological order and interpretation.

Jaspers also dealt with Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts about the eternal return or recurrence of time and the necessary overcoming of weakness and nihilism through such recurrence. Jaspers esteemed Nietzsche's work, although he disagreed with some parts of Nietzsche's legacy, particularly in Nietzsche's interpretations of the existence and role of transcendence. Furthermore, Jaspers was opposed to any thinking of the concept of the superior man.

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