Karl Jaspers

Politics and Metaphysics

Dr Chris Thornhill, Chris Thornhill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136454165
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book sets out a new reading of the much-neglected philosophy of Karl Jaspers. By questioning the common perception of Jaspers either as a proponent of irrationalist cultural philosophy or as an early, peripheral disciple of Martin Heidegger, it re-establishes him as a central figure in modern European philosophy. Giving particular consideration to his position in epistemological, metaphysical and political debate, the author argues that Jaspers's work deserves renewed consideration in a number of important discussions, particularly in hermeneutics, anthropological reflections on religion, the critique of idealism, and debates on the end of metaphysics.

1

Jaspers’ philosophy

The basic terms

Karl Jaspers is primarily known in the English-speaking world as the co-founder of German existentialism. In this regard, he is usually linked with Martin Heidegger. This reception is in itself rather misleading, for it assumes that there are fundamental common interests between Heidegger and Jaspers. In addition, it also assumes that Heidegger was an existentialist. Both of these assumptions are only partly correct. Furthermore, Jaspers’ association with existentialism, and thus with Heidegger (an association which both came to resent), has been partly responsible for Jaspers’ intellectual devaluation through recent decades. Jaspers is often viewed merely as an intriguing apostle to the early Heidegger, whose thought warrants study only insofar as it relates to Heidegger’s own trajectory and intellectual formation. For these reasons, an analysis of what Jaspers means by existence (Existenz), and of his contribution to existentialist thought, is an appropriate way to begin a discussion of his ideas. A clarification of this term not only illuminates his own thinking, but it helps position him accurately in broader intellectual discourse, especially in his relation to Heidegger.

The disclosure of the conditions of truthful human existence is the central commitment of Jaspers’ philosophy. He uses the term ‘existence’ to describe a mode of authentic self-being, which the individual human being begins to realize as it reflects on its own unique possibilities, and as it becomes aware of the ways in which it might relate most adequately to its foundational truths. Existence, therefore, is a possible way of being, in which particular subjective life gains an awareness of itself in a manner which cannot be defined in objective categories, and in which it radically detaches itself from its activities and purposes in everyday life. ‘As possible existence’, Jaspers explains, ‘I am lastly a being, which relates to its possibility and as such is not present for any general consciousness. As we grasp the sense of possible existence, the circle of all the modes of objective and subjective being is ruptured’.¹

In his earlier writings, Jaspers sees existence as a possibility of being which is connected in a complex manner to two other modes of being: to orientation in the world (Weltorientierung), and to transcendence (Transzendenz).² In this scheme, first, existence is a way of being, which the human subject begins to illuminate as it recognizes that its own inner possibilities are insufficiently expressed in the objective forms which it occupies in its pure worldliness. Existence therefore arises directly from orientation in the world, for it marks the moment of ‘freedom’ where particular being begins to interpret itself as something other than material life or empirical, objective, or purposive reason (Dasein).³ ‘Breaking through worldly being is’, Jaspers concludes, ‘secured in the illumination of existence’.⁴ Existence, thus, cannot be abstractly separated out from the world, in which it appears and in which it clarifies the terms of its own possibilities. Nonetheless, all ‘acting out of possible existence’ is ultimately opposed to mere worldliness, for worldly being is concerned chiefly with interests of utility and self-preservation, and it is not susceptible to the unconditioned imperatives of existence.⁵ Second, however, existence Jaspers explains) is also related to transcendence. Transcendence is a condition in which particular life positions itself above all worldly modes of being. This condition can never be realized in any objectively manifest way, and it is therefore indicated only in existence. ‘I come to myself as possible existence out of worldly being’, Jaspers asserts, but existence is not a statically self-sufficient quality: it is only a relation to ‘a being, which is not existence, but its transcendence’.⁶ All true thoughts and actions, Jaspers argues, are motivated by transcendence: ‘The ways of searching for being out of possible existence are paths to transcendence. Their illumination is philosophical metaphysics’.⁷

By defining existence as a possible relation to transcendence, which cannot be defined or articulated in fixed structures as a positively formed human quality, Jaspers is expressly critical of anthropological thinking. As discussed above, he and Heidegger are close together in their attempts to move the conception of the human being away from unitary realized models of human essence. ‘No anthropology’, Jaspers states, ‘recognizes what the living being of the human really is’.⁸ He thus rejects anthropology both in its guise as a positivistic science of human life-forms, and as a philosophical science of human nature and human attributes.

Nonetheless, despite his own protestations against anthropology, Jaspers’ existentialism might in some respects be seen to contain a philosophical anthropology, which views human life as a hierarchy of modes of being, in which the most truthful potentials of being human are more or less adequately expressed. Contrary even to his own definition of his philosophical intentions, therefore, Jaspers can be interpreted as a quasi-anthropological philosopher, whose concept of existence, in some respects, proceeds from clear presuppositions about human essence. Underlying Jaspers’ existentialism is a triadic anthropology, which conceives of human-being as a progression of human self-disclosure in the distinct modalities of world, existence and transcendence. This cannot be reduced to a static anthropological model, as these modalities are fluidly interrelated states of being, not concrete or measurable attributes. However, Jaspers assesses all modes of being within categories derived from this basic triadic scheme, and he sees all modes of being as expressions of potentials, which always reside in the fact of being human. As discussed above, Jaspers positions himself expressly against apriorist, or formally Kantian, modes of philosophical anthropology, which explicate humanity on the foundation of prior unities of thought or action. However, he also argues that the realm of human-being cannot be adequately indicated as a region of existence outside all metaphysical relations. Human-being thus becomes most truly human as it becomes most transcendent, most metaphysical.

Like Kant, therefore, Jaspers still bases his reflections on human-being in a transcendent(al) anthropology, albeit an anthropology based in experience and communicative interpretation, not in prior law. Existence is the key term in this anthropology. Existence reflects a progressive (although invariably incomplete) disclosure of original human capacities. Existence is thus a category of experience, in which human beings, in their historical immanence and particularity, relate themselves to the possibility of an originary unity of being. This unity is not produced by history. It is neither realized as a fact of personality nor an ontological fact of knowledge, but it is interpreted, in however fragmented form, as and in existence itself.⁹ In this relation of existence, humans ceaselessly dispose themselves differently and originally towards the terms of their historical life: they thus become more, and more reflexively, human.

Jaspers’ concept of existence is evidently very close to the idea of existence in Kierkegaard’s atheistic theology, and it also has a certain relation to the concept of experience in Nietzsche’s vitalism. Indeed, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have often been treated as the most central influences on his thought. Jaspers clearly recognizes his own heavy debts to both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, whom he views as thinkers who have radically explored the most extreme philosophical positions after the demise of the substantial orders of religion and speculative philosophy. These early philosophers of existence are, for Jaspers, ‘exceptions in every sense’, who are characterized by a ‘worldless loneliness’,¹⁰ and thus by great existential and experiential integrity.

Nonetheless, Jaspers’ concept of existence also turns against the attitude of radical exceptionalism, which is diversely proposed by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and he argues against the attempt to define truthful existence as pure solipsism, pure interiority or pure particularism. Instead of this, he seeks to integrate the exceptional Nietzschean and Kierkegaardian experiences of human isolation and alienation into a communicative, other-oriented and historical argument. In contrast to both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, therefore, Jaspers asserts that the profound moments of human experience which are disclosed in solitary existence cannot preserve themselves outside the authority of a continuous social, historical and cultural tradition; philosophy, consequently, must seek to make the exceptional particularism of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche meaningful within the historical, binding orders of common life.¹¹ Truthful existence, he concludes, is neither only the extreme experience of the exception, nor the simple assimilation of human life to pure authority. Human life within the continuous authority of tradition, he suggests, possesses an awareness of its truth which cannot be utterly invalidated by the radical otherness of the exception. Likewise, the vital experience of the exception also tells a truth which cannot be neglected or suppressed by traditional authority and continuity. Therefore, the task which Jaspers gives to his own existential philosophy is to reconcile the two extreme possibilities of exception and authority. On this basis, he develops a concept of existential reason: ‘The path, which does not stop before exception and authority, but rather penetrates into them – the path of philosophical truth – is called reason’.¹² ‘The basic attribute of reason is’, he continues, ‘the will to unity’.¹³ Reason thus possesses the existential task to reflect and communicate the unitary moments in even the most local experience.

These reflections on exception and authority place Jaspers in a mediating position between different lines of existentialist thinking, one of which is subjectivist and exceptionalist, one of which is objectivist, historicist and communitarian. All existential thinkers seek, in one way or another, to determine how human life might reflect upon its possibilities for authenticity and legitimate autonomy, whilst accepting unconditionally the relativization of prior metaphysical and religious orders. Kierkegaard’s original answer to this problem, for example, is to outline a metaphysic of subjectivity as the last location of human transcendence. Nietzsche, analogously, interprets the individual will to power as the last attribute through which human life can create valid modes of being for itself. Jaspers shares with such early exceptionalist existentialists the argument that legitimacy for human actions can only be developed on the basis of an internal experience of uniquely personal possibilities. At the same time, however, Jaspers also shares certain common arguments with the alternative, more historicist line of existential theory, centred around Heidegger and Rosenzweig. This line of thought argues that the specificity of human life is only meaningfully expressed in a historically formed worldly community, and that existence discloses its fundamental resources only through processes of practical self-interpretation in common life. Heidegger and Rosenzweig, thus, both see the transcendental truth of human existence as a quality which is commonly elaborated in and by the people (Volk), and which presents itself to its members as truthful participation and belonging. Jaspers’ mediation between exception and authority is thus clearly an attempt to bring together these two contrary lines of reflection in the existential tradition. He follows Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in arguing that an intensely particular experience of existence must provide the basis for true thinking, yet he follows Heidegger and Rosenzweig in arguing that existence itself is always engendered and processed within structures of historically mediated commonality. Rejecting in this way both radical-subjectivist and radical communitarian existential perspectives, Jaspers claims that existence is meaningful only if it can explain and clarify itself as a reflexive agency which is both other than an isolated experience of pure contingency, and different from the objective sharedness of common history. The two poles of exception (subjectivism) and authority (historicism) should, therefore, always be reflected to a higher unity.

On this basis, Jaspers’ existentialism is strikingly distinct from any other existential philosophy, as it attempts both to mediate between, and offer a corrective to, the distinct foundations of the two parallel lines of existential thought. He sees existence as a mode of reflexive experience,¹⁴ which is invariably oriented towards a higher unity of knowledge and self-knowledge. Both the subjective particularity and the historical commonality of existence are crucial and equally binding moments in the self-reflection of existence towards this unity: neither, however, can define existence. In other words, therefore, Jaspers differentiates himself from other lines of existentialist thinking primarily because he is a Kantian. Human existence, he suggests, can always propose itself as other than either particular contingency or common form. It achieves this, however, because true existence is always reflexive: existence always clarifies itself as reason (Vernunft). Unlike Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on one hand, and Heidegger and Rosenzweig on the other, therefore, Jaspers always argues that existence exists truthfully only in a reflected relation to its truth, not as a manifestation of this truth, either in realized subjectivity or realized practicality. He thus reconstructs Kantian philosophy in order to indicate a way beyond either the formed subject or the formed tradition as the sources of human authenticity. At the very fundament of Jaspers’ concept of existence is, consequently, the belief that existence becomes valid where it reflects itself as a possible unity of meaning which is restricted neither to the radical and extreme experiences of subjectivity, nor to objectively embedded forms of authority, but which is also not merely the formal unity of appearances which derives from idealist epistemology. Non-formal unity is thus a unity of reason which is reflected through, not before, the antithetical experiences of subjective and objective life.

Jaspers’ unique position in existential debate is thus, to a large extent, due to the fact that he – unlike Heidegger, for example – does not seek to dismantle irrevocably the basic elements of metaphysical or idealist thinking. In fact, central to Jaspers’ transcendental anthropology is a Kantian attempt to show that human experience, even in its local, plural and historical situations, is still attached to an ideal and transcendental origin, which it increasingly reflects as a unity of self-knowledge.¹⁵ Existence which proclaims itself as authentic in its subjective particularity, and existence which proclaims itself as authentic in its adherence to historically formed tradition, fail equally to recognize that genuine existence is always separated from its primary truthfulness. The truth of existence, consequently, is always other than its particular reality, and therefore always both ideal and meta-physical. ‘Reason does not want unclarity’, Jaspers explains, ‘but an idea. It resists pathos, which seeks obscurity just because it is obscure’.¹⁶ At the core of Jaspers’ existential anthropology is thus always a variant on the Kantian argument that humanity relates to itself antinomically: that the source of human validity and integrity is invariably opposed to its objective conditions. In this, in fact, Jaspers translates the Kantian antinomies of reason into antinomies of experience. Unlike Kant, he does not see the practical truth of humanity as its ability to act in accordance with antinomically deduced prior laws. Nor does he see the truth of cognition as its ability to deduce the ideal foundations of its own validity. Truthful humanity, however, remains a process of antinomical self-interpretation and self-reflection, through which existence experiences itself as always distinct from its realized forms, but always also distinct from its own transcendent(al) unity. Jaspers’ concept of existence is thus grounded in a concept of being in which the unity of being is not realized a priori, as in Kantian ethics and epistemology, but as a still deferred, unrealized totality.

It is in this concept of existence as experiential self-reflection that Jaspers makes his most profound and enduring borrowing from Kant. As will be discussed below, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical career Jaspers draws repeatedly on Kant’s theory of transcendental ideas, a doctrine which Kant himself modifies from Plato. Like Kant, Jaspers asserts that all genuine human actions and genuine human thoughts are regulated by ideas, which indicate absolute imperatives and directives. These ideas have both practical and cognitive significance. Practically, my action is transcendentally justified, both Jaspers and Kant claim, if it is placed in the service of a motivation (idea), which I conclusively recognize as transcendentally compelling. Cognitively, both also assert, operations of thought are justified if they are underpinned by ideas: that is, by regulative foundations which enable the synthetic reflection of particularity and contingency, and which thus constitute the essential preconditions of human thought. For both Jaspers and Kant, therefore, the most fundamental importance of transcendental ideas is that they invariably orient my actions and my thoughts towards the greatest possible unity of reflection. Although I follow a transcendental idea as a particular subject, true ideas possess a universal validity, and they necessarily divulge to me a truth about my thought and actions which goes both beyond my own particularity, and beyond the practical agreements of my objective life. Human experience, cognition and action are authenticated by ideas, through which particular ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• A note on texts and translations
• Introduction
• 1. Jaspers’ philosophy: the basic terms
• 2. Jaspers and Kant: the ideas of existence
• 3. Jaspers and Weber: transcendent responsibilities
• 4. Jaspers, Dilthey and Simmel: experience and history
• 5. Jaspers and Heidegger: the anthropologies of existence
• 6. Theology or anthropology? Jaspers, religion and the revealed law
• 7. Republican existence: Jaspers and post-war politics
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index