Jaspers Karl Theodor (1883–1969), German psychologist and philosopher, one of the main representatives of the existentialist movement (although he rejected ‘existentialism’ as a distortion of the philosophy of existence). From 1901 until 1908 Jaspers studied law and medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Berlin, and Göttingen. He concluded his studies with an M.D. (Homesickness and Crime) from the University of Heidelberg (where he stayed until 1948). From 1908 until 1915 he worked as a voluntary assistant in the psychiatric clinic, and published his first major work (Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 1913; General Psychopathology, 1965). After his habilitation in psychology (1913) Jaspers lectured as Privatdocent. In 1919 he published Psychologie der Weltanschauung (‘Psychology of Worldviews’). Two years later he became professor in philosophy. Because of his personal convictions and marriage with Gertrud Mayer (who was Jewish) the Nazi government took away his professorship in 1937 and suppressed all publications. He and his wife were saved from deportation because the American army liberated Heidelberg a few days before the fixed date of April 14, 1945. In 1948 he accepted a professorship from the University of Basel.
As a student, Jaspers felt a strong aversion to academic philosophy. However, as he gained insights in the fields of psychiatry and psychology, he realized that both the study of human beings and the meaning of scientific research pointed to questions and problems that demanded their own thoughts and reflections. Jaspers gave a systematic account of them in his three-volume Philosophie (1931; with postscript, 1956; Philosophy, 1969–71), and in the 1,100 pages of Von der Wahrheit (On Truth, 1947). In the first volume (‘Philosophical World-orientation’) he discusses the place and meaning of philosophy with regard to the human situation in general and scientific disciplines in particular. In the second (‘Clarification of Existence’), he contrasts the compelling modes of objective (scientific) knowledge with the possible (and in essence non-objective) awareness of being in self-relation, communication, and historicity, both as being oneself presents itself in freedom, necessity, and transcendence, and as existence encounters its unconditionality in limit situations (of death, suffering, struggle, guilt) and the polar intertwining of subjectivity and objectivity. In the third volume (‘Metaphysics’) he concentrates on the meaning of transcendence as it becomes translucent in appealing ciphers (of nature, history, consciousness, art, etc.) to possible existence under and against the impact of stranding. His Von der Wahrheit is the first volume of a projected work on philosophical logic (cf. Nachlaß zur philosophischen Logik, ed. H. Saner and M. Hänggi, 1991) in which he develops the more formal aspects of his philosophy as ‘periechontology’ (ontology of the encompassing, des Umgreifenden, with its modes of being there, consciousness, mind, existence, world, transcendence, reason) and clarification of origins. In both works Jaspers focuses on ‘existential philosophy’ as ‘that kind of thinking through which man tries to become himself both as thinking makes use of all real knowledge and as it transcends this knowledge. This thinking does not recognize objects, but clarifies and enacts at once the being of the one who thinks in this way’ (Philosophische Autobiographie, 1953). In his search for authentic existence in connection with the elaboration of ‘philosophical faith’ in reason and truth, Jaspers had to achieve a thorough understanding of philosophical, political, and religious history as well as an adequate assessment of the present situation. His aim became a world philosophy as a possible contribution to universal peace out of the spirit of free and limitless communication, unrestricted open-mindedness, and unrelenting truthfulness. Besides a comprehensive history of philosophy (Die groben Philosophen I, 1957; II and III, 1981; The Great Philosophers, 2 vols., 1962, 1966) and numerous monographs (on Cusanus, Descartes, Leonardo da Vinci, Schelling, Nietzsche, Strindberg, van Gogh, Weber) he wrote on subjects such as the university (Die Idee der Universität, 1946; The Idea of the University, 1959), the spiritual situation of the age (Die geistige Situation der Zeit, 1931; Man in the Modern Age, 1933), the meaning of history (Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, 1949; The Origin and Goal of History, 1953, in which he developed the idea of an ‘axial period’), the guilt question (Die Schuldfrage, 1946; The Question of German Guilt, 1947), the atomic bomb (Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen, 1958; The Future of Mankind, 1961), German politics (Wohin treibt die Bundesrepublik? 1966; The Future of Germany, 1967). He also wrote on theology and religious issues (Die Frage der Entymythologisierung. Eine Diskussion mit Rudolf Bultmann, 1954; Myth and Christianity, 1958; Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, 1962; Philosophical Faith and Revelation, 1967). See also EXISTENTIALISM , METAPHYSIC.
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