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KARL JASPERS
From Selfhood to Being
Ronny Miron
Amsterdam - New York 2012
CONTENTS
Forewords xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. Opening 1
2. Periodization of Jaspers’s Works 4
3. Philosophizing Framework 6
4. Philosophical Method 8
5. Philosophical Experience of Boundary 11
6. Methodological Approach 14
7. Structure 18
PART ONE: THE EXPLICATION OF SELFHOOD 21
ONE Selfhood through Mental Illness 23
1. Note on the Framework 23
2. Mental Illness as an Expression of the Individual’s
World 24
3. Criticism of the Science of Psychiatry 27
4. The Primacy and Centrality of Subjectivity 32
5. The Idea of the Person as a Whole 39
TWO Selfhood in World Views 45
1. From Pathology to Normality 45
2. “World View” 46
3. The Method in Psychology 48
4. The Metaphysical Elements in the World View 57
THREE Selfhood and the World 65
1. From Subjectivity to Existenz 65
2. The Reality of the World as a Component in
Elucidating Selfhood 68
3. The World as Real Reality and the Question of
Consciousness 75
CONTENTS
vi
FOUR Selfhood in Its Own Eyes 81
1. Back to Existenz 81
2. Separating Existenz from the World 82
3. Returning Existenz to the World 88
4. Freedom as Will 91
5. The Tension between Objectivity and Subjectivity 95
PART TWO: TRANSITION MECHANISMS 101
Introduction to Transition Mechanisms: From the Explication of Selfhood
To the Explication of Being 103
FIVE Communication 109
1. Existenz Facing Another Existenz 109
2. Existential Communication 110
3. Communication as a Means of Constituting the
Selfhood of Existenz 113
4. Communication as a Transition Mechanism 120
SIX Historicity 127
1. From World Orientation and Communication to
Historicity 127
2. Between Historicity and History 127
3. Consciousness of Historicity and History 130
4. Transcendence in Consciousness of Historicity 135
SEVEN Boundary Situations 141
1. Expanding the Boundaries of Existence from
“Situation Being” to “Boundary Situations” 141
2. Boundary Situations in Psychology 142
3. Boundary Situations in Philosophy 149
4. Boundary Situations as a Transition Mechanism in
Comparison with Communication and Historicity 156
Transition Mechanisms: A Concluding Overview 161
1. Three Forms of Otherness 161
2. Absolute Consciousness 163
CONTENTS
PART THREE: THE EXPLICATION OF BEING 169
EIGHT The “Foundering” 171
1. Existenz Toward Transcendence 171
2. Foundering as a Philosophical Concept 175
3. Freedom of Existenz and Foundering 180
4. Foundering as a
Cipher 183
NINE Being as Encompassing 185
1. The Encompassing Between Two Viewpoints:
Epistemological and Ontological 187
2. The Two Facets of Being as the Encompassing: The
Immanent and the Transcendent 207
3. Periechontology 221
TEN The Ciphers of Transcendence 227
1. From the Foundering and the Encompassing to the
Concept of Cipher 227
2. Foreshadowing Aspects of the Cipher in
Psychology 230
3. Immanence as a Cipher of Transcendence 234
4. The Concept of Cipher and Consciousness 241
5. Metaphysical Consciousness as a Language 247
6. The Concept of Cipher as Mediating between the
Elucidation of Selfhood and the Explication of
Being 257
ELEVEN Between Being and Transcendence 263
1. “Being” and “Transcendence” 263
2. The Concept of Transcendence as Reflected in
Research 265
3. Facing the Contradiction 273
Conclusion 275
Notes 279
Bibliography 319
About the Author 335
Index 337
”
INTRODUCTION
1. Opening
In one of his lectures on philosophical intuition, Henri Bergson claimed that every
great philosopher ultimately aimed to express in his writings one simple intuition,
a point where there “is something simple, infinitely simple, so extraordinarily
simple, that the philosopher has never succeeded in saying it. And that is why he
went on talking all his life.”1 That this statement of Bergson’s also appears to be
true of the philosophy of Karl Jaspers. This philosophy, that was formulated
against the background of the fin de siecle, and that dealt with such a wide range
of issues—metaphysics, ethics, politics, education, religion, history, art, and
more—wished to contend with one fundamental problem: the ability of modern
human beings to establish a metaphysical consciousness.2 The heart of this book
will clarify the formation of metaphysical consciousness in Jaspers’s writings
between 1910 and 1947.
The basis of metaphysical consciousness in Jaspers’s thought is the human
search for the meaning of life and existence (Dasein). This search is grounded in
the discontent that accompanies people and in the intuition that there exists some
entity beyond the immediate reality in which people live and act. This intuition
becomes an evident awareness in Jaspers’s thought. On the one hand, it expresses
people’s endeavor to elucidate the discontent they experience within being.
On the other hand, it reflects people’s position in the face of the possibility of
the existence of a transcendental entity whose boundaries exceed the realm in
which human existence operates. Jaspers’s thought is rooted in the Kantian ethos
according to which people act as autonomous entities and create in their
consciousness the reality in which they live, but at the same time it challenges
Immanuel Kant’s approach that human consciousness has no access to “the thing-
in-itself.”
Understanding that metaphysics is embedded in the human condition does not
enable people to escape their basic tasks in existence for another reality, which in
their distress they can envisage as satisfying and perfect.The hold of metaphysical
consciousness over immanence entails the possibility in principle that the feeling
of discontent, or more precisely the objective aspects of this feeling, will be
accessible to the instrument of formal consciousness. This datum creates what I
call throughout this study the “epistemological viewpoint,” portraying Jaspers’s
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
2
attempt to encompass what can be known about his topics of discussion, even only
partially. For instance, as part of his perception of the field of psychopathology,
Jaspers attributed great importance to knowing the physical symptoms of a mental
disorder; in his book Psychology of Worldviews he attempted to ground his
arguments on selfhood in the general and structural features of the phenomenon of
multiple worldviews; and in his later philosophical writings he dealt consistently
with illuminating the contribution of the objective worldview of the consciousness
to the clarification of the issues under discussion: Existenz, the world, and Being.
The epistemological viewpoint does not contradict the fundamental intuition
accompanying Jaspers’s searches, and we should not view it as an attempt to
present a substitute for intuition, which as such needs no establishment in the tools
of consciousness. Jaspers’s definition that philosophy “rejects the mythos that
gave it birth” and presents an argued and rational understanding in contrast to the
dreams and deceptions of the history books3 may explain the nature of the
epistemological viewpoint in his thought. It uses rational tools to clarify the
irrational source of philosophy, whether myth or intuition.
However, Jaspers did not view the experience of discontent as a final state of
human existence. His primary aim was to escape this discontent and to formulate,
on the basis of the primary intuition regarding the existence of a transcendental
entity, an explicit philosophical consciousness of this entity. The understanding
that the very experience of discontent indicates the reality of the thing whose
absence a person senses served as a basis for what I call throughout the book “the
ontological viewpoint.” This viewpoint portrays the intention of the consciousness
to explicate the existence of the thing at the center of the discussion. At the same
time, this consciousness is accompanied by the awareness of the limitations of
rational thought in relation to this entity, which Jaspers believed contained
transcendent aspects, such that by their very definition they cannot be accessible
to people’s perception and understanding. For instance, Jaspers argued that the
unique personality of each mental patient is not revealed through the physical
manifestations of his or her condition, and in his philosophical writing he
discussed the limitations of consciousness and its inability to provide complete
understanding of Existenz and of transcendence.
Unlike the epistemological viewpoint, which seeks to expose the general and
objective aspects of the object and to turn them into a conscious element of the
discussion, the ontological viewpoint appeals to its object’s particular aspects, and
has intuitive certainty of its reality. The transcendental aspects of this entity were
perceived as inexplicable using the instruments of consciousness or even those of
philosophy, and this obliges the ontological viewpoint to maintain the inexplicable
element on which metaphysical consciousness is based. While the presence of the
epistemological viewpoint in Jaspers’s thought helped clarify the boundaries of
the accessibility of human consciousness to the “thing-in-itself,” the ontological
viewpoint reflected the philosophical position regarding the gap between the
Introduction
3
particular nature of a human being’s search for experience and the perfection of
experience as the “thing-in-itself.”
Jasper’s statement that philosophy “also rejects theology” due to its
connection to revelation4 may illuminate a crucial facet of the ontological
viewpoint. Philosophy cannot accept the presence of the transcendental
experience on which theological thought is based as a datum that is taken for
granted. In particular, it cannot accept the attempt to characterize this experience
in a concrete way that could be perceived as formal knowledge about
transcendence. It is true that, like theology, metaphysical philosophical
consciousness recognizes the existence of a transcendental being. However,
metaphysical consciousness is not grounded in an approach according to which
recognition of a transcendental entity is detached from the unique character of the
person establishing a relation toward Being. Jaspers’s philosophical effort to
regard revelation as “a historic form of phenomenal transcendence,”5 grounding it
in the immanent starting point of the person relating to it, may cause the loss of
revelation’s universal character, a character that theology sometimes aims to
prove. The concept of historicity will be discussed in Chapter Six. However, only
in this way may revelation be a significant component in the framework of
philosophical consciousness aimed at explicating the entity of an experience
beyond the boundaries of immanence.
Just as mythology, theology, and philosophy were for Jaspers three spheres
that together form metaphysics and that exist in constant tension, so, too, we must
recognize the inseparability of the two viewpoints, epistemological and
ontological, presented in this book as founding elements of the metaphysical
consciousness that develops in his thinking. As Jasper says:
Philosophical metaphysics tried by pondering transcendence in existence,
by thoughts that reach the ultimate origins and limits of existence, turn
somersaults, and require present fulfillment by a historic Existenz. In
philosophical metaphysics we adopt mythical reality from everywhere
and seek to understand what is alien to us in mythology and revelation
[emphasis mine].6
Metaphysics in Jaspers’s thought is not presented as based on objective
foundations that may enable communications between people (Jaspers’s
perception of communications will be discussed in Chapter Five), but as an
experience where people meets themselves each time while clarifying their
disposition vis-à-vis transcendence.7 This process can serve as a basis for an
illusion, since neither transcendence nor self can be fully philosophically
explicated. However, Jaspers claimed that the effort entailed in fulfilling this
double task and the insights formulated as a result may cause a person to
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
4
“abysmally delude himself, but as a thinker he can also find there his most
profound self-assurance”.8
This process of forming the metaphysical consciousness in Jaspers’s thought
ultimately reflects the human attempt to find meaning in existence primarily by
relying on the intuition about the existence of a transcendental being. At the same
time, the reality of this entity is not perceived in Jaspers’s thought as being limited
to the relations of people toward it, but instead it exists in its own right, as the
“thing-in-itself.”
2. Periodization of Jaspers’s Works
Metaphysical consciousness in Jaspers’s works originates in two basic drives: to
elucidate selfhood and to explicate being. Jaspers’s dealing with these two drives
was expressed in the works published in the two periods of his life discussed in
this book: the medical-psychological period (1910–1919) and the philosophical
period (1932–1947), during which his main philosophical works were written. His
writings from the third period, the socio-political period, not discussed in this
book, include publications written after the Second World War.9 In this period,
Jaspers showed, both in the theoretical issues he discussed and in his participation
in official committees, a public awareness that was not typical of his earlier
periods, and this had a deep impact on the nature and contents of his writings.
The criterion for distinguishing the periods is mainly thematic. It relies on the
continuity or centrality of the topic under discussion. The writings from the first
period, dealing with selfhood, will be discussed in the first part of this book,
Explication of Selfhood. The second period, characterized by philosophical
writing, displayed a displacement of selfhood from the heart of the discussion, in
favor of the explication of Being. This period will be discussed in the third and
final part of the book, Explication of Being. A discussion of the thematic and
methodological aspects of the transition from the first to the second period will
appear in the second part of this book, Transition Mechanisms.
A. The Medical-Psychological Period
During the first period of his writings, Jaspers wrote articles about psychiatry
(1910–1913), and the books General Psychopathology (1913) and Psychology of
World Views (1919). Along with his practice and academic study of medical
issues related to mental illness, and against the background of positivistic
approaches in science in general and in contrast to them, in this period Jaspers
tended to examine different aspects related to the patient’s self and private world.
The book Psychology of World Views, which Jaspers wrote after leaving the
field of psychopathology, expressed his wish to obtain a wider view of human
beings, beyond the boundaries of mental psychopathology. The choice to examine
Introduction
5
the subjective experience of the individual from a point of view of normality
opened new horizons for Jaspers, enabling him to examine more abstract aspects
of this experience. At the same time, Jaspers consistently avoided exploring
aspects related to the concrete reality in which the subjective entity under
discussion lived and operated. These features of the discussion of selfhood in this
book testify to the development that occurred in Jaspers’s approach compared
with his earlier writings. His turning to the abstract aspects of selfhood indicated
the philosophical direction he was about to adopt in the coming years. Jaspers
himself described this book with hindsight as “my unconscious way to
philosophy.”10 However, the separation of the discussion of selfhood from the
discussion of concrete reality and the absence of additional aspects that Jaspers
saw as essential for philosophical discussion do not enable us to include this book
in the second period, when his philosophical writings were developed.
Relatively little research literature exists about Jaspers’s writings from the
medical-psychological period, and it usually does not deal with the challenge of
linking them to his philosophical thought. We may assume that the research
literature perceived these early writings as irrelevant to understanding Jaspers’s
philosophy. Unlike the common approach, the interpretation I offer in this book to
these writings deals with the challenge of revealing the complex relation between
them and his later thought, and focuses on the perception of selfhood (Selbstsein)
developed in them.
B. The Philosophical Period
The second period of Jaspers’s writings began in the early nineteen thirties, with
the publication of Philosophy (1932), and it includes his main writings up to the
end of the Second World War: Reason and Existenz (1935), Philosophy of
Existence (1938), and Out of Truth (1946). In this period, Jaspers, appointed in
1920 as Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg University, strengthened his
position as a philosopher dealing with classic philosophical issues such as
consciousness, human beings, the world, and Being. In his writings from this
period, Jaspers continued to discuss the issue of selfhood that had interested him
already in his early work, and he even dealt with it in greater depth compared with
the first period. However, the main issue that interested him during the second
period was clarifying Being and transcendence.
Both these periods are at the center of this study, which will show their
continuity and development.
C. The Socio-Political Period
In the third period, encompassing the works written after the Second World
War—mainly essays and political books—Jaspers became a thinker familiar to the
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
6
general public.11 Even when consciously addressing a wide audience of readers,
using a simple and flowing style, and trying to participate in the formation of the
new social and cultural reality, Jaspers never stopped viewing himself as a
philosopher, and in this period he even wrote Philosophical faith in the face of
Revelation. Jaspers redefined his thinking and changed its name from “philosophy
of existence” to “philosophy of reason”—a name he believed expressed the “age
old essence” (uralte Wesen) of philosophy.12 However, this book is the exception
that proves the rule of this period, when Jaspers discussed mainly social issues
that interested Germany after the war: educating the youth; the idea of academia;
the question of German guilt; the conditions and possibilities of humanism in the
new political and social situation; and especially the question of the role and
essence of reason and philosophy in the new reality.13 In this period Jaspers was
prominent among German thinkers seeking to establish a new identity and to
found a “different Germany” on the basis of cosmopolitan values and universal
ideals.14 The new Humanism to whose development he wished to contribute,
presented human freedom and its decisions regarding the truth and necessity of
values as the corner stone supporting everything. In his introduction to the
periodical Die Wandlung, reflecting his personal experiences and value decisions,
Jaspers formulated the principles of this approach:
By no means can we say that we have already lost everything. As long as
we have not wasted in desperate anger everything we could have had as
something that cannot be lost: the element of history—for us [this element
is] first and foremost a thousand years of German history, and then the
history of the West and finally the history of the whole of humanity… We
will gain contact with everything human beings have experienced all over
the world in the most extreme form. A German outcast in his homeland can
find his support in the wide spaces of this humanity [emphasis mine].15
In his work written after the war, Jaspers sought to express the profound political
and cultural changes Germany experienced after the war. Although there exists
significant influence of his early work on the writings of this period, these works
should be examined first and foremost against the background of the challenges of
the period when they were written.16 This sort of study requires a different
methodology and poses different questions than those on which this book focuses,
and this book will concentrate only on the works from the first two periods.
3. Philosophizing Framework
Jaspers opened the three-volume work Philosophy with the question “What is
Being?,” and stated that this question arose from the basic situation of people in
the world.17 This is not just one of many questions people ask about existence, but
Introduction
7
a fundamental question (Grundfrage) relating to what philosophy has discussed
since its inception.18 Jaspers listed three aims derived from the question of Being:
philosophical world orientation, self-fulfillment and the openness toward
transcendence19, and devoted to each of these aims a separate volume: (1)
Philosophical World Orientation; (2) Existential Elucidation; (3) Metaphysics.
The three volumes, discussing the three classic issues of philosophy—world,
humanity and God—include all the issues Jaspers’s thought discussed in its
different periods. The fact that he chose to present the framework of his discussion
in Philosophy (1932) is no accident. This book, written after Psychology of World
Views (1919), was undoubtedly Jaspers’s “visiting card,” through which he wished
to distance himself from the fields of psychiatry and psychology, and turn to the
professional study of philosophy. Philosophy is in many ways the most mature and
systematic of Jaspers’s works, and he himself defined it as “closest to my heart”.20
Alongside the three areas of philosophy, Jaspers presented three types of
existence that were destined to become the basic distinctions on which his
philosophy was based: “objective Being,” “subjective Being” and “Being-in-
itself.” Objective Being (Objektsein) expressed everything accessible to human
consciousness and everything that can become “known being” (Gewußtsein)
through science. Subjective being (Ichsein) is separate from the object being and
expresses the unmediated layer of individual human existence.
When people think about their existence in the abstract, they see it as an
object, they become in their eyes Being-in-itself (Ansichsein) and see all other
beings as subject to it.21 Just as the three areas of philosophy are not separate from
each other, but constitute one whole, so also the three forms of existence are not
separate from each other, but together portray the complex where human life
occurs. So the question of Being is a sort of organon of Jaspers’s whole
philosophy, meaning that it defines the objects about which he philosophizes, and
their combination forms the whole of his thought.
Jaspers apparently based this basic division of fields of philosophy on Kant’s
division into the three transcendental ideas of pure reason: the idea of the
knowledge of the world, which is the absolute idea of all the conditions of the
phenomena; the idea of the study of the soul, which is the idea of humanity as the
final subject of all philosophy; and the idea for knowing God, which is the total
unity of the conditions of all objects.
The transcendentalism through which Kant defined the three ideas shows that
unlike the categories, they cannot be derived from the mind, and they do not refer
directly to the objects of the mind as such.22 In addition, I argue that the relation
between Kant’s ideas of reason and categories of mind is similar in principle to
that between Jaspers’s three areas of philosophy and the disciplines that deal with
them formally. Just as Kant’s philosophy perceived the ideas as complementing
for reason what was missing in the categories of mind, which apply only to
experience, so Jaspers perceived “philosophical world orientation,” “existential
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
8
elucidation,” and “metaphysics” as complementing the three disciplines of their
background: science, whose object is the world; psychology, whose object is the
spiritual life; and theology, whose object is religion. While Jaspers never
indicated his attitude toward Kant’s distinctions, the use he made of them goes
beyond the adoption of an efficient method of organization, and expresses the
anchor he found in this philosophy that continued to guide him when he wrote his
different works.23
4. Philosophical Method
Alongside the obvious relation of Jaspers’s philosophical framework to Kant’s
basic concepts, we can also observe a certain proximity between these two
thinkers in their philosophical method. According to Kant’s transcendental
method, people cannot achieve knowledge of any state of affairs without revealing
the general and a-priori system of rules on which it relies.24 Like Kant’s
transcendental method, Jaspers’s method of transcending (Transzendieren) also
aims to clarify the fundamental premises or a-priori certain logic on which
philosophizing is based. This method enabled Jaspers not to see the philosophical
framework set out in Philosophy as a starting point, but already as the result or the
implementation of his method of transcending. In this respect, the three areas
included in this framework: (1) Philosophical World Orientation, (2) Existential
Elucidation, and (3) Metaphysics, should be seen as an objective framework
within which the fields of science, psychology, and religion are rooted.
(1) In Philosophical World Orientation, the method of transcending is
applied to everything that can be scientifically objectified. The German word
Wissenschaft, meaning science, has a much wider range of meaning than the
English word “science,” which is usually used to mean the exact sciences. The
German term indicates a process of methodical investigation both of human
existence with all its theoretical and practical aspects, whose results are universal
knowledge that can be phrased using accurate definitions. Sometimes this term
appears as “science in general” (Wissenschaft überhaupt), in contrast to science
whose object is single and more limited (Einzelnwissenschaft).25 The
transcendence from this framework should have applied to specific contents of
human existence in the world. However, Jaspers clarified that it is based on the
understanding that the Kantian perception sees the world as a disintegrating
“phenomenon.”26
The transcendence in philosophical world orientation is primary and limited
in the horizons it aims at, compared with the two following transcendences, but it
serves as an introduction and a condition for them. This transcendence is essential
in philosophy aimed at explicating “Being” and “transcendence,” as is
demonstrated in the following passage:
Introduction
9
We search for coming to the limits that we expect, for the world, as
appearance, does not rest on its laurels, does not have a self-subsistent
existence… These boundaries, in their concrete form, do not allow us to
ignore them. I do not recognize them from general knowledge but I become
aware of them only through empirical reality itself. The more world
experience [Welterfahrung] is fulfilled in theoretical and practical terms
the more lucid is the manner of transcending the world. Without world
there exists no transcendence [emphasis mine].27
(2) Within Existential Elucidation, the method of transcending is applied to the
perception of the individual as a Being existing in a concrete reality in order to
expose its selfhood in its peculiar specificity.28 Jaspers presented the experience of
Existenz that was shaped in this framework as what exists beyond objectivity but
within the boundaries of immanent reality.29 In this respect, the concept of
Existenz combines the perception of the individual as a unique being that cannot
be generalized, and the understanding that this individual can transcend the level
of objectivity and even consolidate a relation toward transcendence.
Jaspers’s argument that Existenz itself cannot be understood, but instead
reveals to philosophy the incomprehensible (Unverstehbare)30, encompasses the
basic difference separating the two philosophical frameworks. While in
Philosophical World Orientation reality and the action of the individual’s mind
are two sides of the same coin, in Existential Elucidation reality and thought are
separate, so that what is considered universal in Philosophical World Orientation
is no longer perceived as such. In Existential Elucidation, the one-time uniqueness
of individuals is perceived as a basis that enables them to transcend the boundaries
of empirical reality. Existenz, as the name for this uniqueness, becomes possible
only in this boundary, where it is an experience that is not an individual case of
generality. So it is perceived as inaccessible to the tools of objective reason.
(3) In Metaphysics, the method of transcending serves as an instrument to
breach the other philosophical frameworks, Philosophical World Orientation and
Existential Elucidation, in order to achieve a certainty that does not depend on
existence and to form a relation toward transcendence. However, the act of
transcending in Metaphysics is only possible by Existenz that has achieved
philosophical world orientation and whose selfhood is clear to itself.31 The
implementation of the method of transcending in the two philosophical
frameworks presented above should be seen as a basis and a preparation for its
implementation in Metaphysics. The concept of “transcendence” (Transzendenz),
whose elucidation is at the heart of the philosophical framework of Metaphysics,
indicates the existence of a Being that is not existence (Dasein), consciousness
(Bewusstsein), or Existenz. Transcendence, transcending all of these, represents
what will never become an object, the complete contrast to finality and the
expectation and openness to everything that formal consciousness cannot access.32
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
10
The three forms of transcending presented above are anchored in the idea of
the “whole” (Ganze).33 This idea has two faces: the subjective face is based on the
origin of the “whole” being in the individual’s drive to reveal the meaning of
Being, and we must understand it as being beyond all forms of objectivity. The
objective face of the “whole” is based on serving as an object for the person’s
desire. This desire does not enable people to be satisfied with their boundaries and
directs them to things beyond themselves. The “whole” is perceived in Jaspers’s
thought as a substrate in which philosophy is anchored, and that motivates it, and
at the same time as a horizon that it constantly aims to approach in order to
become an explicit element in people’s consciousness.
The anchoring of the method of transcending in the idea of the “whole”
supports the understanding of the three contexts of philosophizing as not only
derivatives of different disciplines but as parts of a comprehensive whole that
exists beyond them. This shows another similarity between Jaspers and Kant, who
deduced from his transcendental dialectic the following:
We easily see that pure reason has no other aim than the absolute totality of
synthesis on the side of conditions, and that reason has nothing to do with
absolute completeness from the side of the conditioned. For it needs only
the former series in order to presuppose the whole series of conditions and
thereby give it to the understanding a priori.
...Finally we also come to be aware that a certain connection and unity
showing itself among the transcendental ideas themselves and that pure
reason by means of it brings all its cognitions into a system. To progress
from the cognition of oneself (of the soul) to cognition of the world, and,
by means of this, to the original being, is so natural that this progression
appears similar to the logical advance of reason from premises to
conclusion [emphasis mine].34
Although Jaspers’s thought reflects the aim to make the “thing-in-itself” explicit,
he avoids presenting his method of transcending as an instrument whose use
guarantees the solution of the question of Being. The definition of the method of
transcending as “only an act, not a result”35 strengthens the understanding that this
method served mainly as an instrument to reveal the three facets of the human
being: the wish to make the world familiar, the drive to consolidate selfhood, and
the search for God.36 The focus on these aspects indicates that Jaspers’s thought
did not concentrate on consolidating the contents to fill metaphysical
consciousness, but with revealing the conditions of consciousness or even the state
of mind (Stimmung) that could facilitate the achieving of this consciousness.
Jaspers aims to explicate the ways a person could imagine (Vergenenwärtingen)
the very possibility of the existence of an absolute being. He also stressed that
even within the act of transcending implemented in the realm of metaphysics, the
Introduction
11
philosopher remains in dialectic that leaves him in a constant contradiction whose
solution, were it possible, would empty transcendence of meaning.37 In this
respect, the method of transcending serves as a means for marking new targets for
philosophy, which ensures that metaphysical consciousness is subject to a constant
process of development. Because it remains unanswered, the question of Being
serves as a motivation and as an urge for a mode of being where philosophizing
accompanies experience of reality.
5. Philosophical Experience of Boundary
Jaspers’s method of transcending relies on the experience of boundary that is one
of the primary insights that characterize his thought throughout the different
periods. This experience has two aspects: first and foremost it expresses the need
of individuals to constantly evaluate the entirety of insights and experiences they
have accumulated so far, and to formulate them as assets at their disposal in the
future. But what is perceived as an asset is not translated into an experience of self
satisfaction or what Jaspers defined as “calmness” (Gelassenheit) regarding
people’s achievements. The basic drive motivating people to appraise their
achievements and to focus on what has not yet been achieved reflects the
condition of philosophizing that aims to create an approach that unifies all the
different philosophical insights.38 Without this drive, what has already been
achieved could become fossilized and lose its creative power. The other aspect of
the boundary experience was aimed at marking new targets for philosophizing and
presenting them to the individual as a demand for perfection, since even if this
perfection cannot be achieved, it drives people and does not let them stand still.
The very search for perfection and the explication of the experience in its absence
are what formulate, in Jaspers’s thought, the way for creating a metaphysical
consciousness.
In addition, philosophical experience of the boundary reflected the target at
which philosophizing was aimed in each of the stages of the development of
Jaspers’s thought: In General Psychopathology this experience served as a basis
for determining the boundaries of the science of psychiatry and for distinguishing
them from what was known as “the person in his individuality and wholeness.”39
In Psychology of World Views this experience was at the basis of the aim “to
determine the boundaries of our mental life.”40 In Philosophical World
Orientation it served as a means for determining the relation between science and
philosophy. In Existential Elucidation it served to redraw the boundaries between
the world and the ways of knowing the particular experience of Existenz. In
Metaphysics this experience helped clarify the awareness of the limitations of the
consciousness grounded in the selfhood of Existenz alone, an awareness that led it
to create a relation toward transcendence that exists beyond it. Finally, in Out of
Truth the boundary experience, which was at the basis of the perception of the
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
12
“encompassing,” helped discern the relation between the immanent and
transcendent aspects of Being.
The duality typical of the different expressions of the boundary experience,
namely between what philosophizing has already achieved and what is perceived
as a perfection not yet achieved, is at the basis of the distinction Jaspers presented
between contextual boundaries (jeweilige Grenzen) and boundaries in principle
(prinzipielle Grenzen). The contextual boundaries can be crossed, and they
present a challenge for scholars and philosophers, even if they cannot serve as
starting points for philosophy. The boundaries in principle, however, dispute the
world view as a phenomenon, and scientific research reaches the limit of its
ability. But although the boundaries in principle denote the end of the area that
can be studied using formal tools of consciousness, they open for people the
option of philosophical transcending. According to Jaspers, “every boundary
immediately raises the question what is beyond it.”41 Following the relation to the
philosophical framework established by Kant, Jaspers’s distinction between
“contextual boundaries” and “boundaries in principle” is apparently parallel to
two boundary concepts in Kant: the barrier or limit (Schranke) and the boundary
(Grenz). Kant states:
Boundaries (Grenzen) (in external things) always presuppose a space that
is found outside a certain fixed location, and that encloses that location;
limits (Schranken) require nothing of that kind, but are mere negations that
affect a magnitude insofar as it does not posses absolute completeness. Our
reason, however, sees around itself as it were a space for the cognition of
things in themselves, although it can never have determined concepts of
those things and is limited to appearance alone.42
The “limit” is a sort of “stop sign” indicating the point up to which a person can
reach, and no further. The “boundary,” in contrast, turns the discussion to what
happens within its framework, perceived as a sign of the end of the realm of
experience at a person’s disposal. Like the concept of “limit,” the concept of
“boundary” also reflects the end of the area of human experience. From an
ontological point of view, we apparently cannot go beyond the “boundary,” just as
we cannot break through the “limit.” However, standing at the edge of the
“boundary” does not indicate the end of our possible experiences, since from that
boundary point are visible the wide horizons surrounding our existence that are
not included within our experiential consciousness. In Kant’s terms, we cannot
cross the boundaries with our reason, but unlike the “limit,” in the “boundary”
people have an idea about the existence of a space beyond us, a space where in
Kant’s opinion human consciousness locates the “thing-in-itself.” Ultimately the
concept of the “limit” is built by elimination, while the positive concept of
Introduction
13
“boundary” originates in a sort of intuition that sees it as a sign of the area of
internal and external space.43
Jaspers used the idea of the “boundary” in order to determine the limits of
philosophy from which the method of transcending would be implemented was
not alien to the usage Kant made of his two boundary terms. Kant used the
negative “limit” term to distinguish between the borders of mathematical and
natural sciences knowledge and the borders of metaphysics: in the first, the
meaning of the restriction is that the knowledge existing in these areas has not yet
reached completion, although it is in a constant state of accretion. In these borders
there exists movement from one conditioned thing to another. Kant called the
concepts determined in these areas dogmatic, in the sense that they cannot be
transcended by possible experience,44 since he saw their borders as reflecting the
limitations of the phenomenon and the way it is represented in our
consciousness.45 In contrast to the restriction existing in empirical areas of
knowledge, in metaphysics the boundary is mainly positive, and as such it creates
an insurmountable gap between what is known and what is not known, and must
limit itself. In this context the essence of reason is exhausted in the relation to
what is beyond it. This relation reflects the effort of reason to extend its
boundaries in order to approach what is beyond the “boundary”—although this
experience is itself accompanied by the awareness of reason that it cannot cross
the boundary between itself and the experience beyond it.
Kant’s philosophy was for Jaspers not only a great source of inspiration, from
which and against which he philosophized, but it also provided him with
instruments to formulate his own philosophy. Kant’s influence on Jaspers is
significantly greater in depth and breadth to the influences he absorbed from other
philosophers.46 However, Jaspers did not remain committed to the borders set by
Kant’s philosophy, and often Kant’s ideas served as vessels into which he poured
new and even contrasting contents than those where they first appeared. Jaspers
apparently wished to transcend Kant’s philosophy in one step, or alternately to
withdraw from it by one step: unlike Kant, who placed at the center of his work
the discussion of consciousness and revealing its boundaries, Jaspers’s thought
focused on the person bearing this consciousness. This approach helped Jaspers
reveal additional forms of human experience in existence, which he thought
reflected the human tendency to transcend itself.
The boundary experience and the method of transcending it show us that at
the basis of Jaspers’s attempt to form a metaphysical consciousness were the
philosophical goals he set himself but had not yet achieved. The very experience
of the absence of perfection and its role in determining the targets of philosophy
was, for Jaspers, evidence of the reality of perfection itself. In this respect the
method of transcending served not only as a “limit” to remaining in what had
already been achieved, but also as a means that could lead the philosophers each
time to new districts beyond the “boundary” where they were standing.
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
14
6. Methodological Approach
In his retrospective essay “About My Philosophy,” Jaspers described the two
elements to which philosophical practice is directed: the “being” and the “self.”
As he writes:
The philosophical mediation is an execution (Vollzug) where I reach the
experience and myself. This is no calm thought where I deal with an object
without involvement. Philosophizing is the praxis of my own thinking
source in which the full essence of the human is realized in individual
people. The peak of the praxis is the internal action (inneres Handeln)
through which I become what I am. [This action] is making the experience
discoverable (Offerbarwerden), it is the activity of the selfhood (Selbstein)
which is at the same time experienced as passivity in the turning into the
given to yourself (Sichgeschenktwerden) [emphasis mine].47
These two components of philosophical practice appear in this book as central
axes around which Jaspers’s intellectual biography developed, and as establishing
elements of the metaphysical consciousness he expounded. During the earlier
stages, Jaspers dealt with the element of “self” from different points of view. This
element reached its climax in Jaspers’s philosophical writings with the
establishment of the philosophy of existence. The discussion of “Being” took
place alongside the discussion of selfhood. However, difficulties that arose in this
framework pushed aside the selfhood from the center of the philosophical
discussion, and Jaspers formulated a new philosophical framework, at whose
center were the concepts of “Being” and “transcendence.” In truth, the selfhood
never ceased to interest Jaspers. But its philosophical explication showed him that
behind the person’s original drive to reach self-understanding pulsated another
drive, deeper and more basic, leading people to search for meaning and intent
beyond the boundaries of their self-being. This book aims to show that the two
basic philosophical urges—the urge to explicate selfhood and the urge to form a
relation toward Being and transcendence—were interlinked and simultaneously
influenced the development of Jaspers’s thought in its entirety. The division of
Jaspers’s work into periods should be seen mainly as playing a methodical role.
The order of issues discussed in the book’s chapters is determined largely on
a chronological basis. By ordering the material in this way, the development of
Jaspers’s ideas is examined from a genealogical point of view—what preceded
what, which ideas served as a basis for later and more mature ideas, and what the
different contexts added to explicating the philosophical questions under
discussion. This approach, viewing the order of the ideas’ appearance as critical
for their understanding, aims to deal with the difficulty raised by Jaspers’s
thought—a thought that does not present its themes in a complete and systematic
Introduction
15
way, and necessitates picking out the arguments that appeared in different contexts
while clarifying these contexts. The genealogical point of view aims to reveal the
dynamic of the development of Jaspers’s philosophy from the writings that
appeared in the psychiatric period up to those written in the philosophical period.
This approach is not sufficient, since a purely genealogical study would limit
the research to “the history of Jaspers’s philosophy” without discussing the
original issues developed in his thought. Alongside the genealogical issue,
sometimes in parallel and sometimes using it as a starting point, the different
philosophical issues will be examined from a thematic point of view. One crucial
aspect that the thematic examination will deal with throughout the book is the
dependence of the understanding of ideas that appeared in the early writings on
those that appeared in later writings. However, this dependence is not a
disadvantage in the context of a discussion that conducts an immanent
phenomenological explication of the philosophical text. The understanding that
occurs in this sort of discussion is always “temporary,” and reflects the discussion
at the stage when it appeared, but will later be formulated differently, more
accurately, in the more advanced stages of explication.
The presence of the two viewpoints, genealogical and thematic, inevitably
creates tension not only between the different parts of the book, but also within
each of the chapters. This tension originates in the basic fact of the hermeneutical
circle that for describing the stages of development requires the writer to have
already a thematic understanding of the issues discussed, but this understanding
only becomes clear to the reader after completing the entire move, at the end of
the book. We should aim to understand the study as one whole, like the way
Jaspers wished his book Philosophy to be read:
The meaning of philosophizing is a single thought, ineffable as such: the
consciousness of being [Seinsbewusstsein]. In this work it ought to be
approachable from every chapter; each should be the whole in detail,
though leaving dark what will first illuminate itself through the rest
[emphasis in the original].48
The book focuses then on clarifying Jaspers’s wide-ranging work, first and
foremost from within itself and from studying the complex mutual relations
between its parts. The choice to conduct a critical phenomenological explication
of the philosophical text makes the writings of the philosopher himself the focus
and main sources for the study. The research seeks to illuminate the different
facets of Jaspers’s thought and its dynamic motion through an immanent
penetration of Jaspers’s thought as reflected in his writings, without requiring an
external justification and without proposing a critical judgment of the validity of
his arguments. This understanding of the role of the interpreter is at the basis of
the decision not to deal in this book with questions about the range of influences
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
16
on Jaspers’s thought, and not to try to discover the similarities and differences
between him and other thinkers of the existentialist tradition, or to locate his work
within the historical context of his time.
The scholarly literature about Jaspers focuses mainly on his philosophical
writings, and places special emphasis on the three-part work Philosophy—the first
and most systematic of them. This literature, a large part of which was written
during Jaspers’s lifetime, contains two main trends: one aims at a particular issue
and presents an immanent interpretation of the sources dealing with it directly.
Among the authors belonging to this trend we can list leading scholars of Jaspers’s
work: Richard Wisser, who discussed the concept of truth; Leonard Ehrlich and
Aloys Klein, who dealt with perceptions of faith and religion; Sebastian Samay,
who discussed questions of objectivity and science; Hans Kunz and Alan M.
Olson, who focused on transcendence; and Kurt Salamun, who illuminated the
ethical aspect. The other trend is an attempt to formulate a general impression of
Jaspers’s thought, often without grounding in a systematic explication of his
writings. The second trend can be exemplified by the work of Fritz Heinemann,
Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Heinrich Knittermyer, and others.49 The literature
included in these two trends does not address philosophically Jaspers’s early
works, dealing with psychiatry, and the ideas developed in Psychology of World
Views are hardly mentioned.50 Apart from the clear break with these early works,
characteristic of most interpretations in both trends, they lack an integrative view
of Jaspers’s work grounded in an analysis of his entire corpus.
However, despite the large scope of scholarly literature in the two trends
presented above, indicating the interest and challenge Jaspers presented to those
who dealt with his work, it would be difficult to remain unaware that Jaspers’s
thought remained to a large extent on the margins of the philosophical discourse
of the past few decades. This phenomenon may be explained in several ways. The
first explanation involves the character and great influence of Martin Heidegger.
Jaspers was Heidegger’s contemporary, and they were both perceived as
representing the German existentialist current. The dominance achieved by
Heidegger with the publication of his book Being and Time in 1927, five years
before the appearance of Jaspers’s Philosophy in 1932, made gaining their place
and status quite difficult for Jaspers and other contemporary philosophers. Even
the thought of Husserl, Heidegger’s teacher, was gradually pushed aside from the
philosophical discourse, while Heidegger’s gained a status and importance that
was already indisputable, and even today is at the center of philosophical activity.
While Jaspers had to deal with the ban on publishing his writings in Nazi
Germany, Heidegger, who joined the Nazi party, continued to publish and
establish his status in Germany during the Nazi regime’s years in power. It was
during the nineteen thirties and forties, when Jaspers’s philosophical writing
reached its maturity that his way to the contemporary philosophical discourse was
barred, even before his thought became available for public criticism.
Introduction
17
Alongside this historical-biographical explanation, we can suggest another
explanation for the relatively marginal status of Jaspers’s philosophy. This
explanation involves his style of writing and the premises on which his thought
was based. Jaspers deliberately avoided coining distinct philosophical terms, and
in practice allowed his ideas and concepts to draw their meaning from the general
context in which they appeared. This approach contributed to the unsystematic
nature of his thought, and made expressing his already complex and vague ideas
difficult, which often left his readers with the impression that they were not
accessible to rational analysis.51 In this respect we can argue that Jaspers’s
philosophy gave its readers a task that he himself did not achieve: exposing the
basic structures and formulating the fundamental concepts in which it was
grounded. Jaspers largely missed one of the central challenges facing any
philosopher: presenting efficient thought patterns or instruments to help deal with
philosophical problems even outside the boundaries of his thought.52 Readers
undertaking the challenge of Jaspers’s complex philosophy are required to follow
the development of Jaspers’s ideas and concepts throughout his writings and
formulate for themselves their overall meaning.
The interpretation I propose in this book attempts to deal with the challenge
of revealing the unity of the world from which Jaspers wrote—from his
beginnings as a young psychiatrist and up to his late maturity as a philosopher
with his own original approach. The analysis wishes to complete what is missing
in existing research literature about Jaspers, to conduct an immanent
phenomenological explication of his writings, and at the same time to crystallize
an integrative interpretation of the range of issues they discuss. Yet, this will not
take place in a vacuum. The different approaches and interpretations in the
secondary literature are perceived in this framework as part of Jaspers’s text. In
the interpretation offered in this book, and in the illumination of the different
facets of Jaspers’s thought, I will not argue with them and where possible will
build upon them in offering an original interpretation of this philosophy. The
current research literature about Jaspers largely focuses on different issues about
his thought and activity in what was earlier called the “third period,” and so it will
not be discussed in this book. As explained, the research literature dealing with
Jaspers’s philosophical thought in the two first periods of his thought, mainly in
the second period, was mostly written during his lifetime and so can be seen as
part of the contemporary discourse. The discussion of the different interpretations
of Jaspers’s thought will be an integral part within the process of developing the
interpretation offered in this study to Jaspers’s thinking. The critique of these
interpretations does not presume to offer the “correct method” of studying
Jaspers’s work, and does not claim exclusivity.53
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
18
7. Structure
After the Introduction, this book is divided into three parts comprising eleven
chapters: Part One, containing four chapters (One to Four), deals with the
explication of selfhood. This part discusses the writings of the first period and
some of those from the second period that deal with selfhood. The perception of
selfhood presented in this part relies on the concepts “self” (Selbst), “mental”
(Seelische), and “subjectivity” (Subjektivität) that typified Jaspers’s early writings.
From the book Philosophy onwards, these terms made way for the concept of
“Existenz.” This study seeks to illuminate the development of Jaspers’s thought by
following his use of these concepts. It also studies the process of widening the
philosophical framework from the pathological-psychological viewpoint in the
early writings to the philosophical viewpoint typical of his writings in the second
period, when Jaspers established his philosophy of existence. Jaspers, like other
philosophers of the philosophical trend called Existentialism, preferred to remove
this definition from his thought. The term “philosophy of existence”
(Existenzphilosophie) was first coined by Friz Heinemann, considered one of the
important German scholars of this trend already while it was in formation, in his
book New Way of Philosophy (Neu Weg der Philosophie) (1929). In his later,
more mature work, Heinemann discussed the characteristics that could include
Jaspers’s philosophy in this trend, and its uniqueness compared with other
thinkers of this trend.54
My main argument in this part is that the philosophical effort to explicate
selfhood is influenced by its solipsistic image, but at the same time contains
several attempts to deal with this image. The first stages of his work, mainly in the
psychiatric period and to a large degree also in Psychology of World Views, were
characterized by an almost complete dominance of the solipsistic understanding of
selfhood that led largely to a subjugation of the different issues under discussion
to the question of their relevance to the understanding of selfhood. However, the
discussion in Chapter Three and Four suggests a process of the formation of
Jaspers’s critical awareness of his early approaches and an understanding of the
difficulties arising from them. This awareness enabled Jaspers to abandon some of
the insights of his early work and prepared the ground for the inclusion of new
philosophical concepts, through which Jaspers aimed to ground Existenz in a
wider context. This book examines the influence of the new issues discussed in his
philosophical writings on his perception of selfhood.
Part Two includes an introductory methodological chapter, three chapters
(Five to Seven), and a chapter of conclusions. This part discusses three of
Jaspers’s central and most original ideas—“communication,” “historicity,” and
“boundary situations.” These ideas, which I define as “transitional mechanisms,”
are presented as central instruments that helped Jaspers rescue the perception of
Introduction
19
selfhood from the influence of the solipsistic image that had accompanied its
discussion up to the appearance of these ideas. These three ideas, discussed
mainly in the Existential Elucidation, helped expand and deepen the perception of
selfhood. These ideas also opened new horizons for Jaspers that served as a
foundation for the establishment of a new philosophical axis in his work, aimed at
explicating Being.
Part Three contains four chapters (Eight to Eleven), and deals with the
explication of Being based entirely on writings included in the philosophical
period. Even in this framework Jaspers continued to discuss selfhood, but the
developments typical of it, first and foremost the distancing from solipsism,
diverted it from the center in favor of the concepts of “Being” (Sein) and
“transcendence” (Transzendenz). The primary motive for discussing the question
of Being and for seeking transcendence was presented as belonging to Existenz;
however, it ceased to function as a touchstone of the different issues that arose in
Jaspers’s philosophy.
Finally, a note about the style of writing. The choice of a phenomenological
method conducting an immanent explication of the original texts leads, almost
inevitably, to a style that humanizes the different concepts under discussion,
abstract though they otherwise are.
PART TWO
TRANSITION MECHANISMS
Introduction to Transition Mechanisms
FROM THE EXPLICATION OF SELFHOOD
TO THE EXPLICATION OF BEING
The growing awareness of the problematic nature of an explication focused on a
single object of philosophizing was at the root of Karl Jaspers’s attempt to expand
his framework of philosophizing and to open it to new issues beyond the
boundaries of the explication of selfhood. The introduction of the concepts of
“world” and “consciousness” into the explication of selfhood already challenged
the fundamental trend in the early writings, where the individual’s subjective
Being was examined on the basis of its personal experiences. However, since
these terms were examined mainly from the viewpoint of Existenz, while assessing
their relevance to its self-understanding, they did not lead to a systematic
undermining of the solipsistic premises. These reappeared at different stages of
the dialectic, which continued to be part of the philosophizing aimed at the
explication of selfhood. Even so, along with the constant expansion of the
perception of selfhood and of the boundaries of its discussion, a search for an
anchor for the person’s Being beyond the realms of the world, consciousness, and
even the self-consciousness of Existenz started to emerge. The seeking of Being
and transcendence, which Jaspers attributed to Existenz, served as an
infrastructure for the formation of framework of philosophizing that I will term
the “explication of Being.” When Jaspers dealt with clarifying Being and
transcendence, a large degree of continuity existed with the perceptions he had
developed regarding selfhood, but the new philosophizing framework that began
to form in his writings was designed using new criteria.
This part of the book will examine the philosophical ideas that were part of
the explication of selfhood, but that at the same time helped Jaspers formulate a
new axis of philosophizing, from which he was able to find a direction to solve the
problems that had arisen in his perception of selfhood, and to complete the aspects
that it lacked. I will define these ideas as “transition mechanisms”: the term
“mechanism” denoted their nature as tools of philosophizing, while the term
“transition” indicates the location of these mechanisms as mediating between the
parts of Jaspers’s whole philosophical move. In biographical terms, Jaspers
discussed these ideas, concentrated in Elucidation of Existenz, the second volume
of Philosophy (1932)1 in the middle of his long period of creation (1910–1963).
While these ideas have also been discussed in other contexts and not only in
Elucidation of Existenz, their presentation as “transition mechanisms” in this study
is not based on the meaning they were granted in those contexts, which will serve
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
104
merely for comparison. Regarding the contents, the ideas discussed in this part of
the book embody three types of otherness, through which Existenz transcends its
involvement with itself and forms a relation toward the Being beyond it: in
“communication” Existenz transcends to another Existenz; in “historicity” it
transcends toward existence as the time and place that form its concrete reality;
and in “boundary situations” it becomes acquainted with the boundaries of
existence and reality that are fundamental for its perception as a worldly Being,
and tries to transcend them. “Boundary situations” first appeared in Psychology.2
“Communication” appeared as a central theme throughout Reason and Existenz,3
and was later mentioned in many contexts in Out of Truth.4 “Historicity” was
discussed in Metaphysics, the third volume of Philosophy.5 Although in these
ideas Existenz forms its relation toward what is beyond it, they continue to be
based on Existenz’s viewpoint. The aspects relating to the explication of Being
embodied in the ideas included in the transition mechanisms are not sufficiently
clarified within the context of the transition mechanisms beyond the viewpoint of
selfhood regarding them, so they constitute part of the explication of selfhood.
However, once these ideas are placed at the focus of the philosophizing, they can
no longer be viewed as part of the transition mechanisms, but instead as part of the
explication of Being.
The discussion of the transition mechanisms will be aimed at clarifying the
turning point in Jaspers’s thought when he transferred his focus of interest from
selfhood to Being. Additionally, the explication of these ideas will serve as an
instrument for evaluating the interpretative process up to this point of the research,
and its future relevance. The separation of the methodological discussion of these
ideas from the book’s Introduction and its location after the discussion of
Jaspers’s perception of selfhood has a double significance: the methodological
clarification enables us to distance ourselves from the intensive involvement with
the contents and to reexamine the interpretative process that has accompanied
their discussion. At the same time, the renewed interest in the philosophical moves
already discussed, essential in a study dealing with the development of thought,
sharpens our awareness of the interpretative moves already made and helps
formulate the future interpretative directions. The discussion of the transition
mechanisms is based on one of the most important premises informing the
interpretation of this philosophy, the premise that research methodology does not
precede the research investigation, but develops during its process from the
phenomenological study of the text.
With these things in mind, we can present the philosophical ideas defined as
transition mechanisms as instruments that helped Jaspers exchange the object of
the explication in his discussion and at the same time maintain a dialog with the
previous object of explication. In this respect, the transition mechanisms also
reflect the continuity typical of this philosophy that created from itself the tools
that regulated the relations between its different topics in the different stages of its
Introduction to Transition Mechanisms
105
development. This understanding is formulated as a criterion determining the
nature of the ideas to be included in this part of the discussion: they have to
continue in some way the philosophical move of elucidation of Existenz, and in
this respect they should be viewed as an integral part of the explication of
selfhood. In addition, the ideas discussed here are required to have new aspects
regarding selfhood that had not yet matured and that left unsolved problems in the
explication of selfhood. This dual requirement is intended so that the ideas
included in the transition mechanisms will help achieve a new integration of
previous aspects, but at the same time serve as a framework for clarifying
Jaspers’s self-criticism of his earlier approaches, which in itself constitutes a basis
for the further explication of his thought. The discussion of the philosophical ideas
included in the transition mechanisms is aimed at clarifying the argument that the
peak of the explication of selfhood and the first formation of the explication of
Being are located at the same point of philosophizing.
The central argument at the basis of the interpretation offered here is that the
transition mechanisms constitute a frame of reference in which Existenz is
presented as being pushed to transcend its boundaries, from its maturing
awareness that it is not exhausted within its own boundaries alone. This awareness
denotes a high stage in the process where Existenz finds itself able to separate
itself from its surroundings and so focus its attention on aspects outside its Being.
The maturation and establishment of this awareness and also of Existenz’s self-
distinguishing and separating skills are expressed in expanding its horizons toward
wider and more absolute aspects of reality: Being and transcendence. The
viewpoint from which these ideas will be discussed is designed in accordance with
their function in the suggested interpretation of Jaspers’s thought as a whole. We
can phrase this in two questions. First, how much did these ideas help rescue
Jaspers’s mature perception of Existenz from the solipsism that characterized it in
its early stage? Second, to what extent did transcendence become a closer and
more tangible horizon for Existenz with the help of these ideas? In this respect,
the discussion of the ideas defined as transition mechanisms is not intended to
offer a complete and extensive discussion of their philosophical aspects, but
instead to reveal their overall role in the formation of the metaphysical
consciousness formulated through them at the stage of exchanging the object of
explication. This discussion will reflect the duality in the particular condition of
Existenz at this stage of Jaspers’s discussion—after it was discussed as the main
object of the philosophizing, and before it was removed from its central position
in favor of the explication of Being. These two facets typifying the condition of
the Being of Existenz are contained in Jaspers’s definition of it as an “origin.” As
he says:
Existenz is not a target, but an origin of the philosophizing within which it
perceives itself. The origin is not the beginning through which I [could]
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
106
always search for additional beginnings… but Being as a freedom I
transcend to when I reach myself in the philosophizing from the unknown.
The helplessness of the philosophizing that is in doubt regarding the origin
is the expression of the helplessness of my selfhood, the reality of the
philosophizing at the beginning of the impetus of this selfhood. The
perception of Existenz is thus a premise of the philosophizing that at first is
only a desire for significance and for a support, which is turned away
empty-handed to the doubt and despair regarding its very possibility and
then appears as unperceived certainty that clarifies itself in the
philosophizing.6
The idea of the origin contains two basic meanings. First, it indicates the self-
stamina of Existenz as a real Being that can be understood from within itself
without the mediation of external factors. Second, this idea expresses Existenz
itself being a starting point for a discussion of something else, still connected to it,
but indicating what is beyond it. In the first meaning, the connection to the
intuitions typical of Jaspers’s early thought is still preserved, but the second
meaning is anchored in insights revealed only in the advanced stages of the
explication—insights that pointed out the limitation of Existenz to continue
creating its self-perception with reference solely to itself. The connection between
Existenz’s self-perception at this stage of Jaspers’s thought and the understanding
achieved regarding the nature of the relations between it and the external reality is
expressed in the following passage:
The world and Existenz are in tension. They cannot turn into one [thing],
nor separate themselves from each other.
This tension is presumed in the philosophizing from a possible Existenz.
The world as what has become knowable, and an Existenz that becomes
clarifying, are distinct from each other in a dialectical way and perceived
again as one.7
Just as the perception of the maturation of Existenz does not enable the separation
between the two facets of the idea of “origin,” so also this understanding cannot
detach Existenz’s self-awareness from its awareness of the real and separate
reality of the world. However, the two facets of the idea of origin and the two
stances of Existenz toward the world—as separate from it and as part of it—are
not identical in content. These stances internalize the presence of the objectivity8
of whose formation the transcending of Existenz is an integral part. In contrast, the
reality of the Being of Existenz is a datum on which the first facet of the Being of
the origin relies, while the second facet already reflects its transcending beyond its
own selfhood. It transpires that the perception of Existenz as an origin expresses
Jaspers’s more cohesive and mature awareness regarding the Being of Existenz
Introduction to Transition Mechanisms
107
compared with the description of the internal-external dynamic typical of its
relations with the world; this approach, indicating the status of the self-awareness
of Existenz as more crystallized, was enabled only when its recognition of the
objective world reality matured and when it transcended it; only then does
Existenz appear as a unity beyond the sum of its two facets expressed in its
relations with the world. This unity is what enables it to form a relation toward
what exists beyond it. In the following passage, Jaspers described the existential
consciousness typical of stage of the explication of selfhood:
Whatever can be objectivized from within me is valid due to my empirical
individuality, and since it can be a phenomenon of my selfhood as an
Existenz it certainly does not evade a final and defined psychological
analysis; this boundary of the knowledge of myself indirectly indicates
something else without this observation being able to force itself. Thus the
clarification of Existenz is released but not filled with knowledge; it
achieves space for me, but does not shape a substance through the
expressions of a Being capable of objective perception.9
These words show that the placing of Existenz as a target and a goal in his thought
helped Jaspers establish his detachment from the scientific-empirical viewpoint of
human beings and of the world, and largely freed him from being tied to objective
thought patterns in general. However, already at the stage when the achievement
of this target appeared close, from the realm of Existenz another target beyond it
became visible. His description of this goal using the vague words “substance”
and “something else” testifies not only to the vagueness surrounding everything
revealed to Existenz, but especially that this vagueness was perceived from
Existenz’s viewpoint, which at this stage had yet to achieve an explicit
understanding of transcendence and Being.
The perception of Existenz as an origin, entailing the special condition of
Existenz at the transitional stage from the explication of selfhood to the
explication of Being, enable us to state more clearly the status of the explication
of selfhood in the context of Jaspers’s entire philosophy. It shows that selfhood is
the first stage in the philosophizing that would not be completed until the
transcendent Being viewed beyond it underwent explication itself. At the second
stage of the philosophizing, revolving around the explication of Being, Jaspers
dealt with new subjects, different in nature. However, since this axis of discussion
arises from the dealing with the explication of selfhood, it can be seen as
complementing and closing a circle for Existenz itself. Just as the viewpoint that
enabled the formation of the explication of Being was on the one hand dependent
upon the awareness of the basic limitation of the philosophizing aimed at the
explication of selfhood, on the other hand it relied on the insights that were
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
108
formed there. The explication of Being is not exhaustable within its own limits,
but needs the explication of selfhood as “the other” as a foundation for it.
Five
COMMUNICATION
1. Existenz Facing Another Existenz
Karl Jaspers’s aim to form an approach expressing the individual’s subjective
Being, but not based on general criteria, was at the basis of the explication of
selfhood as presented up to this stage of the discussion. He wished to examine the
human soul through the physical symptoms of mental disease, to track the
founding subjectivity of world views, and to elucidate Existenz, while not being
subject to the objective viewpoint of consciousness. The premise behind these
attempts, each of which represented a stage in the development of Jaspers’s
thought, was that the complete exposure of selfhood as a particular Being
necessitates placing it at the center of the discussion and turning it into a
framework where the other concepts would also be clarified.
However, while in the writings discussed so far Jaspers was mainly interested
in protecting selfhood from approaches that examine it from general viewpoints,
when he discussed communication he started examining Existenz in light of
another reality. The confirmation this gave to the existence of another reality apart
from that of Existenz—in this context, the reality of another Existenz—forced
upon it a new reality that detracted from the totality attributed to it, and
fundamentally changed Jaspers’s perception of selfhood. Some references to the
existence of another reality had already appeared in Jaspers’s thought even before
he turned to communication. In Psychology1 it was the subjectivity that formed
another world view, and in World Orientation2 it was the reality of the existence
where Existenz finds itself as an existing Being.3 The presence of the otherness in
previous contexts, whose status in the discussion was marginal compared with that
of selfhood, did not change the attitude toward selfhood as a singular Being, but
mainly influenced the understanding of other concepts appearing alongside it. For
example, the concepts of “consciousness” and the “world” became an immanent
part of his discussion of selfhood, which determined the boundaries of the
reference to them. Conversely, the perception of communication discussed in this
chapter reflects a real and conscious transcending from the solipsism typical of his
perception of selfhood when this was the center of the explication. Consciously or
unconsciously, Jaspers himself listed the reasons for the change that occurred in
his perception of selfhood, and in his entire thinking, a change that served as an
essential infrastructure for dealing with the very possibility of communication:
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
110
Against the tendency to self-sufficiency, against the satisfaction with the
knowledge of general consciousness, against the individual’s self-will,
against the drive to self-closure in self-contained life, against wandering
aimlessly in an existing tradition as a routine way of life, the
philosophizing wishes to enlighten…. through communication the freedom
that perceives Being in its origin.4
With these words in mind, we can more precisely define the two facets of the
starting point from which Jaspers turned to clarify communication: it is aimed
against the approach Jaspers himself had developed earlier, against the tendency
to “self-sufficiency” or “self-containment” attributed to Existenz, and at the same
time it is a continuation of the opposition to the viewpoint of consciousness
regarding the human being. So this starting point reveals one of the basic qualities
of Jaspers’s thinking, that no less than aiming at what was beyond it and what it
had yet to achieve, it was also aimed at and against itself. The achievement of
goals that were transcendent to it involved a repeat elucidation of what was
included in it immanently, and sometimes even a dispute with it.
2. Existential Communication
The perception of communication in Jaspers’s thought is anchored in the basic
distinction between “communication in existence” and “existential com-
munication.” Jaspers saw communication in existence, which can become an
object for study to clarify its motives and the basic patterns in which it is
expressed, as hiding the individual’s unique selfhood and identifying it with the
selfhood of others.5 However, he defined existential communication, in which the
explicit selfhood of the person is portrayed, as follows:
… The philosophizing wishes to clarify the freedom before which the
threatening solipsism or the universality of existence always [stand]
through communication that perceives Being. This philosophizing applies
to me from myself to hold me open and then to take without condition the
communication connection that was realized. It seeks to preserve the
possibility mercilessly denied in the solipsism and the universality of
general consciousness.6
The location of existential communication between two poles, solipsism on the
one hand and universality on the other, reveals the two greatest threats to selfhood
with which Jaspers wished to deal in his discussion of communication.
Universality reflects an impersonal attitude toward human beings.7 This approach
relies on the premise that the scientific and objective viewpoint aimed at
elucidating the Being of human beings and the world is capable of enabling an
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111
exhaustive understanding of them. Japsers’ criticism of this approach argues that it
detracts from the particular uniqueness of the individual’s Being by treating it
extremely formally and impersonally. In this respect, we can see it as a
continuation of the fundamental insights formed in World Orientation and even in
his earlier works, where he rejected any attempt to objectify people and developed
an approach that saw individuals as unique and particular Beings.
In contrast, the solipsistic world view perceives human beings—either as an
abstraction or as a reality—as relying on themselves alone. Jaspers’s position
regarding this perception of the individual was clear. He stated categorically that
the very possibility of seeing individuals as isolated essences existing in their own
right is a “boundary image.”8 This means that the perception of a person as
distinct from the surrounding reality is beyond the boundaries of human thought,
and also beyond the boundaries of philosophizing. This criticism of the solipsistic
world view, formulated here for the first time, is a new position in Jaspers’s
writings. Even if we assume that he would not himself have defined the perception
of selfhood created in his writings up to that point as solipsistic, the definition of
communication as existing outside it shows a new awareness of one of the
possible implications of his early view, and perhaps even an explicit criticism of
it.
However, the anti-solipsistic position to which Jaspers committed in his
discussion of existential communications will be shown below as a dialectic
position that sometimes contained explicit contradictions. This anti-solipsistic
position involved several aspects that did not accord with each other and
sometimes even contradicted each other. At one point, this position placed
existential communication at the service of Existenz, understanding that it could
not stand alone. At another point, it directed Existenz to exceed its boundaries and
to form a relation to what transcends its boundaries. The tendency toward these
two directions simultaneously introduced into existential communication the
tension expressed in this context, as it is throughout the entire framework of
explication of selfhood, in an attempt to deal with two contradictory trends
representing two aspects of one subject. In Jaspers’s perception of psychiatry, the
duality was reflected in the presence of two different facets in the discussion of
subjectivity—the expanding and the restricting—(see Chapter One). In
Psychology, the duality was expressed in the two different tendencies of the
explication of world views as part of a phenomenon and as private (see Chapter
Two). In World Orientation, it was portrayed in the tendency to detach selfhood
from the world and in the drive to re-anchor it in the world (see Chapter Three and
Chapter Four). Apart from this basic duality, the dialectic typical of the perception
of existential communication reflects wider processes occurring in Jaspers’s
thought, gradually leading to the replacing of the central axis to which the
philosophizing was aimed. Alongside the continuing tendency to explicate
selfhood, the presence of the “other Existenz” in the discussion precipitated
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
112
changes that resulted in the processes of explication crossing the boundaries of
selfhood and being directed to horizons beyond it. There are two different trends
in Jaspers’s perception of existential communication: while the philosophical
arguments included in the first trend are an integral part of the explication of
selfhood, the second trend shows existential communication to be a transition
mechanism from the explication of selfhood to the explication of Being. In
accordance with the framework of this study delineated in the Introduction, the
discussion will focus on the writings appearing in the second period (in this
context, especially Elucidation of Existenz and Reason and Existenz9,) in which it
is presented as a metaphysical problem. We will not discuss the works dealing
with communication published in the third period, which have received special
attention in research.10
In the first trend, communication is perceived as another means of forming
the selfhood of Existenz. In this framework, Jaspers continued dealing with the
implications of the universal viewpoint of selfhood, but in his discussion the
awareness of the influence of the solipsistic view of selfhood became increasingly
prominent. In a way, the placing of the other Existenz alongside the Existenz
undergoing explication reveals a concrete facet of the reality of its surrounding
world, filling with real contents the perception of selfhood as a worldly Being. In
this respect, we can see communication as a context for dealing with the basic
duality typical of Existenz, between the tendency to isolate itself from the world
and its need to establish its existence therein. The possibilities entailed in the idea
of existential communication in this trend contributed to the development and
deepening of the perception of selfhood typical of Jaspers’s thought up to this
stage. However, the solipsistic substrate, which continued to play a real role in it,
diminished the possibility of breaking through the boundaries of the explication of
selfhood.
Only in the second trend apparent in the perception of existential
communication was its function as a transition mechanism expressed. Compared
with the first trend that contained a noticeable influence of the epistemological
viewpoint, aiming to obtain increasing knowledge regarding Existenz, this trend
emphasized the ontological viewpoint, aiming at elucidating the Being of the
Existenz that intends to form a relation toward transcendence. The innovation in
this trend lies in its confronting the Existenz under explication with another type
of otherness, meaning not only that of the other Existenz, but that of
transcendence. What makes existential communication into a transition
mechanism is the very awareness forming in Existenz’s self-consciousness of the
existence of transcendence—an awareness that would become a central feature of
Existenz in the explication of Being. There is no doubt that dealing with the
possibility of forming communication with another Existenz as a Being that has its
own existence was a starting point for the search for a reality existing beyond the
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113
boundaries of Existenz—a reality that gradually became an independent object of
philosophizing in Jaspers’s thought.
3. Communication as a Means of Constituting the Selfhood of Existenz
The philosophizing aimed at the elucidation of selfhood, as presented up to this
stage, referred to selfhood as an individual Being. The loneliness separating
Existenzes was assumed implicitly in the processes of individualization aimed at
constituting selfhood. The link between loneliness and the processes of
individualization was characteristic of many thinkers in Jaspers’s period. Erich
Fromm criticizes this approach.11 These positions were in the background of the
development of the socio-political critique of the Frankfurt School.12 Since
communication appeared in Jaspers’s writings after the formation of selfhood as
an explicit Being, it was assumed that the perception of communication itself
should not be based on the individualization processes, but should transcend them.
The explicit condition of Existenz served as a basis for sharpening the distinction
between the “Being of I” and the “Being-with-the-other.”13 In a more detailed
passage:
Communication is present whenever two that are connected but must
remain separate reach each other from loneliness and still know only
loneliness, since it remains in place in communication. I cannot become
myself without entering into communication, and I cannot enter into
communication without being lonely. In any suppression (Aufhebung) of
loneliness through communication, a new loneliness grows that cannot
disappear without me myself ceasing to exist as a condition for
communication. I must want loneliness when I dare to be myself from its
origin, and thus enter a deeper communication.14
Jaspers’s perception of communication reveals an undecided dialectic: the contact
with the other creates the sensation of loneliness, which leads to communication,
and so on. It transpires that the experience of loneliness remains a permanent
element in the experience of communication. The experience of loneliness
influences two different directions: it deepens people’s self-awareness as
individuals, and at the same time it pushes them toward the other out of a deeper,
more established individuality. This dialectic perception of the relations between
loneliness and individuality also appears in Jaspers’s early article “Loneliness,”15
which was more psychological than philosophical. The psychological viewpoint is
especially demonstrated by his use of the term Ego and his reference to the
“understanding” (Verstehen) method16 known from the writings preceding
Philosophy. This article was probably written between 1915 and 1916, but was
only published in 1983 by his student Hans Saner, who edited it, and probably
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
114
chose to include in it ideas originating in Jaspers’s writings from the different
periods, especially regarding the concept of truth and the concept of
communication, which appeared in his philosophical writings published from the
nineteen-thirties onwards. To the best of my knowledge, the article has not
appeared in its original, unedited form in any of Jaspers’s books or the collections
of articles published during his lifetime or following his death, and the discussion
of this article will not be incorporated into the body of this chapter. Perhaps the
difficulty in determining the degree of the article’s authenticity explains why it has
not been mentioned by any of the scholars discussing Jaspers’s idea of
communication, apart from Donatella Di Cesare, whose study dealt mainly with
works of the third period.17 The connection between the sense of loneliness and
the processes of individualization, which encompass a person’s entire lifetime,
appears to be the final element in the Being of the self-aware person.18 Ignoring
the clear link between the necessity of individuality and the solipsistic
infrastructure in which Jaspers’s perception of selfhood was grounded is difficult.
In this respect, we may state that Jaspers located communication between
solipsism and universalism, and this did not indicate his escape from solipsism,
but only a clearer awareness of its existence and influence on his thinking.
The central status of loneliness in Jaspers’s perception of communication
appears in Fritz Kaufmann’s interpretation, stressing also the solipsistic aspects
accompanying Jaspers’s perception of existentialist communication.19 Kaufmann
went further and formulated on the basis of the idea of existential communication
appearing in Elucidation of Existenz an understanding regarding Jaspers’s
perception of communication with nature20 and with God.21 He also linked
Jaspers’s perception of communication with the issues he dealt with during the
third period of his writings. Against this background, Kaufmann presented
communication as one of the expressions of Jaspers’s social criticism. In his
opinion, the anchoring of communication on the basis of individuals, which grants
it an aristocratic flavor, showed an individualistic reaction to the age of the
masses. Kaufmann links this aspect to Jaspers’s attraction to Søren Kierkegaard
and Friedrich Nietzsche.22 Kaufmann’s sweeping interpretation, which did not
distinguish between the different senses of this idea in the contexts in which it
appeared, turned the idea of communication into the central subject of Jaspers’s
thinking, and on this basis presented his version of the possible directions in
which it could have developed, but not an inherent interpretation of the concept of
communication as it appeared in Jaspers’s philosophical writings. This criticism
of Kaufmann’s interpretation is similar to Werner Schneiders’s criticism of it.23
The continued existence of the solipsistic aspects in Jaspers’s perception of
communication was not expressed only in the central role allocated to loneliness
in this framework. The discussion of communication contained more direct
arguments linking it to these aspects and more generally to the framework of the
explication of selfhood. Jaspers defined communication as “an inner struggle for
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115
the possibility to exist solely in my own right.”24 The “struggle” Jaspers
mentioned in this context should not be understood as directed against an external
entity, but as expressing a struggle with the human tendency not to become an
Existenz and to remain on the level of what Jaspers terms “mere existence.” The
word in German has two meanings: mere and bare. In this context, I believe
both are relevant. See Jaspers’s use of the term Dasein,
25 referring to the
“fall” of Existenz from a state of realization. At this point there is similarity with
Martin Heidegger’s approach, seeing Das Man as a main mode of Existenz.26 The
argument that communication does not serve as a means of overcoming loneliness
does not necessarily indicate the failure of communication. The reliance of
Jaspers’s concept of communication on a solipsistic basis does not leave room to
expect that communication would guarantee the end of loneliness, or even make it
a rarer experience. In the absence of real reference to the character of the other
Existenz, communication appears as a speculative possibility whose meaning does
not depend on realization. Communication constitutes one more of the
possibilities through which Existenz can realize itself and deepen its individual
identity, and beyond that we know nothing about it. In any case, the loneliness that
Jean Marie Paul rightly defined as the “hermeneutics of selfhood” is revealed as a
formative element of Existenz, and also of existential communication.27
On the Marxist critique of the dialectic between loneliness and
communication in Jaspers’s philosophy, see Günter Junghänel’s criticism that “the
pseudodialectic between loneliness and communication [reflects] an attempt to
cover the objective social contradictions, and especially the class struggle.” He
says that the loneliness Jaspers described does not constitute a party in the
dialectic existing in human communication, but is a by-product of the socio-
material situation in the capitalist world, which only the social order offered by
Marxism could solve.28 This criticism ignores one of the most basic premises of
existentialist philosophy in general, perhaps the most fundamental of all, that the
different levels of existence do not characterize different social groups, but are
different modes of existence of the same person who alternates between authentic
and inauthentic modes of existence. Compare also Schneiders’s criticism of
Junghänel.29 For further discussion, see Georg Lukàcs’s interpretation, seeing
Jaspers’s philosophy as a reflection of the bourgeois elitist ideal lacking any social
consciousness.30 Jaspers responded to the Marxist criticism directed at his thought
in his article “Reply to my critics.”31 Saner discussed the role of Marxism in the
socio-cultural context during Jaspers’s early period, and on the image Jaspers had
of Lukàcs.32 Manfred Gangl discussed Jaspers’s character as a social critic.33
While clarifying the link between the perception of communication and the
main motifs of the perception of selfhood, we may ask the question: why had
communication not been included from the start in the framework of the
explication of selfhood, appearing only as a transition mechanism? The answer to
bloß
bloß
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
116
this stems from the basic ambivalence typifying the perception of selfhood that
was behind the concept of communication in Jaspers’s thought. As he put it:
Regarding the question: why is there communication? Why do I not exist
alone? To this an answer is possible that can be understood to the same
small degree as [there is an answer] regarding the question about selfhood.
In his opinion, at this point we encounter “… the paradox of the becoming origin
of selfhood, which was actually from itself but still does not exist from itself and
with itself alone.”34
These questions, which appear rhetorical when they occur in the context of a
discussion of communication, demonstrate Jaspers’s real difficulty in breaking
through the wall of solipsism he had himself constructed around selfhood in the
early stages of his work, but at the same time also his awareness of this aspect in
his concept of selfhood. The hints of disappointment, or even despair, Jaspers
expressed in this context stemmed from the conflict between the discovery that
Existenz requires communication to constitute its selfhood and the original
intuition, whose influence in Jaspers’s thought was still present, that selfhood had
the ability to “stand independently” in the world.35 The awareness that
communication is essential not only relieved the feeling of loneliness, but also
made it more difficult to experience, especially since being aware of it became
part of Existenz’s self-perception. The paradox to which Jaspers was now exposed
in his discussion of communication was not a solution, since individuality was one
of the expressions of the maturation of Existenz’s self-consciousness, but this
maturity was expressed no less by the urge to communication. In this context, Di
Cesare suggested that Jaspers did not achieve a balance between loneliness and
communication.36
The new self-understanding being formed in Existenz’s consciousness in view
of the possibility of communication with another Existenz, that it could not exist
only in itself and through itself, but required the human Being outside it, was
expressed in the following words appearing under the title “the dissatisfaction in
myself alone”:
If I perceive myself in the face of the refusal to communicate and
experience consciousness where I rely on myself alone then the
dissatisfaction… is worsened… I cannot find the real because what is real
is not only what exists as real for me; I cannot love myself if I do not
thereby love the other. I must become dreary if I am only I am.
However, there is in me a real and original drive to stand by myself alone; I
would still like to be able to live as retiring to myself…37
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117
The refusal to communicate is no longer presented as an expression of the
dominance or power of individuality, but as a lack or fault in selfhood that
damages the freedom that is one of the typical features of Existenz, and eventually
leads to its identification as a closed objective Being.38 In the absence of
communication, Existenz is removed to outside the boundaries of Being and finds
itself as “homeless” in existence.39 In this respect, communication is not perceived
as a means of escaping from selfhood or as evidence of the flimsiness of selfhood.
The maturation of Existenz’s self-consciousness is now presented as “pressing
within the external willingness toward communication.”40 Jaspers, who at no stage
of his philosophy renounced his primordial insights, found it difficult in this
context also to push aside his original urges to grant philosophical representation
to selfhood as an independent and self-sufficient Being, or as he wrote, “I would
still like to be able to live as retiring to myself.”41 However, this urge was
overcome by the awareness that such an approach would diminish the ability to
achieve a complete understanding of selfhood that was at the center of his
philosophical commitment.
The connection between communication and Existenz’s grasp of existence is
not expressed only in the negative, but also in the positive. Just as in the absence
of communication Existenz is removed from existence, so also the presence of
communication strengthens its hold in existence. Jaspers’s argument that
communication helps Existenzes that form it to participate actively in ideas, tasks,
and goals that arise from real existence in the world42 strengthens the observation
that the ability to form a relation toward another Existenz is one of the most
crucial expressions of Existenz’s hold on existence. Existenz’s grasp of the
immanent expressions of the world and its ability to form a relation toward other
Existenzes embody the two main implications of Jaspers’s distancing himself from
solipsism. While the other Existenz is not necessarily part of the immediate reality
of the Existenz examining the possibility of forming a relation of communication
with it, its ability to recognize its existence and to confront the possibility of
communication becomes an inseparable part of its self-consciousness as a worldly
Being.
In a way we can argue that there is a basic similarity between the role allotted
to the other Existenz in communication and the role objects occupy for formal
knowledge. Just as a person’s mind requires objects as a basis for forming its
consciousness, so Existenz requires the existence of the other Existenz in order to
form and develop its self-consciousness.43 We would do well to compare the role
of the “other Existenz” in communication for the Existenz forming its selfhood
with the dialectic of the master and the slave in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s
philosophy. To the best of my knowledge, such a comparison has yet to be made,
although the connection between Jaspers’s thought and Hegel’s philosophy in
other contexts has been examined by Alan M. Olson.44 The very discussion of
communication takes place from the point of view of the Existenz being
KARL JASPERS: FROM SELFHOOD TO BEING
118
explicated in Jaspers’s thought and not from the viewpoint of the other Existenz,
which is not presented as a real entity with its own existence beyond the role it
may play for the Existenz under discussion. Not only can communication take
place only between Existenzes,45 but the very meeting between the two is defined
as responding to the same possibility of selfhood identified in the other.46
Preserving the link to the viewpoint of the Existenz is achieved by reducing the
difference between the two Existenzes, intended mainly to moderate the otherness
of the other Existenz.
At this point, the instrumental nature of the relation Existenz forms toward the
other Existenz is revealed. Existenz does not require the fullness of the Being of
the other Existenz, or even its concrete existence, which was not even mentioned
in the discussion, dealing mainly with the situation from which the Existenz that is
forming its selfhood is pushed to communication. The presence of this aspect in
Jaspers’s thought probably served as a basis for a variety of interpretations that
understood in some ways the philosophy of Existenz as a rephrasing of the
traditional approach of sui causa regarding human beings. From this point of
view, Jaspers’s philosophy was understood as an expression of the extreme
subjectivism of excessive and dangerous autonomy of the individual, and even of
anti-social elitism.47 The implications of these interpretations for the
understanding of the perception of communication are clear; this interpretation
negates the possibility of understanding Jaspers’s concept of communication as an
option that Existenz can realize in practice in its existence.
Like these interpretations, the interpretation offered here does not see
Jaspers’s perception of communication as expressing a real possibility. Here we
also reject the possibility of seeing the concept of communication as part of a
dialogical approach, as other interpreters of Jaspers’s thought believed. The
scholars who saw Jaspers’s perception of communication as a dialog viewed it as
evidence of a real experience of Existenz, instead of as an expression of Jaspers’s
dealing with a speculative option. Hans Urs Von Balthasar lists Jaspers along with
Martin Buber as two dialogical thinkers of the period.48 Heinz Horst Schrey
included Jaspers’s thought in what he termed “the philosophy of dialog.”49
Similarly, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl includes Jaspers in a list of philosophers, such
as Buber, Gabriel Marcel, Franz Rosenzweig, and Albert Camus, who dealt with
“the issue of communication or dialog”—two concepts she probably considered
identical (she argues that Jaspers was unique in this context in linking
communication with truth).50 Michael Theunissen offers a more moderate
interpretation of Jaspers’s perception of communication, and shows similarities
between Buber and Jaspers that indicate, in his opinion, Jaspers’s proximity to
dialogical thinking, but do not yet enable his philosophy to be included in it.51
Harry Wardlaw claims that Jaspers’s understanding of truth as communication
draws heavily on Immanuel Kant.52
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I still have difficulty accepting the interpretation that sees subjectivism as the
be all and end all of Jaspers’s philosophy, since it lacks a real explanation for the
very presence of the idea of communication in his philosophy of Existenz. It
conspicuously ignores the open discussion of the implications created by the
possibility of communication in Jaspers’s perception of Existenz, and misses even
the viewpoint focused on Existenz in which these approaches were anchored.
Jaspers described the implications of this possibility in the following words:
In communication I become open to myself with the other.
However, this opening is also for the first time the becoming real of the I as
self. If I think that opening is the clarification of an innate character, then I
abandon with this thought the possibility of Existenz, which is still creating
itself in the process of opening where it becomes clarified.53
The “opening,” or the ability to self-transcend that is typical of Existenz, which
enabled it to become acquainted with the possible existence of another Existenz,
revealed to it new horizons so far hidden from it. Even before it was exposed to
what was beyond it—Being and transcendence—it reached better self-
understanding. Now it transpires that the very possibility that Existenz could form
a relation toward what was beyond it reveals the real nature of the infinity that,
already early in his writings, Jaspers had attributed to the individual’s subjective
Being. The infinity does not depend on the absence of boundaries imposed upon
it, but on the possibilities of its self-understanding in light of what is beyond it,
and naturally restricts it. In this respect, we can argue that the very possibility of
forming a relation to a transcendent entity testifies first and foremost to the nature
of the Being called Existenz. The perception of communication as the “openness”
and “opening”54 of individuals toward the other in order to form their selfhood is
rooted in German culture. It refers primarily to two central concepts in Hegel’s
philosophy: Entävßerung, which means rejecting or renouncing the other, and
Vergegenständlichung, which means making the object to which the person refers
more vivid and concrete. These two concepts denote individuals’ ability to use
what is around them, in the widest sense, to form themselves as spiritual and
creative entities.55
We can summarize this stage of our discussion of Jaspers’s concept of
communication by arguing that we can find in it the traces of the solipsistic
infrastructure that has generally accompanied the framework of the explication of
selfhood. In this context, this infrastructure is expressed in the centrality attributed
to loneliness in “communication.” However, the introduction of the other Existenz
into the realm of possibilities through which Existenz can realize itself deepened
the cracks in the solipsistic perception of selfhood beyond the influence of the
discussion of the world’s reality and of objective knowledge. This change made
Jaspers’s perception of Existenz more flexible and opened to it new horizons
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including the possibility of forming a relation toward transcendence—an option
that had not appeared in this thinking while the explication of selfhood had been
the main axis guiding it. The possibility of forming a relation toward
transcendence, which appeared thanks to the changes in the perception of
Existenz, served as a basis for Jaspers’s perception of communication being
located outside the realm of the explication of selfhood, as part of the transition
mechanisms.
The opening of Existenz toward what was beyond it, achieved in the context
of what was called earlier the “first trend” in the perception of communication,
was not realized in the form of relations with the other Existenz, but only in
forming a relation toward transcendence, to be discussed in the framework of what
we have termed the “second trend.” The first trend formed the foundation for what
would be realized only in the second trend, to be discussed below. Only when
communication serves as a transition mechanism can we determine whether, or
more precisely, to what extent, Jaspers’s perception of selfhood was liberated
from its early link to solipsism.
4. Communication as a Transition Mechanism
The entry of the other Existenz into the arena of philosophizing revealed the basic
polarity of the Being of Existenz. On the one hand, it tends toward “excited
devotion”56 to itself, while on the other hand it continues to want to “hold itself
from loyalty to loneliness,” and to find ways to “help itself.”57 Steffen Graefe
discussed the connection between the element of “excitement” in the existentialist
view of communication, the “excited approach” appearing in Psychology,58 and
eros in Plato’s philosophy.59 As long as communication is perceived merely as a
framework of relations between Existenzes, we cannot decide between these two
poles, since to the extent that “love, the substantial source of selfhood in the
communication, can grow from itself the selfhood as a motion of its opening, it
cannot enable the arrival at a perfect conclusion.”60 The processes occurring in the
self-consciousness of Existenz when it faces the possibility of communication
cannot be exhausted within the explication of selfhood, precisely because they
direct Existenz toward what is beyond it, to transcendence. Just as in the other
transition mechanisms, in the discussion of communication Jaspers used
transcendence before explicating it. However, its role in the context of
communication is quite clear. As he puts it:
You and I, who are separate in existence, are one in transcendence. There
we do not meet and do not even miss each other, but here in the becoming
of a struggling communication that is revealed and confirmed in danger.
Where this unity exists, there is a leap from what is already
incomprehensible to what cannot be thought absolutely.61
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The transition, or more precisely the “leap,” from existence to transcendence
skipped the possibility of a meeting between the two Existenzes, which was not
realized at all. More accurately, this possibility could not have been realized in
principle, and we cannot even say it was missed. However, although the deep
individuality that typifies them prevented a real meeting between the two
Existenzes, Jaspers believed that they could share the aim to form a relation to
transcendence as a Being existing beyond them. Jaspers did not clarify what the
phrase “we are one in transcendence” meant, so his words lack an answer to the
question whether referring to transcendence could serve as a basis for real
communication between them, or whether it was merely a shared characteristic of
Existenzes as such. One possible answer to this question is the argument that the
unity of the Existenzes in transcendence is transcendental to both of them, and to
the framework of their existence in the world, and it could even be existence out
of communication. However, such a unity does not leave real traces.
Jaspers himself noted the complexity of his arguments, which directed the
discussion in two directions at once, and even understood the potential for a
contradiction forming from them. On the one hand, he wished to follow the
changes occurring in the self-consciousness of Existenz in light of the possibility
of communication with the other Existenz. On the other hand, he wished to
establish out of these changes an approach toward what was beyond the Existenz
and the other Existenz, toward transcendence. From the viewpoint of the Existenz
being explicated we cannot separate these two channels, since the same opening to
the other is itself the realization of itself as an Existenz. In his words, “This
process of realization as opening does not take place in the isolated Existenz but
only with the other. As an individual I do not exist for myself, not as a revelation
and not as an actual.”62 However, from the objective viewpoint of consciousness
we cannot attribute processes of opening and change to a particular Being even
before it was an actual Being. As he says:
For objective thought, certainly only what existed before can be revealed.
However, the becoming open that brings the Being simultaneously with this
becoming is like originating from the nothingness, thus it does not [remain]
only in the sense of mere existence.63
Jaspers clarified that although the “opening [becoming open] and the reality are in
a relationship that appears to be forming in the contrast between its existing from
nothingness and its being self-bearing,”64 the contradiction that is forming is only
an apparent contradiction,65 a contradiction resulting mainly from the continued
presence of traces from the early perception of selfhood, according to which
selfhood is a “self-bearing” Being. This is because transcendence is perceived as
“resulting from the nothingness” only from the viewpoint of Existenz, or more
precisely as long as the dominance of this viewpoint is preserved in the discussion
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and the possible existence of an otherness separate from Existenz itself is pushed
aside. However, as the self-consciousness of Existenz matures and opens new
horizons to what is beyond it, it transpires that the very acquaintance of Existenz
with the existence of transcendence is based on the changes that occurred in
Existenz’s self-consciousness. Perhaps there is still room to define the transition
from the explication of selfhood to the clarification of the relation Existenz forms
toward transcendence as a “leap,” even if only not to grant this transition a
deterministic meaning where the “openness” of Existenz necessarily leads to the
formation of a relation toward transcendence. In any case, the perspective of
Jaspers’s whole philosophy confirms this process, since eventually Jaspers moved
away from dealing with Existenz and focused on explicating Being and
transcendence.
The openness to the reality of another Existenz transpires as an essential
preparation for the perception of communication as a transition mechanism. It
deepened the cracks in the solipsistic perception of selfhood and opened new
possibilities for Existenz that were an “unknown” for it at this stage of the
explication. The vagueness and lack of clarity typical of Jaspers’s arguments
about transcendence in his discussion of communication demonstrate the
condition of Existenz, at this point facing two new options for it: forming a
relation toward another Existenz and forming a relation toward transcendence. In
the process, it forms a self-consciousness that no longer allows it to maintain its
self-perception as a “self-bearing Being,” but Jaspers’s thought still lacked the
tools to bridge the gap between its early self-perception and the possibilities
revealed by the discussion of communication.
As in other places, here, too, Jaspers apparently spoke in two voices and left
his words undecided. Sometimes he appeared to strive to bring both Existenzes
closer to transcendence, and at other times he appeared to see their existence side
by side as helping each of them to eventually arrive at transcendence while
preserving their individuality and sovereignty. Sometimes he appeared to wish to
create a relation of continuity from the level of existence to transcendence, while
at other times he appeared to distinguish between the different stages of presenting
a Hegelian-natured process where each stage was an escalation compared to its
predecessor, but at the same time also its negation. Either way, the shared
presence of both “trends” revealed in the discussion of communication illuminates
the general direction in which Jaspers’s philosophy was moving. This thought was
at this stage in a process where the status of Existenz as the sole object of
philosophizing was being undermined, against the background and limitations
uncovered in the explication of selfhood. True, in this framework, too, Existenz
continued in its explicit condition to serve as an essential infrastructure for
Jaspers’s arguments. However, his main attention was no longer devoted solely to
the explication of Existenz, but started to be directed to expanding the sphere of
reference of Existenz that served as a basis for forming new axes of philosophy
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not dependent on the self-clarification needs of Existenz. To be more precise, the
metaphysical consciousness, which was the fruit of deep modification processes
occurring in Jaspers’s thought, is not the consciousness of Existenz, but this
consciousness itself was already based on something existing beyond it.
The interpretation of Jaspers’s concept of communication offered here,
according to which it is part of the formation process of metaphysical
consciousness—or more precisely a stage where this consciousness became a
conscious goal of Existenz—stands in contrast with most existing interpretations
in the secondary literature. They understood Jaspers’s idea of communication as
an explication of a real experience of Existenz, or interpreted the possible reality
of this experience as equivalent to the possibility of forming the Existenz itself,
also often defined by Jaspers as “possible Existenz.” The understanding that
Jaspers’s perception of communication reflected a real possibility for the Existenz
has appeared, for instance, in interpretations that tried to derive humanistic norms
and ethical values from it. Salamun, for example, summarizes four norms that
arise from Jaspers’s perception of communication: the daring for mediating-
creating loneliness and self-standing self-consciousness; the requirement to open
to the other; the cry for unqualified and non-egoistical willingness toward the
other; and finally the willingness to recognize in principle the other as a possibility
for self-actualization.66 The fundamental difficulty in accepting the ethical
interpretation of Jaspers’s perception of communication stems from this
interpretation almost completely ignoring the fact that the Existenz as another to
which communication is directed does not appear at any stage as a real personality
with its own world. The criticism is not that we cannot derive from Jaspers’s
approach any ethical meanings or discuss the implications of his thought in this
direction, but instead concerns the understanding of ethics as the central and
comprehensive motive in which his approach is grounded. A total interpretation
like this not only does not present a reasonable explanation for the changes and
developments that occurred in his philosophy, but it also ignores the metaphysical
aspect that entered the ethical aspects themselves. Without referring to this
metaphysical aspect, the ethical aspects are also only partially explicated. If
Jaspers’s approach contains an ethical meaning, I believe that it is anchored in the
metaphysics that is progressively revealed as a basic infrastructure of his thought
in its different periods. Even if we ignore the question of the reality of the other
Existenz, we cannot ignore that in his discussion of the possibility of
communication Jaspers presented an instrumental attitude toward the other
Existenz. It was largely a secondary factor in the change processes experienced by
the self-consciousness of the Existenz that continued to be dominant in the
discussion. Schneiders, too, noted the problems in principle posed by the ethical
interpretations of Jaspers’s philosophy of Existenz. In his opinion, Jaspers’s
negative position in the argument about the very possibility of recognizing moral
norms with the usual instruments of our reason could lead to the “crumbling of
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moral philosophy.” Jaspers’s position, in Schneiders’s opinion, should not be
viewed as the abolishing (Aufhebung) of moral philosophy, since this position
limits in principle the possibilities of forming it in reality. Schneiders argues that it
is no accident that Jaspers’s claim regarding the impossibility of deriving “worthy
actions” was a fruitful basis for studies in the field of legal philosophy dealing
with the special meaning of objectivity and normativity of actions.67 He mentions
three works written in this vein.68 These works are valuable not only in the field of
law, but also in moral philosophy, which is currently considered as part of it.69
The role of the other Existenz was mainly symbolic. The other Existenz
represented for the Existenz undergoing explication a different form of humanity,
but the main meaning of this humanity depends on the possibility that it could help
the Existenz become acquainted with hidden facets of its Being. In any case, the
question remains unanswered how we can conclude from the perception of
relations between people, which is apriori presented as a speculative possibility,
any norms and values requiring realization in the framework of the concrete
reality of human action. Even if the requirement for the realization of the norms
that the ethical interpretation deduced from Jaspers’s general arguments, we could
still not view his perception of communication as anything other than a vague
phrasing of mental positions that Existenz develops in the face of the speculative
possibility of meeting another. We can be almost certain that Jaspers would not
have supported this restricted outcome, if only because of the psychologistic
image arising from it—an image that he consciously and actively wished to cast
off even before publishing Philosophy. Jaspers stated in retrospect that
Psychology was not a psychological book in essence, and that it became his
unconscious path to philosophy.70 The conditions for communication that Jaspers
listed related only to the Existenz under explication and not to the other Existenz
to which the communication relation was supposed to be directed.71 To use
Heidegger’s terminology, communication is an aspect enabling Existenz to reach a
more advanced development of its selfhood, which deepens in view of the idea of
transcendence, functions as an Existenzial, and should not be seen as representing
the layer of the Existenzielle that portrayed for Heidegger the layer of
realization.72 Finally, the other Existenz remains in Jaspers’s perception of
communication a speculative element whose realization is at least not a
consideration in the philosophizing, and perhaps does not exist at all.
As in the ethical interpretation, the interpretative direction characterized by
an anthropological-philosophical orientation also contains an understanding of the
perception of communication as an expression of a real option for Existenz.
William Earle, who in general understood the existential elucidation as a rational
framework, saw the perception of communication as an essential means for
achieving a rational estimate regarding the reality in which we live. While
rationality does not cancel the essential and unbridgeable polarity accompanying
the Being of Existenz in its experience of communication, as a result of which it is
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condemned to live in a paradox, in his opinion reason and objective consciousness
are able to help resolve it.73 Urs Richli did not go as far as Earle in arguing that
Existenz could be understood using the instruments of rational thought. However,
from the same anthropological orientation, Richli, too, tried to deduce from the
perception of communication, and in general from Jaspers’s perception of
Existenz, principles regarding the “correct humanity” that he believed was
embedded in Jaspers’s thought.74 In a way, we could state that the anthropological
position, satisfied with drawing general principles regarding people from the
perception of Existenz, including Jaspers’s perception of communication, without
aiming to phrase from these principles any ethical requirements, does not harm the
principle of freedom that was a founding element of the Being of Existenz.
However, like the ethical interpretation, this interpretation, too, was characterized
by understanding communication as a descriptive condition applying to the
ontological reality in which Existenz is contained. The criticism presented to the
ethical interpretation can equally be applied to the anthropological interpretation.
Taking into account the understanding of the ethical and anthropological
interpretations of the idea of communication as an expression of a real experience
of Existenz, it is no wonder that they did not grant real importance to the role of
transcendence in Jaspers’s perception of communication, and were unable to
explain the metaphysical depth of Jaspers’s perception of communication and his
philosophy as a whole.
The interpretative approach based on understanding communication as a
concrete and realizable idea did not solve real problems arising from Jaspers’s
alternating between the other Existenz and transcendence, each of which
represents a different Being of the “other.” This interpretation was also unable to
offer an explanation for the nature of the connection between Existenz and
transcendence arising from the perception of communication. In contrast,
exposing the two directions of philosophizing within the idea of communication,
defined above as the “first trend” and the “second trend,” has enabled us to follow
Jaspers’s attempts to escape from the perception of Existenz as a solipsistic Being
and to reveal the transitional function entailed in his perception of communication.
The continuation of the tendency to achieve the explication of selfhood within
the discussion of communication and the absence of a real explication of
transcendence testify to the greater proximity of communication to the explication
of selfhood than to the explication of Being. However, as transcendence and
Being become central issues of philosophizing, there will hardly remain any trace
of the idea of communication as a possibility of meeting between two Existenzes.
This will clarify not only the functional status of the other Existenz, also harnessed
to the self-explication of Existenz, but also the functional nature of the entire
perception of communication that serves mainly as a means for the replacing of
the axis of philosophizing—from the one aimed at selfhood to the one that was to
be directed at Being.
Six
HISTORICITY
1. From World Orientation and Communication to Historicity
The perception of Existenz as a worldly Being, which started to form in World
Orientation,1 reflected Karl Jaspers’s aim to provide his discussion of selfhood
with a philosophical nature. The introduction of the concepts of “world” and
“consciousness” into his discussion undoubtedly created a real change in his
perception of selfhood. It no longer appeared as a Being detached from any
context and link with the reality external to it, but became a worldly Being. While
selfhood was still the main object of the philosophical explication, the discussion
of the implications of this change was restricted to the relevance of the world’s
reality to the self-perception of Existenz. In a way, only in the perception of
communication can we find a more direct handling of the implications of the
perception of selfhood as a worldly Being. When Jaspers was discussing
communication, he was not conducting an independent discussion about the world
as a real context in which the meeting between Existenzes takes place. In the
discussion of the concept of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), on which this chapter
focuses, Jaspers was able for the first time to consider the concept of the world as
a Being that had independent existence that could be examined beyond the
implications it had for the self-consciousness of Existenz. In this context, too, he
added insights to the framework of the explication of selfhood, and therefore
presented it here as one of the transition mechanisms. However, since historicity
expresses a deeper otherness than that of the other Existenz discussed in
communication, the clarification of this concept created a further distancing from
the solipsistic perception of selfhood and made real progress toward the
explication of Being. Unlike the concepts of communication and of boundary
situations (to be discussed in Chapter Seven below), the concept of historicity has
rarely been studied by scholars.
2. Between Historicity and History
The idea of historicity is based on the classic Hegelian distinction between the two
meanings of the German word for history (Geschichte): history and story.2 The
first denotes the objective meaning relating to historical events, on whose basis
the science of history was created. The second denotes the subjective meaning of
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this area, stressing the decisive role of the human factor in forming the past
consciousness of people as a basis for their self-understanding in the present.
Against the background of this distinction, of which Jaspers was aware, he
attempted to differentiate between historical consciousness and consciousness of
historicity. People’s role regarding historical consciousness is limited to their
ability to observe past events and learn about different historical periods from
them. These events do not necessarily have any relation to their personal lives. In
any case, in the mental activity involved in historical consciousness, the person’s
presence is not the individual’s presence, with all the subjective factors
characterizing that selfhood, but the presence of someone gifted with an abstract
reasoning ability, or what Jaspers called “consciousness in general.” Not only is
the individual’s private personality not perceived as a factor influencing the
process of understanding through “consciousness in general,” but there is a
deliberate effort to distance it based on the assumption that it could bias and even
damage the understanding. In contrast, in consciousness of historicity, which is
part of the consciousness of Existenz, it perceives itself as an entity forming in
time. This means that Existenz perceives its existence in the present as a
continuation of previous forms of existence, and as part of a reality that will
continue even after it ceases to exist. At the center of the consciousness of
historicity is an awareness of the temporal aspect of existence in its many
expressions, an awareness that turns the existence of Existenz into one point on
the time axis, and that requires a wider understanding of existence of which
Existenz is only one part.3 The consciousness of historicity naturally acts to
reduce the importance attributed to the existence belonging to Existenz and to
undermine the solipsistic self-understanding.
Jaspers’s concept of historicity contains two main components: first it denotes
the physical aspect of time as a continuity on which the objective examination of
time in science relies. The general meaning of this is that every present point of
time was preceded by another point, and will be succeeded by another point. This
facet is relevant to the discussion of Existenz as a real Being in concrete time. The
term “historicity” also represents the experience of reality through consciousness,
in the process of constructing the individual’s personal identity, which lasts
throughout a person’s life. This aspect relates to Existenz as a Being aiming at
achieving awareness of the facts of its existence and its patterns of dealing with
them. The consciousness of historicity, attributed first and foremost to Existenz,
but present in all human beings conscious of their experiences, reflects the
constant involvement of Existenz with its origins; its life story; the question of the
relation between the life story and its current situation; and the way it perceives it.
The combination of these two meanings of “historicity” enables us to understand
the idea of historicity as expressing a process whereby people understand
themselves as part of a surrounding human Being characterized by the continuity
of concrete existence in time. This understanding is based on reflection aimed at
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clarifying the data and circumstances of the past on the objective level, but at the
same time granting them subjective meaning relating to the concrete personality.
The consciousness of historicity serves as a framework for a broad, independent
clarification of existence, but also for Exisentz’s dealing with the meaning this
clarification has for its self-perception. The connection between the objective and
the subjective aspects, or between the datum discovered and the reflection
performed upon it to derive meaning from it is expressed in the following words
from Jaspers:
Here [in the consciousness of historicity] are originally connected in an
inseparable way Being and knowledge… Without knowledge, meaning a
clear perception and being inside it, there is no historistic Being, and
without a reality of historicity there is no knowledge.4
The two components of the consciousness of historicity, “knowledge,” and
“Being,” or the objective and subjective aspects of time, illuminate from a new
angle the epistemological and the ontological viewpoints, which have been
revealed as establishing elements in Jaspers’s philosophy. The epistemological
viewpoint, focusing on the question what can be known about selfhood, directs
Existenz in this context to examine its past and to ground its self-perception in a
wider view of the data of existence, understanding that only some of them can
have some expression during its lifetime. In contrast, the ontological viewpoint,
aiming at expressing the entity of selfhood as a Being present in the world, is
reflected in the discussion of historicity in Existenz’s effort to understand itself as
part of the wider entity of existence. To be more precise, the anchoring of the
ontological viewpoint in a wider awareness of the temporal aspect of existence is
not exhausted by the perception of Existenz as a worldly Being that transpired
from the discussion in World Orientation. There Existenz was still discussed as a
Being that forms its existence and examines it according to the possibilities it
entails, while the concept of historicity portrays a more mature self-perception of
Existenz, seeing itself as part of a wider Being whose boundaries extend far
beyond its individual existence.
In a way, only in the discussion of historicity, at least to a greater extent than
in the discussion of communication, does the inability of the two viewpoints, the
epistemological and the ontological, to fully describe the perception of selfhood
start to become apparent. The epistemological viewpoint is required to expand its
horizon and examine the whole of existence, the relevance of historical knowledge
to the discussion of historicity. In contrast, the anchoring of Existenz in an
existence whose boundaries extend beyond the concrete existence of Existenz
requires the ontological viewpoint not only to examine the entity of Existenz, but
also to present a broader entity. Up to this stage of the interpretation of Jaspers’s
thought it was possible to discuss the contribution of each of these viewpoints to
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the analysis of the subject, but we now require a new understanding that identifies
the point where they meet. The knowledge achieved through the ontological
viewpoint will no longer be perceived as external to the reality of the ontological
Being of Existenz, but as inseparable from its reality, which cannot be exhausted
merely by observing the concrete existence to which it is directly linked. The
continuing undermining of the solipsistic intuition did not allow Jaspers to
continue to see Existenz as a Being whose existence and self-consciousness could
rely only on themselves. As we will see below, widening the frame of reference of
the two viewpoints to the existence whose boundaries extend beyond those of
Existenz softens the distinction between historical consciousness and
consciousness of historicity and helps expose the connection between knowledge
about Being and Being itself.
3. Consciousness of Historicity as a Means of Elucidating Existenz
A. Existenz and Historical Knowledge
Jaspers’s handling of the possible contribution of historical knowledge to the
clarification of Existenz raises anew questions that have already been discussed in
previous contexts. In his early writings, Jaspers sought to determine the relation
between the physiological aspects of mental illnesses studied by the science of
psychopathology and the character of the individual mental patient; in
Psychology5 he discussed the question of the possible contribution of general
psychology to understanding the mental life of a person as a subject; while in
World Orientation he discussed the relationship between science and philosophy.
Jaspers’s argument all along was that even if psychopathology, general
psychology, and science could contribute to understanding a person, the
uniqueness of selfhood is not revealed except through the viewpoints that also
contain awareness of the particular dimensions existing in the individual’s Being.
This awareness is apparent in the meanings he gave to the founding terms of the
explication of selfhood: “mental,” “world view,” and “elucidation of Existenz.”
Jaspers not only tried to form a point of view through which the individual’s
subjective Being could be elucidated; he also devoted considerable effort to
distinguishing between it and other viewpoints, which appeared to him to miss the
point. Presumably, this principle would also apply to the distinction between
historical consciousness and consciousness of historicity. Only consciousness of
historicity would be relevant to the elucidation of Existenz. This premise was the
basis for Elisabeth Young-Breuhl’s interpretation, defining historicity as a concept
of the Existenz that as such is outside the object-subject dichotomy, and reflects
an inexpressible certainty of Existenz and of the reason that clarifies it. Along
with historicity, she also listed the concept of freedom and the concept of
communication as concepts of the Existenz. She also argues that there exists a link
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between Jaspers’s idea of historicity and Immanuel Kant’s perception of time.6
However, the innovation entailed in the concept of historicity, and more generally
in the ideas defined as transition mechanisms, is the change in the pattern that had
accompanied Jaspers’s thought up to this point. Unlike his previous discussions,
in this context Jaspers aimed to make the gap between Existenz and what is
beyond it more flexible. In his attempt to harness as many viewpoints as possible
to the philosophical discussion, he was able to note the partial, limited nature of a
viewpoint as such, and at the same time to move away from the idea that one
exclusive point of view could reveal the fullness of the object of philosophizing to
which his thought was directed. In the concept of historicity, this change became
apparent in the effort to harness the mental skills involved in forming a historical
consciousness, which were mainly aimed at establishing the scientific nature of
history as a realm of knowledge serving the consciousness of historicity, and in
turning it into an integral part of the self-perception of Existenz. As he puts it:
From this historistic (gechichtlichen) source the historical also becomes for
the first time really historistic. Without it, it would only mean a particular
event attributed to the existence of the present evaluated positively or
negatively. However, my theoretical knowledge from history becomes
through the whole science of history a function of the possible Existenz, if
its contents and images aim themselves at me, face me, demand from me,
or push me away from them, not only as distant patterns existing as closed
within themselves, or in other words: if it is assimilated to the function of
the eternal present of the things that exist within the philosophical-
historistic consciousness.7
It transpires that the idea of historicity entails the understanding that the historical
knowledge itself does not reflect a mere generality, but also contains an existential
element, and meeting with it may help the explication of Existenz. Existenz’s
observation of historical knowledge is not characterized by an unmediated,
unbiased view, usually considered as a precondition for knowing things, but
instead it perceives it a-priori as facing it, and it sees it as a fertile source for
elucidating its selfhood. The viewpoint of Existenz regarding historical knowledge
creates a transformation in it that expropriates its general, impersonal aspect,
restructures it, and turns it into a tool through which it organizes its story of
becoming.
On the face of it, these claims of Jaspers’s contain no real innovation. As in
previous contexts, here, too, he tried to harness the issues that arose in his
discussion, in this case, historical knowledge, to the purposes of the self-
elucidation of Existenz. As in his criticism of the science of psychopathology or of
general psychology as formal frameworks of knowledge that could not enable
access to the fullness and uniqueness of human Being, here, too, was implicit the
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assumption that general and formal historical knowledge could not serve as a
source for the self-understanding of Existenz. We could even say that historicity
granted historical knowledge the same role that the other Existenz had in
communication—another means for establishing the selfhood of the Existenz
being explicated. Just like in communication, so in historicity the specific features
of the “other” were denied and assimilated into the press of the self-elucidation of
Existenz, which apparently did not lose its dominance in the philosophizing.
Jaspers discussed the consciousness of historicity after presenting his
perception of communication, and this could be crucial in revealing the motivation
for this consciousness. Jaspers described in this context the mutual fertilization
between Existenz and historical knowledge. On the one hand, the viewpoint of
Existenz regarding historical knowledge shows new, unfamiliar facets of it,
enriches it, and reveals its dynamic aspects; rescues the historical knowledge from
the generality that typifies it as a framework of formal thought and encourages the
creative forces it contains, which without Existenz would have remained silent and
dormant. In this respect, we should not understand the argument that Existenz
removes from historical knowledge its general element as an expression of its
distorting influences, but of its ability to produce from it what is sometimes
missing in the historian’s view. Jaspers noted that through Existenz, “[historical
knowledge] proves its power in the ability of its results, to be replaced by real
historistic consciousness of the self existing in the present.”8 On the other hand,
historical knowledge serves Existenz as a source for meaning and a broader self-
understanding in existence; thanks to it Existenz does not perceive itself as an
autonomic Being existing outside any context, but as a Being existing in a place
and time and as part of a Being that existed before it and will continue to exist
after it.
Clarifying the mutual relationship between historical knowledge and the
existence of which Existenz is part served as a basis for Jaspers’s claim that
people’s handling ofthe element of historicity in their Being requires them to
become acquainted with other forms of objectivization through knowledge.9 The
meeting with these forms opens for Existenz a window on complete entities of
realities beyond itself, through which it learns that its concrete existence takes
place alongside other forms of existence, not necessarily existential ones, and is
subject to the same conditions as the rest of them. This understanding does not
make the general, objective viewpoint the main instrument for elucidating
Existenz’s experience of historicity. However, since historical knowledge
becomes for it a criterion by which it examines everything around it, it is
encouraged to identify the existence of general aspects applying to it as a Being
existing in time, aspects that can also find expression in other Existenzes, but also
in other entities that are not Existenzes at all. Contrary to the tendency to
emphasize the otherness of Existenz compared with other objects in the world, in
the process of becoming acquainted with its historicity, it learns that general,
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objective knowledge also relates to crucial aspects of its existence, which
undermines the thought that Existenz is opposed to any form of generality and
objectivity.
It is hard to ignore Jaspers’s vacillation between the effort to grant expression
to the particular element in the story of self-formation and the urge to make a
general claim regarding the temporal nature of human existence as such. True, the
historicity of a person does not express any more than the story of the birth and
establishment of this person’s selfhood as an Existenz—a Being that is not
considered by Jaspers as identical to the sum of phenomena accompanying its
existence in time. However, the dialog Existenz conducts with the possibility that
this story could itself become knowledge, with all the implications of this, serves
as a basis for the understanding of historicity as a “framework story”—the “story”
being the sum of all the private experiences, and the “framework” also containing
general aspects whose relevance exceeds the boundaries of the individual story of
the concrete Existenz.
Against the background of this interpretation, I argue that the mutual
relationship formed between historical knowledge and Existenz in the framework
of historicity constitutes an innovation and development in the shape of Jaspers’s
philosophizing. In the explication of selfhood, the boundaries of the discussion of
the different subjects were fixed according to their degree of relevance to the
character of Existenz, and even in the perception of communication the element of
mutuality in the relations between Existenzes was hardly discussed. In contrast, in
the clarification of the influence of Existenz on historical knowledge, we find a
clearer recognition of the reality of an otherness separate from the Existenz. Since
the otherness of existence in time, which transcends the concrete existence of
Existenz itself, is deeper than that of the other Existenz, which has the same
structure as the Existenz being explicated, I argue that in the discussion of
historicity, Jaspers’s thought moved another step further away from the solipsistic
perception of selfhood, beyond that enabled by the perception of communication.
B. Existenz and Existence
The pair of terms in the title above may appear tautological, but this title refers to
the examination of the attitude of Existenz (Existenz) toward existence (Dasein).
The argument discussed in consciousness of historicity, according to which
Existenz is in concrete existence in time, appears to have no innovation compared
with the insights Jaspers has reached so far. Already in World Orientation, Jaspers
dealt with the meaning of determining the reality of the world for Existenz, and in
Elucidation of Existenz this discussion was deepened. However, when it became
apparent to Jaspers that separating Existenz and the world was impossible, the
recognition of the reality of the world still posed a threat to the self-perception of
Existenz. This demonstrated Jaspers’s difficulty in abandoning the solipsistic
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image of selfhood that was fundamental to his early thought, leading to his
inability to conduct an independent discussion of the world that was not
subjugated to the purposes of the self-elucidation of Existenz. In the discussion of
historicity, for the first time Existenz was presented as having relations of unity
with existence:
Being as detached [absolute] Being, whether transcendence or selfhood, is
inaccessible to me. When I want to realize it by distinguishing it from
existence, I lose it…
I become certain of my own selfhood, and thus of transcendence, only in
existence. The given, the situation and the tasks receive their meaning in
their fixity and particularity to become for me myself… The contents of my
essence are real only in a phenomenon and not outside it, in imaginary
selfhood separated by abstract transcendence. This unity of myself with my
existence as a phenomenon is my historicity, and awareness of it is
historistic consciousness.10
The definition of Existenz as being in unity with existence should not be
understood as evidence of Jaspers’s moving away from understanding Existenz as
a particular Being that he worked throughout his writings to establish. The
consciousness of historicity as existential consciousness reflects the freedom of
Existenz to form a conscious relation toward existence. In any case, its being
subject to this existence does not contradict its typical uniqueness and particularity
within it. Similarly, the recognition of Existenz being “subject to existence,”
which is an integral part of the consciousness of historicity,11 does not express the
perception of existence as a necessity forced upon it as expressed in the other
contexts already discussed in previous chapters. See especially the discussion in
Chapter Four, in the section “Detaching Existenz from the World.”
The explicitness typical of Existenz’s consciousness at this stage is revealed
as having two facets. On the one hand, it is reflected in the self-understanding of
Existenz as subject to the factuality of existence that places borders and
boundaries around it, while on the other hand it knows that it is not exhausted
merely by the boundaries of existence, and “… in this understanding Existenz
realizes its essence through its fate.”12 In this respect, being part of existence, and
even the access to historical knowledge and the uniqueness of the Being of
Existenz, do not appear at this stage of Jaspers’s philosophy as excluding each
other.
Existenz’s recognition of its reality in existence and the connection between
this perception of existence and its self-perception establishes and deepens the
activity and sovereignty Existenz shows toward itself in the ongoing process of
self-explication. Compare with Alan M. Olson’s interpretation, according to
which transcending to transcendence occurring in historicity is based on the
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individual’s life-practice (Lebenspraxis), determining the dialectical nature of
freedom and will.13 These expressions reflect the understanding that the existence
to which Existenz is referring is not laid out before it as an absolute and complete
element that it could accept or reject as a whole. Quite the opposite, the freedom
typifying it as an Existenz encourages it to see those incomplete aspects of
existence as an opening that enables it to perceive existence itself as a space where
it might realize itself. As in the other contexts discussed in the explication of
selfhood, the discussion of historicity also shows that Existenz is able to design
existence to suit its character and needs. However, the innovation in the
consciousness of historicity compared with the consciousness of Existenz formed
up to the transition mechanisms is that at this stage Existenz recognizes that the
elucidation of the basic data of existence is a necessary condition for determining
the boundaries in principle in which its selfhood can be formed—a recognition
that arises as a positivistic consciousness of Existenz regarding its dependence on
factors beyond its control. Historicity as a framework where the attitude of
Existenz to existence and the boundaries of the freedom it has within it is revealed
as inseparable from the basic processes that were typical of the discussions in
World Orientation and Elucidation of Existenz.
The maturation of Existenz’s attitude toward existence that arises from the
discussion of historicity reflects not only that it is not required to leave its
selfhood in order to create the consciousness of historicity. From the point of view
of this study, the importance of the idea of historicity is first and foremost in that it
expresses Jaspers’s deepening awareness of the problems in the solipsistic
understanding of selfhood; in this way the perception of Existenz as a worldly
Being is filled with real contents. However, the main importance of this idea is
that it represents the stage of Existenz’s reconciliation with, and acceptance of,
itself and the world. Historicity, which assumes Existenz’s awareness of its
characteristic particularity against the background of the existence in which it
finds itself, and also its ability to establish a consciousness of distinctness from it,
does not negate the previous stages. The inclusion of the idea of historicity in the
transition mechanisms creates integration between different insights discussed
separately in previous contexts; on the one hand it enables maintaining Existenz’s
central position in the philosophizing, and on the other hand it opens the wide
horizons of transcendence.
4. Transcendence in Consciousness of Historicity
The consciousness that started forming already in the explication of selfhood,
according to which Existenz is not free of limitations and preconditions created
outside it, has been fundamental to Jaspers’s discussion of the perception of
communication and the idea of historicity. In communication this consciousness
was reflected in the confrontation with the possible reality of the other, while in
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136
historicity it was expressed in the attempt to become acquainted with existence
from a viewpoint transcending the boundaries of existential existence. Existenz’s
awareness of its dependence on factors external to it, and as a result to the
problems typical of the solipsistic approach, became more penetrating in the
context of consciousness of historicity. While the isolated existence of Existenz
was revealed in communication only through the other Existenz, whose perception
was largely derived from the way Existenz perceived itself, in consciousness of
historicity the dependence of Existenz on what is beyond it is clarified as having
wide dimensions transcending the boundaries of its personal existence. As the
awareness of the Existenz’s dependence deepens, and as it achieves a clearer self-
understanding, new horizons are opened to it, which Jaspers’s early perception of
selfhood had blocked due to its total nature. Recognizing the other Existenz that is
close by and the boundaries of existence that extend even beyond it becomes a
corner stone in the process of the formation of existential consciousness regarding
transcendence.
As in the other transition mechanisms, in the discussion of historicity
Jaspers’s usage of the term transcendence did not rely on a real explication, which
demonstrates that the ideas discussed in this framework were an intermediate
stage prefiguring aspects that only later would become the focus of his
philosophizing. While the consciousness of the dependence of Existenz on
external factors reflects Jaspers’s continued effort to leave the solipsistic
viewpoint, the absence of any real elucidation of the concept of transcendence
indicates that the consciousness of transcendence had yet to mature into a central
object to which the philosophizing was aimed. Unlike the perception of
communication, the discussion of historicity already shows some progress in
clarifying the concept of transcendence. For instance, the description of
transcendence as the world’s Being of nothingness14 indicated its location outside
the world of phenomena and stated as fact the essential gap between it and
existential existence, and existence in general. In any case, transcendence was
presented as relevant to Existenz. As he said: “Any betrayal of transcendence
exists for me in the pattern of betrayal of the phenomenon of existence, whose
price is the loss of the Existenz.”15 Although as part of the world of phenomena
Existenz is distant from transcendence, its uniqueness as a particular Being is
expressed in its typical effort not to be limited to the boundaries of this world and
to form a relation toward the transcendence beyond it. The argument that
“historicity as existence in time is for me the only way in which the absolute Being
is accessible to me”16 grants the concept of consciousness of historicity its
accurate meaning: being a consciousness forming in and directed at existence, it
aims to understand people as a phenomenon of existence in general, including the
existence that preceded it; consciousness of historicity establishes the perception
of Existenz as part of existence. Since the consciousness of existence and of itself
exposes Existenz to the horizons beyond it, consciousness of historicity becomes a
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viewpoint that bridges, first, between Existenz and transcendence as an absolute
experience and, second, beyond existential existence and existence in general.
Jaspers expressed these two aspects of consciousness of historicity in the
following passage:
Thus in historicity the duality of my consciousness of Being becomes clear
to me, which first in the agreed unity is true: I exist only as existence in
time, and I myself am not temporal. I know myself only as existence in
time, but in a way that this existence becomes for me a phenomenon of my
non-temporal selfhood.
… I and my phenomenon separate themselves and identify themselves the
more I reflect about the ways or immediately exist with myself.17
Although the references to transcendence in the discussion of historicity did not
exceed the granting of preliminary meaning to this concept, they were sufficient to
clarify that historicity constituted an integral part of Existenz’s self-consciousness.
Jaspers went further, arguing that without the existence of a relation of Existenz
toward transcendence, it would be risking the loss of its selfhood.18 The dialog
between existence and transcendence and the formation of both through each
other in the discussion of historicity became crystallized in the concept of
eternality, which Jaspers defined as an endless duration of time. The fixing of
Existenz’s grasp in eternality that remains connected to the world of phenomena
of the present19 compressed the consciousness of historicity into an eye blink.20
Compare this with Jaspers’s historical discussion of the eye blink (Augenblick).21
Individuals as Existenz became aware that they were no more than a passing
phenomenon in existence. Through this phenomenon itself, which has depth in the
past and horizons in the future, the eternal was revealed to them. The eternality of
human Being is not the sort of religious claim referring to the person’s survival in
life after death. Nor does eternality appear in this context as an expression of the
realization of values. In my opinion, the main point of eternality is that it indicates
people’s ability not only to direct their future but also to design the past of
existence, which has apparently already been decided, in such a way as to allow
them to claim from it the story of Existenz’s formation. Jaspers described the two
temporal directions on which consciousness of historicity acts simultaneously as a
paradox:
The paradoxes of Existenz’s consciousness of historicity, that the
disappearing time contains the Being of eternality, does not mean that
eternality is supposed to be somewhere outside the place where it appears
temporally. In contrast [it means that] in existence, Being does not simply
exist, but it appears as that which is already decided, and indeed what has
been decided is eternal.22
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In many ways, the meaning granted to existence in the consciousness of historicity
may be compared to the meaning of “situation Being” in World Orientation.23 See
the discussion of the term “situation” in Chapter Three. In Chapter Seven below
this term will be discussed from an additional angle. In these two contexts,
existence was presented as a blend of necessity, meaning of data whose origin is
external to Existenz, and of freedom or possibility that reflect Existenz’s ability to
act and to form itself. While for Existenz the wide consciousness of the world
entails becoming aware of its dependence on factors beyond its control, its ability
to achieve orientation within this world is revealed as a lever for self-realization.
The perception of Existenz that appears for the first time in the discussion of
historicity as being in unity with existence now receives its full meaning. The
consciousness of existence and of formation in time does not lead it to view itself
as confined to the boundaries of existence forced upon it as a worldly Being.
Jaspers’s interpretation of the concept of eternality enabled expanding the
meaning of the idea of possibility beyond its appearance in World Orientation.
While before it had been perceived mainly as having a meaning regarding the
future of Existenz, in the discussion of historicity it refers also to its past, and not
only the future but also the past appears here as an incomplete element for it. This
means that the consciousness of historicity provides Existenz with a new meaning
for events in its past, and it is not only subject to them but they appear as data that
can be formed and acquired.24
In the absence of a real explication of the concept of transcendence, Jaspers
found it difficult to separate this concept and its implications for the perception of
Existenz. This difficulty is apparent in the argument that the unification of
existence and Existenz in the consciousness of historicity is a personal perception
Existenz reaches.25 The perception of Existenz still finds it difficult to contain
simultaneously both the particular elements and the new awareness of extra-
existential, independent dimensions revealed in the discussion of historicity. Also,
the insights achieved regarding transcendence in the discussion of historicity had
not been independently conceptually formulated, and transcendence could be
significant only for the Existenz that had experienced it.26 Even if historicity as
existential consciousness contained a degree of awareness of transcendence and
exposed Existenz’s ability to refer to what was beyond the boundaries of its
concrete existence, the deviations did not breach the boundaries of existentialist
consciousness, based first and foremost on its selfhood.
The unity of Existenz and existence, as a phenomenon in its historicity, is
as such only by the standing of selfhood in existence before its
transcendence, whose absoluteness I cannot know outside the ciphers of its
historicity.27
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The difficulty in starting the clarification centered on transcendence, typical of
Jaspers’s perception of communication, remains largely in his discussion of
historicity. It transpires that the gradual distancing from the solipsistic perception
of selfhood—as expressed in becoming aware of the existence in which Existenz
is anchored, its relation to the possible existence of another Existenz, and even in
awareness of wider aspects of existence—was still insufficient to direct the path of
philosophizing toward transcendence. As the clearer consciousness of the
boundaries within which Existenz moves becomes formed, so does a more vivid
awareness of their rigidity and the difficulty in breaching them without
undermining the importance of Existenz in the philosophical discussion. The