Karl Jaspers ✨ Existentialism

Philosophy cannot arise from scientific ways of thinking and scientific knowledge alone. Philosophy demands a different thinking, a thinking that, in knowing, reminds me, awakens me, brings me to myself, transforms me.

To think of something, I must think of something definite. Definite being is a mental conception. Transcendent Being is inconceivable and undefinable; it is nothing. … If the nonbeing of being was absolutely nothing, the nonbeing of all definite being is precisely all—the true Being. … [N]othingness as the nonbeing of anything definite is the superabundance of true Being. Being and nothingness become identical. Nothingness is infinite abundance. … I try to think that there might be no being at all, neither existence nor Being proper; and I find not only that this is unthinkable but that the attempt assures me of the impossibility of absolute nonbeing. … Nothingness becomes Transcendence; the passion for the void becomes a will to true Being. The embodiments of this passion in existence and mundanely real action express the urge to be sublimated in the peace of Eternity.

Existenz can grasp itself in its own freedom only if at the same time, and in the same act, it will perceive something other than itself. Strict unconditionality makes me aware, not only that my existence is not selfmade and is the helpless prey of certain doom, but that I do not have myself alone to thank for my freedom either. In some way or other, the realization of unconditionality will occur only in relation to its Transcendence. … Freedom is not being-in-itself. In Transcendence freedom ceases because decision has an end; in Trancendence there is neither freedom nor unfreedom. Being free—the most profound appeal to us as long as it is still up to us what we are—is not the same as being transcendent. Confined to itself, even freedom withers. It seeks its fulfillment in Transcendence, which as such opens only to freedom, and whatever this fulfillment is will turn into a possibility for freedom: into the possibility of perfection or of reconciliation, of redemption or of pain at transcendent Being. In every case the end of possible self-sufficiency is freedom's ultimate satisfaction in temporal existence. … Existenz is either in relation to Transcendence or not at all.

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Happy birthday, Karl. Thank you!

These are said to be only setbacks, only contingent ruin. In the long run there is reason to believe in substantial progress. But precisely these contingencies, these destructions are, at any rate in the foreground, the overwhelming basic happening of history. It is said things need not continue to be as they have been till now. It is up to us to guide the course of events better. But this is the Utopian idea that everything can be fabricated, the principle of ‘breeding’ applied to the realm of man, where the object can never be known, surveyed and manipulated. It is said ruin is the consequence of guilt. If we only expiate our sins and prove ourselves in a pure life, things will be different. Indeed, this has been the exhortation since the ancient prophets—but we do not know upon what route, when or how, the good of a world order will follow from the ethically pure life. We may not deny the reality that the ethically good as such is by no means crowned with success—nor is it done for the sake of success. But the ethically good that assumes responsibility for success and the consequences remains the one great chance.

...There is progress in knowledge, in technology, in the prerequisites for new human possibilities, but not in the substance of humanity. Progress in substance is refuted by the facts. The peoples which had reached the highest levels perished, succumbing to those inferior to them. Cultures were destroyed by barbarians. The physical annihilation of the highest types of men by the oppressive realities of the mass is a fundamental phenomenon of history. The average that multiplies the most, the growth of the thoughtless populace, triumphs without a struggle through mere existence en masse over that which is spiritually higher. There is a constant counter-selection of those who are inferior, e.g. in conditions under which cunning and brutality promise lasting advantages. One inclines toward the proposition: Everything exalted perishes, everything inferior endures. Against such a generalisation, we can point to the recurrence of the great, even if it remains silent for centuries and longer. But how fragile, how dubious and uncertain is this endurance!

We must return to a deeper origin, to a fountainhead from which all faith once welled forth in its particular historical shapes, to this wellspring which can flow at any time man is ready for it. When trust in that which is manifest and given in the world no longer supports life, then trust in the Origin of all things must lay the foundations.

We live in the awareness of perils that were unknown to past centuries; our communication with the men of other ages may be broken off; we may heedlessly deprive ourselves of tradition; human consciousness may decline; there may be an end to open communication among men. In view of the dangers with which we are faced, we must in our philosophizing prepare for every eventuality, in order that our thinking may help humanity to preserve its highest potentialities. Precisely because of the catastrophe that has overtaken the Western world, philosophical thought can regain full independence only by discovering its relation to the Primal Source of humanity.

A democracy that makes conquests abdicates itself. A democracy that seeks understanding among people promotes universal unification based on equality of rights.

There is a line at which even the possibility of moral judgment ceases. It can be drawn where we feel the other not even trying for a moral self-analysis—where we perceive mere sophistry in his argument, where he seems not to hear at all. Hitler and his accomplices, that small minority of tens of thousands, are beyond moral guilt for as long as they do not feel it. They seem incapable of repentance and change. They are what they are. Violence alone can deal with such men who live by violence alone.

There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every evil and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty. If I was present at the murder of others without risking my life to prevent it, I feel guilty in a way not adequately conceivable either legally, politically or morally. That I live after such a thing has happened weighs upon me as indelible guilt. As human beings, unless good fortune spares us such situations, we come to a point where we must choose: either to risk our lives unconditionally, without chance of success and therefore to no purpose—or to prefer staying alive, because success is impossible. That somewhere among men the unconditioned prevails—the capacity to live only together or not at all, if crimes are committed against the one or the other, or if physical living requirements have to be shared—therein consists the substance of their being. But that this does not extend to the solidarity of all men, nor to that of fellow-citizens or even of smaller groups, but remains confined to the closest human ties—therein lies this guilt of us all. Jurisdiction rests with God alone. ... The metaphysical guilt results in a transformation of human self-consciousness before God. Pride is broken. This self-transformation by inner activity may lead to a new source of active life, but one linked with an indelible sense of guilt in that humility which grows modest before God and submerges all its doings in an atmosphere where arrogance becomes impossible. ... Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such—an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and if I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive.

In subjectivity, man as an individual is familiar with the experience of the origin: that I am not free through myself, but that precisely where I know myself to be authentically free I, at the same time, know myself to be bestowed upon myself out of a transcendent matrix. I can be lacking to myself—this is the mysterious boundary to which the possible experience of being-bestowed-upon-oneself corresponds. Existence, which we are able to be, is therefore only together with Transcendence, through which we are. Where existence becomes sure of itself and freedom lucid they will, at the same instant, become certain of Transcendence.

The question that is today exciting Europe and mankind is whether the road leads on to liberty, or whether it passes first into the annihilation of liberty for an unpredictable period. What will happen is, in any case, dependent upon men. Here nothing must be thought of as following a fixed path. All our human, and particularly our spiritual, activity consists in finding our way in open possibilities. What will come to pass depends upon us—upon each individual, although no individual decides the course of history.

True, the many religions lead to the one truth, but this truth cannot be attained at one stroke, but only along the roads that were really traveled, roads which cannot be traveled all at once and in the same way.

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The sense of a resolute refusal to realize is another matter. There my Existenz can see no compelling need for this existence in the world: while finding myself in existence, I can still fight existence as such. Mundane existence can be truly, consciously embraced only by an Existenz that has been touched by the question of this negative resolve. One must have potentially left the world and come back to it, to have it positively as a world in its splendor and in its dubiety and in its character as the sole place for the appearance of Existenz, the place where it can understand itself and other Existenz. I am not alone in existence. It is this fact which makes that negative resolve to call mundane existence into doubt so doubtful, since all I do in it is to plunge worldlessly and uncommunicatively into the transcendent abyss. But Existenz in existence is the will to communicate; since communication is a premise of its being, it can neither stand absolutely on itself nor cling directly to Transcendence. There is no individual salvation. No truth will let me reach the goal for myself alone. I share in being what others are; I am responsible for that which is outside me, because I can address it and enter into active relations with it; I am a possible Existenz for other Existenz. I therefore reach the goal of my existence only if I grasp what is around me. I have not come to myself until the world with which I can establish possible communication has come to itself with me. Freedom depends upon the freedom of others. The measure of my self-being is my neighbor's self-being, and finally that of all men. Only the eventual foundering of this realization will reveal what Being is.

I might seem to have reason to think: Everything founders; I need not even begin, for everything is senseless anyway. This thought presupposes duration as a standard of value and absolutizes mundane existence. But although for existence — and thus for each one of us — the will to be lasting and extant is inescapable, although the thought that all things founder will initially express despair in the boundary situation, an Existenz cannot come to itself if it has not been in boundary situations.

All fulfillment is transitory, yet it is in and through fulfilled existence that I read the cipher script of Being.