Jaspers' Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing

We have been made accustomed to think that truth is a rational truth that is, as the maxim that can be held as universal and can be accepted by all. However, there are also others who wish to entirely reject the truth of reason saying that ‘reason is the root of injustice and manipulation.’ Reason is being understood as the totalizing tendency to include everything into a unified understanding or perception. Reason has the drive to simplify everything and reduce its perception into a unified concept or system.

In my own understanding of Jaspers’ reflection about philosophy, I began to understand that philosophy for him can only be authentic if it addresses the actual existence of man. Hence, he calls it as Existenz philosophy.[1] He clarifies this Existenz philosophy saying: “in Existenz philosophy, out of the decisiveness of our fundamental bases, the clarity of a life related to Transcendence should again become communicable in thought, as a philosophizing with which we actually live.”[2]

Reflecting on these words, I think Jaspers tries to argue that philosophy can no longer be a single, complete system to be brought out as a presentation of concepts that represent the thought of great thinkers. Jaspers warns us against this tendency to create a system of philosophy. He believes that a system destroys philosophy. There can only be a philosophy of an individual person. A philosophy is a person’s articulation of a particular encounter with the world.[3] It is an attempt to name that which s/he discovers as s/he faces his/her own existence. This does not however mean that the truth is not shared or could not be a product of communication. Rather, Jaspers only says that we refrain from talking about concepts as if the concepts that we attach to a philosopher is his philosophy. Philosophy to be real should not be conceptual, and it should never be reduced to a system. In his autobiography he says, “Concepts which were originally reality pass through history as pieces of learning or information. What was once life becomes a pile of dead husks of concepts and these in turn become the subject of an objective history of philosophy.”[4] Jaspers believes that philosophy has to proceed in the manner that Kierkegaard and Nietzsche[5] developed their own. It has to be a product of one’s confrontation with his world, even painfully, rather than staying complacent with the already accepted sets of truths or concepts.[6] Real philosophy is born in the actual struggle through life, in seeing that in life, there are events that may not be defined and fully comprehended but still need to be articulated. It is in this encounter with life itself that we should do our philosophizing.

The tension between the rational and its opposite (the non-rational)

Jaspers has noted that the history of philosophy reveals the tension between the realm of the rational and that of its opposite, the non-rational. He cited as an example the highly rational articulation of the Greeks of Ancient philosophy who are also at the same time confronted by the irrationality of Fate. Jaspers said that this tension has gone further even until the time of Christianity where the desire to rationalize the faith through theology is also accompanied by faith’s assent to mystery. Christianity has articulated the irrational especially in the language of Providence whereby a Christian openly accepts that there are things that are beyond his capacity and understanding, but fall within the providence of God, and hence have to be accepted and obeyed.

In other words, in man’s tendency to rationalize the environment, the reality of the non-rational also emerges at the same time. “All philosophizing which would like to dissolve Being into pure rationality retains in spite of itself the non-rational.”[7] And further he says, “even in the most radical defiance of reason, there remains the minimum of rationality.”[8] The human person could never really escape his/her tendency to employ the use of reason as s/he confronts the world around him/her, as s/he wants to understand that which lies beyond him/her. Yet, at the same time also, it is a fact that the human person would also obviously fail to rationalize everything in his/her world. There would always be something that goes beyond ones comprehension.

The invitation of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

In the history of philosophy, Jaspers noted, there are two thinkers (Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) who have endeavored to establish the balance of reason and the non-rational. Jaspers said that the emergence of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was also accompanied by a particular turn in the reality of the Western man: “a destruction of all authority, a radical disillusionment in an overconfident reason.”[9] Hence, one striking character of the two is their doubt towards the so-called scientific men (the experts). Jaspers noted that “both suspect truth in the form of scientific knowledge.”[10] The experts have the tendency to believe that everything in the world can be explained, and can be subjected to experiments and scientific investigation. The experts hold that the world is comprehensible. But Jaspers lament over the experts’ incapacity to experience the “maturity of that critical point where everything turns upside down.”[11] What the experts, ironically, fail to understand is the fact that there are things that escape man’s absolute comprehension.

However, despite their critique against reason, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are not also abrogating reason altogether. They too agree that to perceive Being happens only through interpretation and so Being comes to man also only through reason. But such interpretation cannot be total. It cannot be so comprehensive as if it can speak the entirety of Being. Whereas they believe that reason interprets the existence of man, they also posit that interpretation is continuous and even endless.[12] For Jaspers then, man confronts his existence and articulates it through his use of reason. But the human person has to be made aware that the interpretation, even if it seems to be decisive, is but temporary and it can change anytime. With the finite nature of every interpretation, the philosopher is cautioned to be incessantly vigilant of his own existence because he knows that his articulation of it continues through time.[13]

The Need to Interpret through the exception

Jaspers has noted that Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are not really the exemplars of their time. They are even sometimes ignored by their contemporaries. They too have not left a particular school of thought or a particular philosophical system. But they are studied even long after their death. They continue to haunt the minds even of the contemporary men. For Jaspers, these two, though they are the exceptions of their era because they dared to think differently, can serve as our inspirations in the way we do philosophy today.[14]

Philosophy has to cease from being a mere naming of concepts (from mere handing on or passing down of a philosopher’s doctrine (content) from one generation to the next). Philosophy has to transform into a real reflection (interpretation) of existence. A philosopher has to become constantly attentive to what he calls as the ciphers, as those which can point to the human person the possibilities for his/her future. The task of the philosopher is to confront the Encompassing, the Infinite possibilities, to which s/he could project herself/himself, and to begin a journey towards transcendence. With this kind of philosophizing, we must not forget to discern and decide for our purpose, for our direction, for our reasons. In journeying towards the unknown future, we must continue to ask: what else could come from here? Where would I like to proceed? What would I like to do? For us to become authentic philosophers, we have to constantly push ourselves in order to make decisions that can bring us beyond our boundaries. To philosophize is to journey toward the beyond, toward our Existenz.

Jaspers describes his lecture on Reason and Existenz as follows: “this lecture has no intention of surveying the whole, but rather of making the present situation perceptible by reflecting upon the past. No one knows where man and his thinking are going. Since existence, man, and his world are not at an end, a completed philosophy is as little possible as an anticipation of the whole.” He further says, “the contemporary problem is not to be deduced from some a priori whole; rather it is to be brought to consciousness out of a basis which is now experienced and out of a content still unclearly willed.” (48)

In short, when Jaspers reflected about the possibilities of the contemporary way of doing philosophy, he was insistent on the philosopher’s attentiveness to his present. The present is where man lives and creates his life. This is the non-rational part of philosophy: to be engaged, as it were, in what is happening at present. It is part of philosophizing to feel the agony of those who suffer, to rejoice with those who are in triumph, to fight the cause of the oppressed, to seek for justice for those who are marginalized, to experience the beauty of art and music, and I think, even to practice the faith of a believer. One has to be fully conscious of his present, of his situation, of his context.

However, Jaspers also realized that those who are so emphatic about the present also missed an important aspect of philosophizing. He admits that every mode of philosophizing could not totally dispense the use of reason. The present is so varied and enigmatic. Part of philosophizing is to create a whole, a unity, out of the multiplicity of the present. This is where reason plays its role. Reason however should not be conceived as mere objective thinking.[15] Reason is one’s grasp of beings that bring out the latter’s existential significance. It is that which pushes the variety and multiplicity of Existenz towards a kind of unity, even if such unity can never really be achieved.[16]

Jaspers believes that philosophy has to be rooted in the selfhood of the human person. The philosopher perceives Being as the Encompassing, which is a horizon of infinite possibilities. When Jaspers was said to contend that philosophy is “primarily an activity in which people gain illumination into the nature of their existence and that content and doctrines are relatively unimportant,”[17] he probably means that philosophizing is simply an articulation of humankind’s journey towards freedom and authenticity. The future of mankind surely depends on the kind of interpretation that we give to the ciphers of the encompassing. Our future depends on the decisions that we presently assume as part of our own journey toward our Existenz.
[1] Reason and Existenz, 128
[2]Reason and Existenz, 128.
[3] Jaspers said, “philosophical activity is fully real only at the summits of personal philosophizing… objectivized philosophical thought is a preparation for, and a recollection of, it.” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/jaspers.htm. Retrieved last December 16, 2007.
[4] http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/jaspers.htm
[5] “Their (Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s) earnestness and absoluteness overpower us as standards although we do not follow them in their content. That we owe something new to Kierkegaard and Nietzche – the possibility of laying the deepest foundations – and yet that we do not follow them in their essential decisions, makes up the difficulty of our philosophical situation.” (Reason and Existenz, 129 – parenthetical notes added).
[6] Jaspers himself said, “It is as though we again sought on these paths of philosophizing the quietude of Kant and Spinoza, of Nicolas of Cusa and Parmenides, turning away from the ultimate unrest of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. But still these latter philosophers remain as lighthouses still burning, perpetual indicators of directions, without which we would relapse into the deception of supposing there were teachable philosophic doctrine or contents, which as such are without power.” (Reason and Existenz, 130).
[7] Reason and Existenz, 20.
[8] Reason and Existenz, 20.
[9] Reason and Existenz, 23.
[10] Reason and Existenz, 25.
[11] Reason and Existenz, 26.
[12] Jaspers said, “The age of reflection has, since Fichte, been characterized as reasoning without restraint, as the dissolving of all authority, as the surrender of content which gives to thinking its measure, purpose and meaning, so that from now on, without hindrance and as an indifferent play of the intellect, it can fill the world with noise and dust… reflection cannot exhaust or stop itself. It is faithless since it hinders every decision.” (Reason and Existenz, 31).
[13] “Philosophy as thought is always a consciousness of Being which is complete for this moment, but which knows it has no final permanence in its form of expression.” (Reason and Existenz, 48).
[14] Jaspers said, “through them, we have become aware that for us there is no longer any self-evident foundation. There is no longer any secure background for our thought.”(Reason and Existenz, 46).
[15] John K. Roth, ed., World Philosophers and their Works. (California: Salem Press, Inc., 2000), 950.
[16] Roth 2000: 951.
[17] Roth 2000: 945.