Philosopher, born in Oldenburg, NW Germany. He studied medicine at Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg, where he undertook research in a psychiatric clinic (190915), published a textbook on psychopathology (Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 1913) and was professor of psychology (191620). From 1921 he was professor of philosophy at Heidelberg, until dismissed by the Nazis in 1937. His work was banned but he stayed in Germany, and was awarded the Goethe Prize in 1947 for his uncompromising stand. In 1948 he settled in Basel as a Swiss citizen, and was appointed professor. Among his many works are Philosophie (3 vols, 1932), considered his most important writing, and Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen (1958, trans The Future of Mankind), in which he talks of the possibility of a world political union under which all could live and communicate in peace and freedom.
Karl Theodor Jaspers (February 23, 1883 – February 26, 1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy.
Biography
Jaspers was born in Oldenburg in 1883 to a mother from a local farming community, and a jurist father. It soon became clear that Jaspers did not particularly enjoy law, and he switched to studying medicine in 1902.
Jaspers graduated from medical school in 1909 and began work at a psychiatric hospital in Heidelberg where Emil Kraepelin had worked some years earlier. Jaspers became dissatisfied with the way the medical community of the time approached the study of mental illness and set himself the task of improving the psychiatric approach. In 1913 Jaspers gained a temporary post as a psychology teacher at Heidelberg University. The post later became permanent, and Jaspers never returned to clinical practice.
At the age of 40 Jaspers turned from psychology to philosophy, expanding on themes he had developed in his psychiatric works. In 1948 Jaspers moved to the University of Basel in Switzerland.
Contributions to Psychiatry
Jaspers' dissatisfaction with the popular understanding of mental illness led him to question both the diagnostic criteria and the methods of clinical psychiatry. Jaspers studied several patients in detail, giving biographical information on the people concerned as well as providing notes on how the patients themselves felt about their symptoms.
Jaspers set about writing his views on mental illness in a book which he published as General Psychopathology. Of particular importance, Jaspers believed that psychiatrists should diagnose symptoms (particularly of psychosis) by their form rather than by their content.
Jaspers felt that psychiatry could also diagnose delusions in the same way. Jaspers also distinguished between primary and secondary delusions.
Jaspers considered primary delusions as ultimately 'un-understandable,' as he believed no coherent reasoning process existed behind their formation.
Contributions to Philosophy and Theology
Most commentators associate Jaspers with the philosophy of existentialism, in part because he draws largely upon the existentialist roots of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and in part because the theme of individual freedom permeates his work.
In Philosophy (3 vols, 1932), Jaspers gave his view of the history of philosophy and introduced his major themes. Beginning with modern science and empiricism, Jaspers points out that as we question reality, we confront borders that an empirical (or scientific) method can simply not transcend. At this point, the individual faces a choice: sink into despair and resignation, or take a leap of faith toward what Jaspers calls Transcendence. In making this leap, individuals confront their own limitless freedom, which Jaspers calls Existenz, and can finally experience authentic existence.
Transcendence (paired with the term The Encompassing in later works) is, for Jaspers, that which exists beyond the world of time and space. Jaspers' formulation of Transcendence as ultimate non-objectivity (or no-thing-ness) has led many philosophers to argue that ultimately, Jaspers became a monist, though Jaspers himself continually stressed the necessity of recognizing the validity of the concepts both of subjectivity and of objectivity.
Although he rejected explicit religious doctrines, including the notion of a personal God, Jaspers influenced contemporary theology through his philosophy of transcendence and the limits of human experience. Mystic Christian traditions influenced Jaspers himself tremendously, particularly those of Meister Eckhart and of Nicholas of Cusa. Jaspers also entered public debates with Rudolf Bultmann, wherein Jaspers roundly criticized Bultmann's "demythologizing" of Christianity.
Jaspers also wrote extensively on the threat to human freedom posed by modern science and modern economic and political institutions.
Jaspers' major works, lengthy and detailed, can seem daunting in their complexity.
Commentators often compare Jaspers' philosophy to that of his contemporary, Martin Heidegger.
The two major proponents of phenomenological hermeneutics, Paul Ricoeur (a student of Jaspers) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (Jaspers' successor at Heidelberg) both display Jaspers' influence in their works.
Other important work appeared in Philosophy and Existence (1938). For Jaspers, the term "existence" (Existenz) designates the indefinable experience of freedom and possibility;
Jaspers in relation to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Jaspers held Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to be two of the most important figures in post-Kantian philosophy. In his compilation, The Great Philosophers, he wrote:
Jaspers also questions whether the two philosophers could be taught. For Kierkegaard, at least, Jaspers felt that Kierkegaard's whole method of indirect communication precludes any attempts to properly expound his thought into any sort of systematic teaching. Jaspers, Karl (1955).
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