’MEANING AND PURPOSE OF HISTORY’
(‘Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte’, 1949) is a work by Jaspers. Jaspers puts forward the concept of the world-historical process, focused on the discovery of its unity. This unity is interpreted not as a result of the self-deployment of a certain totality according to a rigid scheme, but as a general result of the semantic problems of a person. Jaspers structures history into four periods: prehistory, the era of the great cultures of antiquity, the 'axial time' and the scientific and technological era. Prehistory - the period of mastering fire (‘Promethean era’), the emergence of languages, the beginning of the use of tools, the emergence of ‘human-forming violence against oneself’, the formation of groups and communities, the emergence of myth. In this epoch, history and historical consciousness in the proper sense of the word are absent; there is no awareness of history, tradition, documentation, understanding of their roots and current events. The prehistoric formation of man is the formation of man as a species, its result is the formation of biologically inherited properties. History as such, according to Jaspers, arises with the emergence in the 5th-3rd millennium BC. high cultures (Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian cultures and the Aegean world; pre-Aryan culture of the Indus Valley; Ancient China). Jaspers believes that the immediate reasons for the beginning of history were the creation of a centralized state system (in order to solve the problems of irrigation), the discovery of writing (and the formation of a spiritual aristocracy of scribes), the emergence of peoples who are aware of their unity, with common language, common culture and common myths, the use of the horse. Next historical period- ‘axial time’ - is associated with the formation of the spiritual principles of mankind in the period of 8-2 centuries. BC. in parallel and independently among the ‘axial peoples’, which include the Chinese, Indians, Iranians, Jews and Greeks. It was during this period that the modern anthropological type was formed in a spiritual, and not biological, sense. The breakthrough of the ‘axial time’ constitutes, according to Jaspers, the transformation of a person into a ‘free personality on the basis of self-existing existence’. Mythological consciousness is destroyed, problematizing for a person his existence. During this period, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Zarathustra, Jewish prophets, Greek thinkers create. ‘Man is aware of being as a whole, of himself and his limits. Before him opens the horror of the world and his own helplessness. Standing before the abyss, he raises radical questions, demands liberation and salvation. Realizing his limits, he sets himself the highest goals, cognizes absoluteness in the depths of self-consciousness and in the clarity of the transcendent. The consequences of the 'axial time' were fundamental to the whole world, and its ultimate meaning, according to Jaspers, has not yet been fully manifested. At this stage, history becomes world history, the history of a single humanity, in contrast to the local histories of the previous stage. The formation of the scientific and technological era Jaspers refers to the 17-18 centuries. Science and technology are becoming a fundamentally new factor in the development of mankind. Jaspers considers the emergence of science to be the ‘secret history’, but names the factors that stimulated its emergence. Their basis is called the biblical religion, which gave rise to the spirit of striving for truth, knowledge of the world and the struggle for their ideals and principles passing through doubt. However, the loss of deep meaningful life orientations led to the negative consequences of scientific and technological progress, to the massification, to the leveling of the individual. Thus, the connection of man with history, with the heights of the human spirit, is lost. A person falls under the power of science and technology, loses control over them (‘demonism of technology’). The situation of the modern world is characterized by the dominance of the masses, the collapse of traditional values, and nihilistic tendencies in the life sphere. Jaspers discovers the roots of this situation in the influence of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and philosophical idealism. The overcoming of negative socio-cultural tendencies is associated by the philosopher with the acceptance of freedom as an unconditional goal. AT modern world the ideas of socialism, world order and faith can contribute to the achievement of freedom. Socialism expresses the principle of rational planning. The world order is connected with the formation integrated approach to common problems around the world. This is not a world empire, but the unity of efforts of sovereign states to solve global problems. The idea of a world order is not feasible without the presence of faith, which gives strength, tolerance and spirituality in activity. According to Jaspers, faith does not imply the unification of beliefs; common feature of all beliefs in their relation to the world order can only be the acceptance of the principles of the world community, in which each faith will find the opportunity to open itself with the help of peaceful spiritual means. Jaspers points to the likelihood of humanity advancing towards a new ‘axial era’, constituting the unity of humanity on the basis of love and free communication. KARL JASPERS
MEANING AND PURPOSE OF HISTORY
[world history, a holistic picture of the world]
In terms of the breadth and depth of changes in all human life, our era is of decisive importance. Only the history of mankind as a whole can give a scale for understanding what is happening at the present time.
A glance turned to the past plunges us into the mystery of human existence. That we have history at all; that history has made us what we appear to be today; that the duration of this history up to the present moment is comparatively very short - all this leads us to ask a number of questions. Where is it from? Where does it lead? What does this mean?
Man has long created for himself a picture of the universe: first in the form of myths (in theogony and cosmogony, where man is assigned certain place), then a kaleidoscope of divine acts that move the political destinies of the world (the vision of history by the prophets), and even later - a holistic understanding of history given in the revelation from the creation of the world and the fall of man to the end of the world and the Last Judgment (Augustine).
Historical consciousness becomes fundamentally different from the moment it begins to rely on empirical data and only on them. Such an attempt is already evident in the legends about the emergence of culture from the natural world, which have spread everywhere - from China to the countries of the West. Today, the real horizon of history has expanded extraordinarily. The biblical time limit - the 6000-year existence of the world - has been eliminated. The abyss of the past and the future opened up before us. Researchers are looking for traces in the past historical events, documents and monuments of bygone times.
The empirical picture of history in the face of this boundless diversity can be reduced to a simple identification of individual patterns and an endless description of a multitude of events: the same thing repeats itself, similarity is found in the different; there are different structures political power in the typical sequence of their forms, there is also their historical intersection; in the spiritual realm there is a uniform alternation of styles and a smoothing out of irregularities in duration.
But one can also strive for the consciousness of a single generalizing picture of the world in its integrity: then the presence of various cultural spheres and their development are revealed; they are considered separately and in interaction; their commonality in the formulation of semantic problems and the possibility of their mutual understanding are comprehended; and finally, a certain semantic unity is developed, in which all this diversity finds its place.
Everyone who turns to history involuntarily comes to these universal views that turn history into a kind of unity. These views may be uncritical, moreover, unconscious and therefore untested. In historical thinking, they are usually taken for granted.<.....>
If the manifold facts testifying to or pointing to unity are not sufficient to constitute the unity of history, then perhaps another starting point should be found. Unity is not a fact, but a goal. Perhaps the unity of history arises from the fact that people are able to understand each other in the idea of a single, in a single truth, in a world of spirit in which everything meaningfully correlates with each other, everything participates in each other, no matter how alien it may be. Unity grows out of the meaning towards which history moves, the meaning that gives meaning to what without it was would be insignificant in its dispersion.
The target can be hidden meaning that no one meant; but the observer tries to interpret it and check it, or sees in it his conscious task, the manifestation of the will to unity.
1) The goal is considered civilization and humanization person. However, what is the essence of this goal outside of an ordered existence, the goal is not clearly defined, the goal itself is historical,? as an ordered existence, the goal is the legal order of the world. The path of history leads from dispersal to actual ties in times of peace and war, and then to living together in true unity based on law. Such a unity would open up space within the framework of an ordered existence to all the creative possibilities of the human soul and the human spirit.
2. The goal is considered freedom and the consciousness of freedom, everything that has happened so far must be understood as an attempt to realize freedom.
But what freedom is, it still has to discover itself on its path that goes to infinity.
The will to create a world order based on law does not have as its immediate goal freedom as such, but only political freedom, which opens up in human existence the scope for all the possibilities of true freedom.
3. The goal is considered greatness of man creativity of the spirit, the introduction of culture into public life, the creations of a genius.
The basis is always the desire for the greatest clarity of consciousness. The unity of meaning arises where a person in borderline situations is most fully aware of himself, where he raises the deepest questions, finds creative answers that can direct and determine his life. This unity, based on the greatness of man, is achieved not by the spread of tools and knowledge, not in the course of the conquest and creation of empires, not through such extreme forms in the aspirations of the human spirit as destructive asceticism or the education of Janissaries*, not at all in the longevity and stability of institutions and fixed norms, and in bright moments of self-comprehension, essential revelation.
This essential can be a point that disappears in the stream of historical events. But it can also become a kind of enzyme that affects everything that happens. It may remain an inactive memory, ready to make an impact, a question facing the future. Or maybe there will not be an echo in the world that can reach it at an unattainable height, and it will disappear without leaving a memory, existing only under the sign of transcendence.
The fact that such peaks seem to us immeasurably significant is due to their participation in that unity that we constantly see before us, but never fully comprehend, to the unity towards which history moves, from which it arose and for which it exists at all.
4. The goal is considered and discovery of being in man, comprehension of being in its depths, in other words, the discovery of a deity.
Such goals can be achieved in every era, and indeed - in certain boundaries- are achieved; constantly being lost and being lost, they are found again. Each generation does it in its own way.
However, by doing so, the single, fundamental goal of history has not yet been achieved. Moreover, we are constantly being called upon to give up our imaginary goal in the future and be careful not to miss what is given to us in the present.
Absolute unity of purpose is not achieved in the interpretation of meaning. Every formulation, even if it expresses the highest, is aimed at an end that is not the highest, at least not in the sense that all other ends can be derived from some definitely conceivable end, and thus the unity of purpose would open our eyes the whole point of the story. Therefore, all putative ends do become historical factors if they are pursued or believed in, but they never become something that transcends history.
Meaning as a supposed meaning is always inherent in human consciousness in its various forms. We humans rise in it to the one about which we have no concrete knowledge.
However, this desire to know a single, all-encompassing meaning, to believe in it, always remains.
And if each absolutized meaning inevitably turns out to be untenable, then new generations, in the person of their philosophers, again turn to the search for a comprehensive meaning that would dominate history and continue to dominate it, and now, when it is understood, could be perceived by our will as conceivable meaning that guides us (this happened in the Christian philosophy of history, in the teachings of Hegel, Marx, Kant and others).
Such unity is offered to us in a total interpretation of history.
3. Unity in the total concept of history
In an attempt to comprehend the unity of history, that is, to think general history as integrity, the desire of historical knowledge to find its final meaning is reflected.
Therefore, when studying history in a philosophical aspect, the question of unity, through which humanity is one whole, has always been raised. People populated the globe, but were scattered over its surface and did not know anything about each other; they lived the most diverse lives, spoke a thousand different languages. Therefore, those who used to think within the framework of world history, because of the narrowness of their horizon, created this unity at the cost of its limitation - in our country by the Western world, in China - by the Middle Empire. Everything that was outside of this did not belong here, was considered as the existence of barbarians, primitive peoples who can be the subject of ethnography, but not history. The unity consisted in the following: it was assumed that there was a tendency, according to which all, still unknown, peoples of the world would gradually become attached to one, that is, their own, culture, introduced into the sphere of their own life order.
If faith has always proceeded from the fact that there is a cause and purpose in history, then thought wanted to find them in a particular story. The constructions of a unified history of mankind were attempts to explain the knowledge of the unity of either divine revelation or ability of the mind.
The pace of God in history has become visible to the people of the West in the sequence of acts of the creation of the world, expulsion from paradise, the expression of divine will through the mouths of the prophets, salvation, the manifestation of God to people at the turn of time, the forthcoming Last Judgment. Everything that was first affirmed by the Jewish prophets, which was subsequently revised in the spirit of Christian teaching by Augustine, was repeated and changed from Joachim of Florence to Bossuet, secularized by Lessing and Herder *, and then by Hegel; it is always an idea of a single holistic history in which everything has its place. Here appears a sequence of basic principles of human existence, which, being known in all their depth, teach what, in fact, is and what happens. However, this construction - for all the majesty of faith in it and its incarnations over the course of two millennia - turned out to be untenable.
a) If I know the whole, then each human existence occupies a certain place in this whole. It does not exist for itself, its purpose is to pave the way. It relates to transcendence not directly, but through its place in time, which encloses it in some framework, turns it into a part of the whole. Every human existence, every epoch, every nation is a link in the chain. Against this rises the original relation to the deity, the infinity of the all-encompassing, which can always be integral.
The meaning and purpose of history
Dominion over the conquered and over the slaves. The establishment of a single world order would lead, along with the elimination of absolute sovereignty, to the elimination of the former concept of the state in the name of people's happiness. The result of this would not be a world state (which would be a world empire), but an organization of states constantly rebuilding itself through deliberation and decision-making, enjoying self-government in limited areas, in other words, the result would be global federalism. The world order would be the continuation and ubiquitous expansion of domestic political freedom. Both are possible only when political power is limited by questions of existence. In this plane, we are not talking about the development, formation and disclosure human nature in general, but about what, by its very essence, is or can be characteristic of all people, which, despite all the differences, deviations in faith and worldview, unites people, in other words, about the universal. In natural law, attempts have long been made to identify these common properties that bind all people. Natural law establishes human rights, seeks to create an instance within the world order that would protect the individual from violent actions on the part of the state through effective legal processes under the auspices of the sovereignty of all mankind. It is possible to develop principles that are understandable to man as such (like Kant's principles of eternal peace*). Such concepts as the right to self-determination, equality of rights, the sovereignty of the state, acquire their relative, lose their absolute meaning. It can be proved that the total state and total war contradict natural law because in them the means and prerequisites of human existence become the ultimate goal, or because the absolutization of means leads to the destruction of the meaning of the whole, to the destruction of human rights. Natural law is limited to questions of human existence. Its ultimate goal is always relative - it is the goal of immediate existence, but it grows out of the absolute final goal of genuine and complete human existence in the world. We cannot foresee what the age of world unity will be like, no matter how burning our interest in it. However, it may be in our power to outline the possibilities and boundaries of what awaits us in the future. 1. All processes will be "internal". There are no more alien forces, barbarian peoples, who could invade this world from the outside, as happened in the past, in the era of the great empires of antiquity. There will be no limes, no Chinese wall* (except during the transitional period, when the great powers will still be temporarily isolated from each other). The unity of the world will be unique, all-encompassing, closed, so it cannot simply be compared with the empires of the past. If there is no longer a threat from outside, then there is no longer a foreign policy, there is no need to orient the state towards defense, towards the ability to repel an invasion from outside. The position that foreign policy more important than the internal, loses its meaning, however, even before the significance of this thesis was always small where the threat from the outside was not serious (for example, in England), and during the great empires of antiquity, at least for a short time (in Rome, in China). All the products of the state now serve the growth of well-being, and not destructive military equipment. The necessary relationship between the organization of the army (necessary to repel external danger or to carry out plans for conquest), total planning, violence and unfreedom is crumbling. However, the possibility of restoring this relationship in a terrorist state such as a world empire remains. With a general decline and hidden anarchy, the whole is no longer disciplined, as before, by a threat from without. 2. The coming world order cannot be constituted as some kind of complete whole, but is formed in a graduated manner along the numerous steps of freedom. There will be different levels in the world order. That which unites all as a common cause, in order to guarantee peace, may be limited to a few, but must under all circumstances deprive all of sovereignty in the name of one all-encompassing sovereignty. This sovereignty can be limited to the main spheres of power - the army, the police, the law - and the bearer of this sovereignty can be, through elections and complicity, all of humanity. However, the structure of human life is much richer than the all-encompassing legislation of mankind. What this device will become within the framework of the universal world must emerge in various forms from numerous historically established structures in the process of their transformation by the technical conditions of life. On this path, limited factors will become starting points for the formation of social mores, the spiritual life of people. All this is possible only without total planning on the basis of planning only universally valid laws and treaties in a free society. market economy, which retains its decisive importance in a number of significant areas, in conditions of free competition and spiritual rivalry, in free communication, primarily in the sphere of the spirit. 3. How in a world empire - in contrast to a single world order - the soul and spirit of a person are transformed, we can assume by analogy with the Roman and Chinese empires: this, most likely, is the leveling of human existence to a previously unknown degree, life in an anthill, full of empty activity, stiffness and ossification of the spirit, the conservation of graded power by means of an authority that is losing its spirituality. However, this danger cannot be insurmountable for a person. In a single world empire, movements of a new type will arise, opportunities for separation, revolutions, breaking through the boundaries of the whole to create new separate parts will open up, which will again find themselves in a state of struggle with each other. 4. Is it generally possible for mankind to establish the legal structure of the world through political form and the ethos that binds all? This can only be answered in the future by the realization of this possibility, when peace and creativity reign in large global associations for some time. To attempt to predict this would mean that we resort to a purely speculative solution of the question. And this is impossible. The expectation that ancient truth will play a certain role in the new world order by no means acquaints us with its actual content. For not in the re-creation of a vanished reality, but in a flame that will ignite its content, creating forms inaccessible to any foresight, something may arise that in the future will turn out to be an ethos capable of serving a person as the basis of his public life. To the question of whether a world order can be established on the basis of communication between people and decision-making as a condition and consequence of freedom, one should answer: there has never been such a world order. But this is not a reason to deny its possibility. It is close to the development of bourgeois freedom in a democratic society, to the overcoming of violence by means of law and legality - all this, it is true, is far from perfect, but nevertheless, in a number of exceptional cases, such freedom has actually been achieved. What happened in individual states, which, therefore, actually happened in general, cannot in principle be considered impossible for humanity as a whole. However, if this idea is persuasive in itself, then putting it into practice is incredibly difficult, so difficult that many tend to consider it impossible. One way or another, the path to the historical realization of this idea leads through actually existing forms of political power. political forces. 1. The path to world order leads only through sovereign states that form their military forces and keep them ready in case of conflict. How they get out of the situation in an atmosphere of tension - whether through agreement or war - will decide the fate of mankind. The picture of the actual state of states determines the picture of the political state of the world. There are the great powers - America and Russia, then the united European nations, then the neutral ones, and finally, forming various levels of the hierarchy, the conquered nations. The complete impotence of the latter is opposed by the complete sovereignty that only the former possess. Intermediate stages are independent states, which, being more or less dependent on powerful powers, are often forced to make decisions at their direction. In general, we can assume that the time of nation-states has passed. Modern world powers encompass many nations. A nation, in the sense in which the peoples of Europe constituted it, is too small to act as a world power. At present, we are talking about how the unification of nations takes place, which is necessary to create a world power - whether one nation subjugates others, or nations equal in their life principles form, sacrificing their sovereignty, a single state community. Such a state can, in turn, act as a nation, relying on the political principle of state and public life, uniting representatives different peoples. National consciousness has turned from a popular into a political one, from a natural reality into a spiritual principle. Meanwhile, even now - and even to a greater extent than before - the ghosts of the past continue to live, and the concept of the national retains its significance in the minds of people, despite the fact that it has already lost its political significance. Along with powerful industrial powers, there are states in the world that have the potential to become major powers in the future. This is primarily China, which, due to its reserves of raw materials, its huge population, the abilities of people, due to its traditions and position in the world, may, in the foreseeable future, take key positions in world politics. Then India - this special continent with the unique spiritual tradition of its peoples, a continent that harbors the possibility of power, at the present time, however, has not yet awakened, despite the constantly flaring up movement for independence there. Within the framework of world history as a whole, the powerful powers of our time - America and Russia - appear as formations of a relatively late time. True, the development of their culture dates back a millennium. However, compared with other peoples, they seem to be stuffed with other people's ideas. Christianity was brought to Russia, Europe is spiritually present in America. However, both America and Russia are characterized, if compared with the ancient cultures creating their own special world - the absence of roots and at the same time magnificent immediacy. For us, it is infinitely instructive and liberating, but also terrible. The heritage of our traditions is dear only to us, Europeans, their traditions are dear to the Chinese and Indians in a different way. Traditions give a sense of their roots, security, make demands on themselves. In comparison, we are struck by the secret feeling of inferiority that those in power experience in the modern world, masking it with a kind of infantility and angry claims. How this game is played political forces how it changes depending on the chess moves of individual states in the complex interweaving of possibilities for conquest of power and how certain basic properties are nevertheless preserved, it would be of great interest to penetrate into all this. For the spiritual and political ideas of the world order find their realization only on the path that leads through the conquest of power in this game. At the level of everyday life, many things seem random. Anything that opposes being drawn into the larger entities causes trouble; this includes national claims regarded as absolute, all private contrivances aimed at obtaining some special advantage, all attempts to play the big powers against each other and profit from it. 2. All the people, more than two billion, who populate the globe today, are drawn into the game of these superpowers. However, the leadership and decision belongs to those peoples who constitute a comparatively insignificant part of this whole mass. Most people are passive. There is some primordial division of the world that has existed since the beginning of history. Only once after the 16th century this original division was greatly changed when large areas were developed, almost uninhabited, according to European concepts, or
Entering the last decade of the 20th century and summing up the results of a century of philosophical development, we can, I think, among the most outstanding thinkers, name the German philosopher Karl Jaspers.
Karl Jaspers was born on February 23, 1883; his father, a lawyer, later - the director of the bank, came from a family of merchants and peasants, his mother - from a local peasant family. The family honored traditions and order, but religiously, the father was characterized by indifference, which his son shared in his youth.
In 1901, Jaspers graduated from the classical gymnasium and entered the Heidelberg University at the Faculty of Law. However, after studying for three semesters, he moved to the Faculty of Medicine, graduating in 1908; in 1909 Jaspers received his medical degree. Interest in medicine, among other motives, formed in the young Jaspers, probably due to his congenital illness: he had incurable disease bronchi, which constantly provoked heart failure. The diagnosis of this dangerous disease, which, as a rule, brings people to the grave no later than the age of thirty, was made by Jaspers at the age of 18. “Due to illness,” recalls the philosopher, “I could not take part in the joys of youth. Traveling had to be stopped already at the beginning of the student period, it was impossible to ride, swim, dance. On the other hand, illness also ruled out military service and thus the danger of dying in the war. It is amazing what kind of love for health a state of illness develops ... ”That is why a young man, by his nature prone to communication, to friendship, early learned the melancholy of loneliness.
Nevertheless, in all periods of his life, including during his student years, Jaspers had few, but close friends; so, at the medical faculty, he was friends with a gifted student Ernst Mayer, brother of his future wife Gertrude Mayer. Characteristically, both brother and sister were keenly interested in philosophy, and Gertrud Mayer studied philosophy professionally. Jaspers met her in 1907, and three years later the young people got married. Since then, loneliness has not tormented Jaspers: in his wife he found not only a loving soul, but also a person close in spirit. To a large extent, the young naturalist developed an interest in philosophy - after all, medicine belonged to the natural sciences - not without the influence of his wife, and "philosophizing at the level of existence", about which Jaspers wrote so much later, was one of the greatest spiritual joys in his family life. life.
After graduating from the medical faculty and having received the profession of a psychiatrist, Jaspers worked from 1909 to 1915 as a scientific assistant in a psychiatric and neurological clinic in Heidelberg. Here he wrote his first major work, General Psychopathology (1913), which he defended as a dissertation, and received a doctorate in psychology. The methodological basis of this work was the method of descriptive psychology, as it was developed by the early Husserl (Jaspers did not accept the later Husserl with his method of “contemplating essences”), and the “understanding psychology” of W. Dilthey. This work had great importance and for the further philosophical thinking of Jaspers, so below we will dwell on it in more detail. After defending his dissertation, Jaspers began lecturing in psychology at the University of Heidelberg; among his first topics was the psychology of characters and talents (as a student, Jaspers was fond of characterology and listened to the lectures of L. Klages in this regard), as well as pathography prominent personalities(a fashionable theme at that time was genius and disease). Subsequently, Jaspers published several works about this: about Strindberg and Van Gogh, about Swedenborg and Hölderlin, about Nietzsche's illness in connection with his work.
In 1919, Jaspers published the fruit of many years of work - "Psychology of Worldviews", which already touched on philosophical problems proper and brought its author wide fame. Two years later, Jaspers becomes professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.
The "Psychology of Worldviews" bears the imprint of the influence of Max Weber, to whom Jaspers owes much of both his worldview - especially political - orientation, and his methodological approaches to the analysis of philosophical problems. “No thinker was (then and to this day) as important to my philosophy as Max Weber,” Jaspers later wrote. A rigid division of worldview (values), on the one hand, and scientific research On the other hand, the consideration of philosophy as a spiritual attitude different from science, involving transcending and, accordingly, “the last I don’t know” - these points are in many respects common between Jaspers and Weber. Weber highly valued the work of such thinkers as Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, who also influenced the young Jaspers. Finally, Jaspers was brought together with Weber by a keen interest in politics common to both. The Jaspers family was not alien to political interests: Jaspers' grandfather and father, as well as his mother's two brothers, were deputies of the Landtag in Oldenburg; in addition, the father of the philosopher for many years was the chairman of the Oldenburg magistrate. Therefore, like Weber, from an early age he heard the discussion of a variety of political issues in the family circle. Weber's "severe liberalism", his conviction that real civil life in society presupposes political freedom, young Jaspers fully shared. It is not surprising that later he turned out to be an implacable opponent of totalitarianism in any of its manifestations - both in National Socialism and in communism.
The relationship between Jaspers and his outstanding senior contemporary Heinrich Rickert, who at that time occupied the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, developed quite differently. Understanding philosophy as a science, Rickert, faithful to the academic tradition, did not recognize Jaspers' "existential philosophizing", in which he saw the product of an amateurish approach and a "psychologization" of the subject and method of philosophy, disastrous for strict thinking. In essence, Rickert denied "existential self-understanding" the right to be called philosophy; he was also convinced that Max Weber could not be considered a philosopher, although he highly valued his sociological, historical and political works.
In 1931-1932, Jaspers' three-volume work "Philosophy" was published, on which he worked for more than ten years. There is no philosophical presentation here. systems in traditionally academic style, but an attempt was made to systematize and streamline all those ideas and reflections that constituted the content of the existential philosophizing of the thinker. Jaspers becomes one of the leading philosophers in Germany, and no one else doubts his right to occupy the philosophical chair.
However, with the advent of National Socialism, a difficult, dramatic period began in the life of the philosopher. In 1937, he was suspended from teaching and deprived of the right to publish his works in Germany: married to a Jewess, Jaspers lost all rights in his homeland. Being retired, in the anxious daily expectation of a “knock on the door”, the philosopher continues to work for eight long years - to write “on the table”. And only in 1945, after the defeat of Nazism, Jaspers returned to teaching - first in Heidelberg, and then, since 1947, at the University of Basel. The works of the philosopher are published, some of which were written during the years of forced silence: “On Truth” (1947), “The Question of Wine” (1946), “Nietzsche and Christianity” (1946), “On the European Spirit” (1946), “The Origins of History and Its Purpose (1948), Philosophical Faith (1948). Philosophical, historical and ideological problems come to the fore: how to overcome the cataclysms that befell European civilization in the 20th century? What spiritual guidelines do Europeans have and how can they be acquired in a modern industrial society?
In the postwar years, Jaspers is one of the spiritual leaders of Germany. He addresses his compatriots not only in his books and articles, but also in radio speeches, and everywhere he the main idea- how to save humanity from totalitarianism, this main danger of the 20th century, plunging people into bloody revolutions and extermination wars. Appeal to humanistic traditions - to Lessing, Goethe, Kant - this is one way that Jaspers sees here; the other is a more serious, more reliable path for all who have lost direct life in its traditional form and awakened to autonomy, to spiritual independence - the acquisition of philosophical faith. “Our Future and Goethe” (1947), “Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Age” (1950), “On the Conditions and Possibilities of a New Humanism” (1962) - these are works in which the philosopher refers to the values of the old burgher culture in Germany, trying to to renew and partially limit them, "grafting" on them the experience of the "crisis consciousness" of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but at the same time preserving their enduring truth.