jaspers biography

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Volume 5, No 1, Spring 2010 ISSN 1932-1066

Review ofKarl Jaspers: A BiographyNavigations in TruthStephen A. Erickson

Pomona [email protected]

Abstract: This review was presented at the Author Meets Critics session of the Karl Jaspers Society of NorthAmerica in conjunction with the 84th Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, SanFrancisco, April 2010.

Suzanne Kirkbright's Karl Jaspers: A Biography is anunusually helpful study.1 Subtitled Navigations inTruth, it helps us find our way down the variousstreams of Jaspers' thought, making that largereservoir of insights Jaspers has bequeathed us evenmore lucid and accessible.

The remarks I offer are complementary in atwofold sense. I want both to complement her onwhat she has accomplished and also to add somereflectionsthese, however, by no means bringingto any completion those opportunities for probingJaspers' thought that are his continuing challengeand gift to us. Quite centrally, we know, Jaspersvalued communication. Kirkbright's study helps uscommunicate with himand with each otherevenbetter than had been possible before, especially

regarding those complex, often tangled strands thatbind thought together with life.

Let me begin with a distinction manyphilosophers of existence not only frequently make,

1Suzanne Kirkbright, Karl Jaspers: A BiographyNavigations in Truth, London, Yale University Press 2004,ISBN 9780300102420.

but equally often find themselves having to livewith: that between the inner and the outer. I foundthe "ailing plant" metaphor from Jaspers' ber meineExistenz (1904) most illuminating. Its inclusion anddiscussion early in Kirkbright's book (pp. 25-26) notonly makes obvious chronological sense butrevealing philosophical sense as well. Kirkbrightspeaks of the sharpness of Jaspers' ability to reorienthis thoughts from his inner unhealthy condition to amore robust state also available to him, though notwithout effort. With sensitivity she wonders as tothe extent to which the illness may have separated,possibly even isolated Jaspers to some degree. Atthe same time she rightly points to Jaspers' rational-analytic ability to orient himself positively and, onemust think, thereby to connect. The communicative

connecting, then, though immersed in vulnerabilityemerges out of and as strength. We might think ofthis as an underlying overcoming that is acontinuing and paradigmatic feature of Jaspers' lifeand thought.

The picture with which Kirkbright provides usshows us the split between a man undergoingsomething far from marginalafter all, his life is underthreatand in the midst of this exhibiting deepresources of humanity and rationality. To suffer and ye
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Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts

http://www.existenz.us Volume 5, No 1, Spring 2010

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productively to reflect, the first largely a private affairfor Jaspers, the latter moreand increasingly soa publicone, portrays an extraordinary challenge overcome. In anon-confessional mode Jaspers comes to articulate thehuman condition in its limit situations. This is anextraordinary undertaking and accomplishment,

italicized in its authenticity through the life circumstancesout of which it grew. We are much indebted to SuzanneKirkbright for the light she sheds on this.

Receptivity must, if honest, accept what is given,requiring of the receptive one both patience andacquiescence in the role of patient. For those withboth courage and the appropriate, if rare gift,spontaneity must hope to transform the "given" ingenerative ways. I have used words such asreceptivity and spontaneity to suggest thatKirkbright has offered us significant biographicalreason to view Jaspers in an existentialized Kantian

way. Of course to do so I have dwelled with arelatively early and surely decisive situation andexperience in Jaspers life. In so doing I believe I amtrue both to Jaspers and to Kirkbright's Jaspersinthis regard, as in so many others, essentially the sameperson. It is often said that the existential outlookrequires that one's philosophy grows out of one's lifeand then seeks to transform one's understanding ofthat life and of human life itself. Surely Kirkbright'sbiography gives us numerous buds, blossoms andblooms for that "ailing plant" that once was Jaspers.Could the extraordinary restorative life and powersof this plant be among the best templates for anunderstanding of Jaspers' trajectory and journey,from psychiatrist to philosopher of human existence,from sensitively positioned German academic tojudicious assessor of the troubled and troublesomestatus of Martin Heidegger?

Jaspers reflections in Einsamkeit (1915-16) areilluminating. They bring those aspects of Jaspers Ihave been exploring into further focus. Kirkbrightserves us wonderfully well in quoting them (p. 39):

To say 'I' is to be alone. Whoever says 'I' establishes adistance, draws a circle around himself. To give upsolitude is to give up myself. Solitude can only bepresent where individuals are present. Whereverindividuals are present, though, there are twin aspects:desire for individuality and therefore a drive intosolitude; and suffering out of a sense of individuality,and therefore the drive to break out of solitude. In thatcase, what always counts is not so much to be anindividual as to feel and know oneself as an individual.

Here existential separation and relatedness aregiven a dynamic and rationale that are hard toemend or to improve on.

I now turn to another and somewhat vexingtopic of interest and concern: the complexintellectual and personal relationship between

Jaspers and Heidegger. Here Kirkbright is alsoconsistently illuminating. Since not all present mayknow of some of the details of this relationshipIcertainly hadn't until my reading of this mostinformative bookI will mention just a few that Ifound particularly enlightening, if nonetheless alsosomewhat perplexing. After each I have chosen toenumerate, I offer a brief comment or question:

(1) It was Jaspers who proposed that Heideggerjoin him in establishing a journal, Philosophy of ourTime, critical journals by Martin Heidegger and KarlJaspers (p. 130). As Kirkbright indicates, it was

Jaspers, particularly, who wanted to stand inopposition to the academic, university tradition thatboth he and Heidegger found bureaucraticauthoritarian and in numerous waysphilosophically moribund. In fact, Jaspers musedthat once such polemic had sated them, Heideggerand he might bring the journal to its end.

Regarding this historical circumstance thequestion I offer is this: How realistic at the timewould the hope have been that such a journal couldalter the landscape and course of academicphilosophy, and to what reputational risk wasJaspers subjecting himself in pursuing such a courseof action? I note in this connection Jaspers' concernregarding Heidegger's dedication of works to suchsignificant figures as Scheler, Rickert, and HusserlKirkbright notes that Jaspers was troubled by thepossible insincerity and opportunism involved inHeidegger's actions. I wonder how we are tounderstand Heidegger as Jaspers' choice for co-editor in terms of Jaspers' own perception of theconstellation of personalities and forces thatconstituted the lay of German philosophical land.

(2) Jaspers' second book, Psychology of WorldVisions (1919), was aggressively critiqued byHeidegger; a copy of Heidegger's review being sentpersonally by Heidegger to Jaspers. In the reviewHeidegger observes that Jaspers' "limit situation"concept was articulated in an altogetherunsatisfactory way. Not only this, from a formalstandpoint Heidegger reduces the level of Jaspersbook to a "basic aesthetic experience." There is more
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Very helpfully we learn from Kirkbright that in aletter to Rickert Heidegger states, "this book must,in my opinion, be fought in the severest manner,precisely because it has so much to offer that Jaspershas learned from everywhere and because itappropriates a trace of the times" (p. 131).

My question is this: granting that in humanrelationships the personal and the philosophical canand often do proceed along separate tracks, how was itnonetheless possible for Jaspers to consider Heideggeran ally and trustworthy, continuing partner in anycommon philosophical cause, given the insincerity issuesimplied in the various communications?

(3) Kirkbright does those of us engaged withJaspers a great service by mentioning the Gumbelaffair of 1924. It highlights highly commendablefeatures of Karl Jaspers that are constant and richlydeserve repetition and praise. For those not aware

of the Gumbel episode, the circumstances and factsare roughly the following. Gumbel, and unpaidlecturer for statistics on the philosophy faculty atHeidelberg, had made some controversialstatements at a political meeting, presumablyoutside of the University. These reached anewspaper and were duly reported. Jaspers wasasked to serve along with two other colleagues onthe investigative committee. The recommendationof the faculty of philosophy, subsequently passedby the University Senate, was to withdrawGumbel's teaching rights. Jaspers himself votedagainst this motion of his colleagues. He was clearlyset against the politization of academic life. In thisconnection, though some few years later, Heideggerwrites to Elizabeth Blochmann that Jaspers had notcomprehended the political situation of the early1930s and was politically unaware, possibly naive,we might say.

But how oblivious was Jaspers to such politicalmatters at any point in his adult career? And, in thisregard, where precisely did he stand in the early 1930swith respect to University reform? By no means am I

wishing to speak negatively of Jaspers, not do I wishto lump him in with the fleeting Rector of Freiburg.But the circumstances are surely complex. AsKirkbright notes, in The Idea of the University Jaspersattributes the erosion of Germany's scientific traditionto a failure of leadership. She rightly informs us thatJaspers' ultimate educational vision, at least at thistime, was Nietzschean (p. 135). We are also informedin convincing ways by Kirkbright that Jaspers'

concerns for reform of University life in 1933 wereon a relatively similar leveland not altogetheropposedto Heidegger's. Regarding these matters weboth benefit from Kirkbright's revealing book and canbenefit even more by further reflection on a difficultand dangerous moment in German educational history

A somewhat final note on this matterinphilosophy, I have come to realize over the years,nothing is finally final: we are perhaps very welserved by noting Ernst Mayer's description ofJaspers' Philosophy, provided by Kirkbright later inher book (p. 231). He refers to it as "independent oftime." It may be a stretch, but such independence, insome ways geographical as well, contrastsperceptively with the charming description ofHeidegger given in a letter written by Jaspers to hisparents in 1928 (p. 235). "He is totally rooted in hishome turf and near to nature. His most prized thing

is the Htte that he built for himself high in themountains. From there, he looks across the whole ofthe Black Forest onto the chain of the Alps." Thisquotation Kirkbright also helpfully provides.

Have we here an insightful and concise contrastbetween enlightenment and counter-enlightenmentthe cosmopolitan and the more naturistic, thetimeless and the time-intoxicated? To be sure, this isto some considerable extent an overdrawncomparison. Jaspers, after all, was timely in whatwere often very courageous ways, and the deepestaspirations of the brilliant Heidegger included thehope for a recognition and placement that wouldsignificantly transcend historical footnoting. Andyet...when one reflects on "existence" in twentiethcentury philosophy, one will invariably give centraconsideration to Jaspers and to Heidegger. Thesetwo thinkers stand apart and, at times, stoodtogether. They are both close and distant withrespect to each otherin contestation and inagreement, in fragile friendship and in decisivealienation from each other. It is one of the numerousand considerable virtues of Suzanne Kirkbright's

perceptive Jaspers biography to have untangled andsorted so much of this out for us.

I find Kirkbright's account of Jaspers' presenceand participation in the Geneva conference of 1946of especial interest. Not only is it important in itselfas an effective means of shedding further light onthe depth and breadth of Jaspers' thinking. It is alsoworthy of our urgent consideration as 21st centurythinkers in a world under rapid, unpredictable and,


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almost certainly, irreversible reconfiguration,economically, politically and soon, one hopes,philosophically. As Kirkbright indicated, Jaspers'speech was guided by the theme of the conference,the European Spirit. From his remarks it is clear thathe understands Europe far more as idea than as

geography, as spirit than as location. Not only is thissignificant to register as a further confirmation ofJaspers' own inclusive and communicativementality. It can also be taken as a caution and ahope it is incumbent upon us to nurture as we moveinto a most uncertain future.

Following closely Jaspers' statements andunderlying motivations, Kirkbright elucidates theaxial underpinnings of Jaspers' thought at thisimportant historical and intellectual moment in1946, directly after the Second World War and in aconference setting that prominently included the

participation of Georg Lukcs. Jaspers expressed inhis remarks in Geneva a concern for greatercommunication between the religions of the world.He was also able to ground this concern insomething well transcendent of geographicalplacement, viz., fundamental ideas of human self-understanding and development that had theirorigins in what Jaspers referred to as the axial age.

The envisioning and investigation of apurported axial age, we well know, is one of Jaspers'seminal contributions to our thinking. Kirkbrightnotes Jaspers' deployment of this notion in a mosthelpful and illuminating way. She notes as wellJaspers' oppositional stance toward the Christiantradition, based in part on its own opposition, inturn, to any genuinely open-minded and receptivestance towards spirituality.

I have said nothing in this short commentaryabout Gertrud, and this is unfortunate, for in herbiography of Karl Jaspers, Kirkbright presentsGertrud perceptively and the relationship betweenhusband and wife very well. That Gertrud greatlyinfluenced Jaspers' advocacy of truth as intimately

related to a process of continuing inner renewal andrequiring constant self-improvement is surely thecase. Kirkbright accounts for this influence mosthelpfully. I hope to have conveyed a few of the manyaccomplishments to be appreciated and explored inKirkbright's biography of Jaspers. There is muchmore to explore, and I recommend that anyone whohas not yet done so take up this fine study.

jaspers biography

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