Karl Jaspers: A Biography--Navigations in Truth

By Suzanne Kirkbright

Throughout his life, German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) recorded his experiences and reflections in diaries and correspondence. This comprehensive biography is the first to explore these... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300102429
• ISBN13: 9780300102420
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

It is possible to learn much about Jaspers from this work

I am not a real student of the work of Jaspers though I have read some of it especially his work on 'The Axial Age , that age in which Mankind in several different places seemed to simultaneously discover the higher moral life. Much of what I knew about Jaspers came from Hannah Arendt's chapter on him in her book 'Men in Dark Times'. There Arendt paints a picture of Jaspers as a person of highest integrity and fidelity to truth.She highly praises the humanity of her former teacher and thesis supervisor. They remained lifelong friends and were too connected by their respective relationships to Heidegger. Kirkbright tells the story of the frail sickly Heidegger and his lifelong search for truth. She tells of the specially good marriage he had, and how wife Gertrude ( nee Mayer) contributed to his thought. Jaspers and his wife survived the war and he afterwards became a kind of moral spokesman to German society. The book does not go deeply into Jaspers' thought, nor does it analyze in depth many of the incidents and events in Jaspers' life. I for instance would have liked to know more about what Gertrude Mayer's marriage meant for her father, who was an Orthodox Jew. Kirkbright tells of how Jaspers after years of struggle achieved a position and recognition as thinker.The book tells the basic story of his life in a convincing and highly readable way. And I am sure all those interested in Jaspers can learn much from it.

how to live in dignity ...

Already as a child, German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) suffered under bronchiktasis and an accompanying heart insufficiency, which was classified as incurable and life-shortening. the fear to die early pushed him to live concentrated and not to waste any time. Being exhausted very soon, throughout his life he was forced to work lying horizontal on a divan. His daily creative working periods (of reading and writing) had been very short, so he was obliged to budget his targets carefully. "A man will be, what he will be, via the things, he has chosen for his own affair..." was the way, he programmed himself. "The minimum of being self-determinate is associated with the joy to work. without that, everyone will get paralyzed. Therefore to save the joy of working is the main problem in the technical world. Assigned work mostly is a work, which separates being a human and being a worker. But the duties of a physician, teacher, minister etc. cannot not be technically rationalized, because they depend on vital existence ..." Jaspers noted in his tiny but important book "The Mental Situation Of Our Age". Beginning as psychiatrist (among other things with the fundamental work "PSYCHOLOGY of the WORLD VIEWS") he extended his horizon of views to a stable existence-philosophical theory, which at first united him with the academic colleague Martin Heidegger, then however, ethical standardizes taking seriously, had to lead him away from this Nazi-collaborator. Jaspers wrote after the end of WWII to the American Military Government in Germany: "Heidegger's kind of thinking appears to me unfreely, dictatorial, without any sense for communication. Nowadays it would (practiced at universities) have a fatal effect ...". Added to the lifelong illness of Jaspers was the threat by the Third Reich. Jaspers' woman was Jewess. The married couple during the Nazi-era always carried in their pockets cyanide-capsules, to be faster, if Gestapo would try to arrest them. "No longer able to continue the fight, suicide becomes more and more fascinating. It seems to be the last moral effort of autonomous humans. To end voluntary is like coming home to oneself... " Jaspers wrote in those dark days. "The rule of the apparatus favors humans, who live contemplativelessly without any leisure , bedeviled sleeplessly by their wishes of climbing up the social ladders. It is required to be skilful, slippery, oily. You have to become beloved, you must ingratiate on everyone with a clever fuss of persuading and captivating, you have to become zealous, indispensable, you have to be silent, insidious, you have to present a modest gesture, you have to work only to please your chief, you never are allowed to show any independence against a superior ...". Jaspers analyzed the Hitler-Germany and Martin Heidegger, the post war German society and "The Question of German Guilt" - but in the center he defined how to live with dignity - in any time...

Inspirational

I have read every work of the late Karl Jaspers. I believe Ms. Kirkbright summarizes her approach in her introduction. She chooses a difficult path to explore. She must write about Jasper's life without focusing on his specific philosophy. She explains in the introduction that she will write about Jaspers seeking truth without going into detail about his idea of truth. Personally I can not put the book down, but I keep reading and reading. Too many academic snobs keep trying to kill the spirit of philosophy. Why is it wrong to look at Karl Jaspers through the lens of his family correspondence? I recommend this book to anyone who is interesting in learning about the man who wrote so much philosophy and began the long tradition known as existentialism. I do not recommend this book to anyone who is too pretentious to actually read a book!