Philosophy of Existence

by Karl Jaspers

Book Overview

Philosophy of Existence was first presented to the public as a series of lectures invited by The German Academy of Frankfurt. In preparing these lectures Jaspers, whom the Nazis had already dismissed from his professorship at Heidelberg, knew that he was speaking in Germany for the last time. Jaspers used the occasion to offer an account of the cultural and intellectual situation from which existentialism emerged as well as a summary of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812210107
• ISBN13: 9780812210101
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic overview of Jaspers' thought

Written between "Philosophie" and "Von der Wahrheit," this slim volume provides a fantastic and surprisingly readable overview of Jaspers' metaphysics. Based on a series of lectures, the text is less technical than Philosophie; however, Jaspers manages to explain the Encompassing, Transcendence, Existenz and Ciphers in moderate detail.I found Grabau's translation much more lucid than the texts included (for instance) within Walter Kaufmann's "Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre." Since Grabau's translation of key terms is similar to E. B. Ashton's translation of Philosophie, I have had no trouble going from one to the other.Overall, I recommend this book for those interested in delving into Jaspers' metaphysics.