Limit-situation
Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy
Jonna Bornemark Abstract In this paper I will discuss the concept “limit-situation”1 as it is developed in Karl Jaspers’ early writings, especially his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and Philosophie, and explore how this concept could be understood in a broader way. After a discussion of the concepts of “limit” and “situation” I will discuss Jaspers’ heritage from Kant and Kierkegaard, in whose works the concepts of antinomy and paradox are central. Antinomy is worked out in Jaspers’ thinking as single limit-situations in which the human being understands her finitude and openness. It is through these single limit-situations that her world-view is shaped. Through a discussion of Jaspers’ communication theory and his understanding of the mystics, I will extend the concept of limit-situation from the single limit-situations. I will argue that the limit-situation should be understood, not only as a concept marking the limits of the human situation, but as a way of exploring the human situation as limit.
Introduction The antinomicality of existence is the limit-situation of the antinomies (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 220 [1932, p 251]. Translation modified, see footnote 1.) we become ourselves by entering with open eyes into the limit-situations (Jaspers 1970, volume II, pp. 278–279 [1932, p. 204]. Translation modified.) The concept limit-situation, as well as Jaspers’ philosophy in general, has
1. “Limit-situation” is a translation of Jaspers’ “Grenzsituation”; it is translated in other texts as “boundary situation”. My reasons for choosing “limit” rather than “boundary” will become clear later on. Because of this translational difference I have modified some quotations and translate “Grenze” as “limit” rather than “border” and “border situation” as “limit-situation”. Sats – Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2 © Philosophia Press 2006
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not attracted much attention in the last decades.2 But when we today try to understand the human being in the paradoxical situation between the own and the different, the concept “limit-situation” can be helpful. Limit-situation is, according to Jasper, the antinomic situation that makes up a foundational condition for human beings. This theme is relatively undeveloped in the secondary literature, but it is a central underlying theme in existential philosophy. In this article I will try to sort out what the concept limit-situation means and show how the concept can be developed and used today. During the second half of the 20th century,, philosophy of existence often became identified with existentialism. But if existentialism was formulated by Jean-Paul Sartre in the French philosophical tradition, the Germany concept “philosophy of existence” (“Existenzphilosophie”) was used as to characterise the work of Jaspers and Heidegger, among others 3. Both Jaspers and Heidegger were very suspicious of the concept “existentialism”, partly because as an “ism”, it tried to formulate a systematic teaching, but also because existentialism, to a far too high degree, stressed human autonomy and freedom, and therefore was often characterized as strongly individualistic; alone with her freedom and her choices the individual must fulfil herself and create an autonomous and responsible existence. However Jaspers as well as Heidegger accepted the term “philosophy of existence” which had a strong connection to Kierkegaard, to whom Jaspers was one of the first to pay attention to. Jaspers’ philosophy of existence to a great degree shares the same starting-points as existentialism. Jaspers formulates one such starting-point as ‘everything is essentially real for me only through that I am myself (Jaspers 1938, p. 1, my translation). This emphasis on the existence of the self as the beginning of all philosophy is thus a common starting-point for both Jaspers and the existentialists. The text just quoted continues: ‘We are not only here, but our existence is entrusted to us as place, as a body of the realisation of
2. The concept of “limit-situation” seldom occupies any central position in the secondary literature. One exception is Rodriguez de la Fuente’s doctoral thesis, which focuses to a high degree on the concept “limit-situation”. Bollnow is another exception; he has written about Jaspers and Heidegger and takes as his starting-point the concept of the limit-situation. Heidegger is probably the one philosopher who, following Jaspers, has most often used the concept in his own philosophy. The interest in Jaspers today is mostly centred around general philosophy of existence, discussions about how different world-views can meet each other, and communication theory. 3. In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger has several references to Jaspers’ Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. He also directly refers to the concept “limit-situation” in footnotes in §49, § 60, § 62 and § 68.
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our origin’ (Jaspers 1938, p. 1, my translation). This “entrustment” shows a doubleness, a passivity in the entrustment, but with a call or demand for activity. This passivity moves away from the common understanding of existentialism. The contemporary understanding of the individual is closely connected to existentialist philosophy. If we today want to differentiate the concept of the individual, it is important to examine how the individual was understood in the early philosophy of existence. In her 1948 essay ‘Was ist Existenz-Philosophie’, Hannah Arendt, who was Jaspers’ student and friend, argues that the focus upon the individual arose from the modern individual’s feeling of not belonging in the world, of being torn out of her context. Arendt goes on to claim that if it is in the philosophy of existence that philosophy shows signs of uttermost isolation, it is also here that it returns from such isolation. Arendt’s claim is that it is far more fruitful to understand philosophy of existence as Jaspers presents it: as a discussion of the necessary openness, incompleteness, and dependence. This openness constitutes Jaspers’ central concept of “limit-situation”. How should one understand the concept limit-situation? One possible perspective is to focus upon the limit of the situation, upon the human being as historically and psychologically situated and to study the ways in which her situation is limited. I will employ a different focus, which seems more promising to me; instead of thinking of limit in terms of situation, that is, the limits of the situation, one could think situation in terms of limit, which also means the situation of limit. We need to examine the concept of “limit” as well as “situation” to better understand what this means. Thereafter we need to examine how Jaspers uses the concept of limit-situation in Philosophie der Weltanschauungen and in Philosophie, volume II,4 the two books in which this concept is most strongly developed.
Limit and situation
Jaspers is the first philosopher to use the concept “situation” as a technical philosophical term (Laucken 1995, p. 924). In Philosophie (volume II, p. 201–203) he defines situation as a spatial order, or more precisely, as a reality for an interested subject, with its limitations and opportunities. A situation is a meaningful reality, physically as well as psychologically concrete. It continually changes and exists only in virtue of continual change. The individual also has
4. All references to this work refer to the German edition (1932), except the quotations that refer to the English translation (1970) with the German page in brackets.
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the capacity to change the situation actively, but she can never be outside of all situations. If she steps out of one situation she steps into another. Situation is thereby a concept of facticity. It is the human situation, which the individual tries to control through knowledge. What one knows about a situation forms it at the same time as the knower is immersed within the situation. Knowledge can never stand outside of the situation: on the contrary, when new knowledge arises it changes the situation. In Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 202) Jaspers differentiates limit-situations from temporary situations, by saying that human beings never can leave the limit-situations, in contrast to temporary situations. Limit-situation is therefore constitutive for the human being. Even if one can leave every temporary situation, one can never leave one’s “situatedness”, thus situatedness as such can be understood as a constitutive limit-situation. The concept of situation has influenced 20th-century century philosophy to a large degree. Philosophers understood themselves as situated and thus repudiate the ideal perspective of an almighty god. Instead they found their knowledge within existential limits. To Jaspers this means that the task of philosophy no longer is to formulate universal doctrines; rather, philosophy is a unsetteling activity, an uprooting of the situation even if this activity at the same time formulates and orders. Jaspers further develops the concept of “situation” in Philosophie (volume II, p. 210 ff), in a discussion about the determination and historicity of existence as a foundational limit-situation. By historicity, Jaspers means that human beings always exist in a certain situation with an uncertain future. Freedom is the capacity to accept the situation and with all its hindrances and possibilities and make it one’s own. Although the limit-situations are universal and experienced by everyone, each individual’s personal situation interacts with the universal limit-situations in different and unique ways. This means that all beings are to be understood as historical phenomena. This also means that the relationship between the individual and the universal is reshaped (even though this to Jaspers does not mean a negation of the universal). Historicity is universal since it means that everything is situated, but also since our way of expressing historicity itself is historically bound. Jaspers’ emphasis on situation shows the influence of Kierkegaardian philosophy. Limit-situation concerns the specific individual as a foundational structure. The paradoxes that the limit-situations carry are of concern not only as an abstract mind-game but especially in factual life. Heidegger develops this concept of the facticity of the situation further. He emphasises a concept of situation that is partly founded on the determination of the being-in-the-world, while at the same time this determination can only occur through openness.
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Situation is exactly this determined openness that characterizes the being of human beings (Heidegger Heidegger 1993, p. 299). This structure that Heidegger brings forth (with explicit reference to Jaspers in the same paragraph) is also present, though not as explicitly, in Jaspers’ texts. This openness can be understood partly as a primary openness that allows a certain determination, but also as that life that a certain situation “opens up” for, the same opening that is the meaning of every life.5 The concept of situation thus carries a double meaning of determination and openness, but puts the emphasis on determination. We can thus understand situation as the limit between an opening and a determination, which leads us to the second concept in focus here: “limit”, or rather the German “Grenze”. The history of the German philosophical concept “Grenze” is closely intertwined with the concept of “Schranke”. Both these concepts arose as theoretical concepts in German in the 18th century.. “Schranke” originates from a translation of the Latin “limes” and “terminus” (Fulda 1974, p. 875). “Limes” refers to a border between two fields and “terminus” means “determined border” but also “border-mark” or “border-stone, as well as the personification of this border, the “border-god”. “Schranke” can thus be understood as a border that splits something similar into two parts, a border within a homogeneous area, which in principle produces two similar parts. I will here use “border” to translate “Schranke”. Kant developed “Schranke” as the limitation of the finite, as lack, and understood “Schranke” as derived from the more foundational concept of “Grenze”. The concept of “Grenze” first got its meaning from the concept of the limit in infinitesimal calculus and is understood by Kant as a negation that excludes any belonging to a greater whole. A limit in this sense is that which contains its own perfection; it refers to the point after which there can be no greater value. This kind of limit can be understood as a philosophical interpretation of the limit-value of infinitesimal calculus, the point of inflection of a graph and after which no higher value can be reached. Kant claims that mathematics and natural sciences only admit borders: something is always excluded, something exists that the science, by definition, does not include. Science tries, for example, to explain a part of reality that can be added to another part (partes extra partes). Metaphysics, on the other hand, leads to the limits of reason, the uttermost possibility of appearance. But “Grenze” still keeps a positive meaning since it is the place where appearance touches upon the
5. This thought is also developed by Hannah Arendt.
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thing-in-itself, that which is beyond experience but which still needs to be assumed and thereby thought, or it is rather included in thinking, even though it can never be explicit. Appearance and the thing-in-itself are not two parts of one reality; the thing-in-itself marks instead the limitation of reason. That the thing-in-itself can not be thought on its own, that is, be represented, does not mean that it is not included in thought. The thing-in-itself points to that within appearance that also points to an outside. Kant therefore means that humans always exist on the limit (which is an argument that Jaspers emphasises even further). This “utterly other” thereby delimits experience at the same time as knowledge is always founded on the knower’s relationship to this radical alterity (see Kant 1985, §57). Jaspers is to a very large extent influenced by Kant’s understanding of the concept “Grenze”. “Grenze” or “limit” is not only relevant to knowledge in Jaspers’ thinking, but it is also, as we will see, an even more important concept for understanding human finitude. This finitude signifies the impossibility for human existence to include everything, either in knowledge or in life. The human being is surrounded by limits. It is in connection to this that we can understand limit-situations as an expression for the limit of the situation, as an expression for the insight that humans exist as limited by their situation. But limit also marks that there is something else: ‘The word limit implies that there is something else, but it indicates at the same time that this other thing is not for an existing consciousness’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 179 [1932, p. 203], translation modified). One problem in Jaspers’ philosophy is that he marks this radical otherness as something other, which leads to an understanding of his concept of “transcendence” as a transcendent something6 (Jaspers concept of transcendence has a close relation to Kant’s thing-in-itself). This understanding and formulation easily leads to a misunderstanding of “limit” as “border”. The risk consists in understanding the limit between the empirical and the transcendent as a border between two areas, a border that can only be seen from a bird’s-eye view. Such an understanding of limit can be found in Jaspers’ writings when he claims, for example, that the limit-situations ‘are like a wall we run into, a wall on which we founder’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p 178 [1932, p. 203]). Nevertheless, Jaspers’ philosophy in large part strongly emphasises that such a bird’s-eye perspective, which can observe both sides of a border, is impossible. It is not through knowledge that the radical alterity of
6. This trait in Jaspers’ philosophy was later developed into what he called “periechontologie”, in which the transcendent is expressed as an all-embracing something.
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the transcendent has meaning. We could instead, borrowing a phenomenological term, say that this “other side” is “appresented”. The wall in the quotation would not mean anything if one could not have a relationship to the “other side”. It is exactly the unreachability of the other side that requires that we understand “Grenze” not as “border” but as “limit”. This limit can thus not be thought from a bird’s eye perspective. Limit is instead “my” finitude and inability, the limit of “my” ability. To be surrounded by limits, to be delimited, is usually understood as being closed off or as an introversion since there is something that can not be reached. But since this should not be understood as a something in Jaspers concept of the limit-situation, this inability rather means an openness and a respect for that which can not be thought or formulated. The opposite way of thinking is an immanence where the “I” can understand everything and thus does not respect the otherness of the other. It implies an over-confidence in the possibility of including everything in one’s own thinking. The limit as that which delimits the “I” thereby also means an openness. That which limits also contains the possibility for openness. To be limitless means to be inclusive and closed, whereas the limit makes openness possible. To be open one needs to have limits. Limitation also requires a location: individuals are situated on one side of the limit and the limit thereby gives one situation. Limit and situation thus both contain a doubleness. A situation is a determination that demands and creates an openness in the shapes of a life with possibilities. In a similar way a limit makes openness possible by establishing a situating limit. Limit-situation can be said to double this doubleness. Jaspers analyses this structure of doubleness under the concept of antinomy.
Antinomies as constitution
Jaspers borrowed the concept of the antinomy from Kant whose thoughts on the “ideas” Jaspers considered so central that he included a discussion of them in an appendix to Psychologie der Weltanschuungen. We therefore need briefly to explore Kant’s thoughts in order to understand Jaspers’ concept of antinomy. In Kantian philosophy, the fragmented knowledge of the senses is ordered by the categories of understanding, and as such they differ from the ideas that are related to the Kantian concept of reason. In contrast to sensory knowledge, the ideas relate to things that seem to be objects for the mind, but turn out to be something different since they can not be thought without giving arise to antinomies. The antinomies arise since ideas relate to a totality, but a totality that is never given. But this does not mean that the ideas are meaningless; on the contrary, they are necessary for systematic thinking and for all systematic
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understanding of experience. Systematic thinking needs regulative ideas that precede the system and give it its comprehensive framework, a framework within which knowledge and experience can be understood. Kant mainly describes three ideas: 1) the idea of the full subject, that is the “I” or “soul”, which is related to immortality, 2) the complete succession of conditions that is formulated as “world” or “cosmos”, and 3) a complete concept, the “whole” or “God”. These ideas are transcendent, which means that they exceed every experience, at the same time as they are regulative. Therefore these ideas can never become objects of experience. This transcendent quality of the ideas on some occasions lead to antinomies, i.e. the ideas produce contrary thesies that both seem to follow from the idea. Kant argues that these antinomies can only be solved within his transcendental idealism by separating appearance from the thing-in-itself (Jaspers Jaspers 1919, s. 408–428). ). It is obvious that Jaspers here uses Kant’s concepts of “ideas” and “antinomies” for his own purposes. But he states that he, in contrast to Kant, mean that the antinomies do not only affect theoretical knowledge but also, and above all shapes our concrete lives. He also claims that the antinomies can never find a final solution in any philosophical doctrine. Jaspers finds support from Kierkegaard in this criticism of Kant. The Kantian antinomies argue that two well-founded statements that can be developed from the same maxim or idea are incompatible. Kierkegaard uses the concept of paradox to denote the meaning of the antinomies but also to characterise this incompatibility as an unknowable and unsolvable thought. For Kierkegaard paradox signals a real relationship; it is the category that expresses the human relationship to god (Malantschuk Malantschuk 1977, p. 277–280). ). For Kierkegaard the central characteristic of the antinomy/paradox is thus not logical contradiction, which marks the limits of knowledge. Rather, “paradox” is an expression for that which can not and should not be solved. Jaspers keeps the term “antinomies” but agrees with Kierkegaard that these can never find satisfying solutions. Jaspers also expands this concept and argues that both the world and human existence should be understood as occurring in an antinomical split. The antinomies are thus constitutive and a foundational condition of life. The antinomies are, like contrasting colours, dependent upon each other and produce their opposite. Attempts at solutions can only be temporary since the opposites constitute each other. In Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 204 ff.) Jaspers divides the antinomies into three groups: logical opposites (x or non-x), real opposites (life or death) and value opposites (useful or harmful). The logical opposites stand at the limit, served to delimit the human consciousness from the infinite. In
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opposition to Kant, as we have seen, Jasper argues that the dialectical solutions that are offered for the antinomies are only technical solutions. These antinomies seldom create despair, since they are mostly antinomies of thinking and not relevant for the whole existential individual. But ones relation to the antinomies lays the foundation for the way in which one shapes a conception of the world. The opposite pairs of the antinomies, though dependent upon each other, are isolated and made absolute and seemingly independent when the mind allies itself with one pole against the other. Jaspers claims that only mystic thinking functions differently; we will come back to this claim. Because of this dualism, all rational thinking sooner or later falls into contradictions within the system; Jaspers calls this “failure” or “crack” (“Scheitern”). This crack is at the same time a negative name for an opening, for ‘existence as a whole remains unfinished. Wherever it might tend to come to a conclusion, there are antinomies to prevent it’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 218 f., [1932, p. 250]). According to Jaspers, this openness is a necessary structure that makes thinking possible. Without the relationship to this otherness and infinitude thinking as a changing process would be impossible. The antinomical structure is the final and enabling thought necessary to thinking, but in practical life it poses a problem that needs to be solved or actively handled. As active beings humans need to act one way or another; this need is the final proof of human finitude. Theoretically one can always strive towards an understanding and inclusion of all perspectives (even if this striving always fails), but in concrete decisions one needs to make excluding choices. The value-contraries also belong to life. Every value demands the existence of something of less worth, and every value is thereby also a value that excludes another. The value-contraries are, as we will see, closely connected to the specific limit-situations of guilt and struggle. Jaspers understands all art, philosophy, poetry, religion etc, as attempts to create harmonious solutions to the antinomies – attempts that for the most part are unconscious of the deceitfulness of their task. For individuals, the antinomies can function as motivating forces to action and development, but they can also lead to paralysis, frustration and cynicism. Alternatively, one can handle the antinomies by closing one’s eyes to them and letting the opposites live side by side (which is often called double moral standards), or, more commonly, by taking a dogmatic position, i.e. making one side absolute and ignoring the other and thereby becoming able to act with full force. The antinomical situation always leads to an eternal process with an infinite number of solutions. Jaspers agrees with both Kant and Kierkegaard when he states that the human being never stays within the concrete finite, but that the concrete finite always
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has both a finite and an infinite character. The concrete finite needs the infinity of the ideas to make a structure for action possible (even if Kant emphasises the epistemological aspect); it is thus the antinomical structure that drives humans forward and makes action possible. Jaspers, Kant and Kierkegaard also agree that the transcendent only has significance within the sphere of immanence, that it is uninteresting and impossible to understand the transcendent solely in terms of itself. The Kantian antinomies are, as we have seen, first and foremost antinomies of thinking, antinomies that are to be solved in a system. For Jaspers, the antinomies signify the end of logical thinking, but to enable life to be lived, they continually need to find temporary solutions. It is in this passage from logical antinomies to unavoidable situations, which we continually need to solve, that Jaspers starts to use the concept of limit-situation.
Specific limit-situations – where we meet our openness
The antinomies become crucial and urgent for every human life in the specific limit-situations. In Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, and to a lesser degree in Philosophie, “limit” is understood mainly as an opposition between two contrasting concepts. These oppositions are antinomies in the sense that they are both necessary for human life, and at the same time exclusive of each other. The contradiction can not be solved since both poles are necessary, both sides of the opposition need instead to be fulfilled. Both sides thus need to be maintained and allowed. But the two sides are not equal; instead, one side is usually understood as positive and the other as negative. One side is saved at the expense of the other, and at the same time the positive needs to be saved from the negative. But if one succeeds in dissolving the negative side, the positive side will also be dissolved, since the negative is bound to the positive, or rather the other way around; the negative pole is always the primary to Jaspers, as life is bound to death.7 One can never avoid or reduce these limit-situations to something else; on the contrary, they are what form one’s seeing. Nor can they be explained or deduced from something else. The specific limit-situations, which are most clearly characterized as opposites, are death and contingency: 1) In Philosophie (p. 220 ff.), as well as in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 229 ff.) death is characterized as the ultimate limit of all limits. It is obvious through human mortality that the individual is not eternal and that she always dies before she is completed; that is, her potential is never completely
7. Jaspers is closer to Heidegger than to Arendt on this point.
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fulfilled. New life demands the death of old life at the same time as all life is only life since it is mortal. Jaspers also points out that mortality in itself is antinomically split, since although it is what gives attention to ones own individuality, to human facticity and specific situation, it is at the same time death that is common to all beings. Death only really happens to “me”; that is ones own death signals a definite ending. Yet at the same time death always occurs and the world keeps on going in spite of this. 2) Contingency and necessity are only mentioned as limit-situations in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 239 ff). Contingency is there described as a limit-situation in which all reality and knowledge is understood as a selection from the infinite. The specific context might be necessary but the principle of selection is always a contingency. The antinomy consists in the need to understand the world as necessary and coherent, at the same time as the world shows itself as coincidental, chaotic and non-coherent and thereby impossible to grasp from all aspects. The two sides are always limited by each other at the same time as they are dependent upon each other. The discovery of coherence demand something non-coherent that can be understood. The non-coherent, can at the same time, only be thought from out of the search for coherence. Psychologie der Weltanschauungen also treats the specific limit-situations of struggle and guilt. But in these limit-situations a positive opposite cannot be found to the same extent. Rather their antinomical structure opens up an abyss in which the finitude of the self is understood. In Philosophie this abyss is emphasized to an even greater extent at the expense of the dualistic relationship. In this book suffering is also described as a specific limit-situation (p. 230 ff). 3) Suffering is a characterization of our finitude within life. Suffering is often understood as something that can be avoided through, for example, the development of medicine and science. But to avoid to understand suffering as a necessary part of human life leads to self-deception and a failure of seeing the existential meaning of suffering. To avoid suffering can for example mean a refusal to allow other human beings to come close, since with proximity comes the power to harm. To avoid this limitation in myself thereby limits me even further. By accepting suffering, on the other hand, one can bear one’s cross, facing suffering and accept that it belongs to “me”. Of course I try to free myself from suffering, but I understand at the same time that it belongs to me. I do not try to blame it or project it on someone else; instead I realize that there is no such thing as a solution that is perfect in every respect. No matter what choices one makes in life, a certain amount of suffering is unavoidable. Pure happiness would be emptiness. True happiness must contain risk-taking and rebuilding with it.
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4) Death and suffering are situations to which humans will always be exposed, without any action demanded from the subject. But there are limit-situations that start out from actions. These are, as discussed in Philosophie (p. 227 ff and 242 ff) the limit-situations of struggle and guilt. These limit-situations are unavoidable results from one’s own acting. Since acting can not be avoided, neither can the limit-situations. Trying to avoid them will only recreate them in a different form or negate ones own self. Struggle can not be avoided, since all acting is in favour of something and in the face of some kind of resistance. Whatever is in favour of one thing is also necessarily against something else. Cooperation is not a solution to this, since it basically repeats the same structure in larger numbers. The struggle becomes an existential limit-situation when it has to be understood from the first person perspective out of which “I” realize that I need to fight in favour of something even though I do not have any absolute arguments for this something. It becomes an existential limit-situation when I realize that the struggle needs to be carried out even though there is a lack of foundation, when I accept that that which is important to me remains important even though never absolute. All action also carries existential guilt since all actions have unforeseen and maybe unwanted consequences. Guilt is the limit-situation in which I feel guilty for being unable to do justice to all perspectives. The human being’s experience of her inability to perform universal acts makes her understand herself as finite. The only other solution would be not to act at all and thereby to negate ones own existence. A life always needs to be a specific life, to be “my” life; guilt thus points back to the situatedness and facticity of a singular human being. Rationality leads to attempts to defend singular acts, “my” acts, and transforming them into universal acts, “our” acts, and thereby building a system to explain the actions as the best possible choices in order to get away from existential guilt. The oppositional pairs of the limit-situations are described as a field of tension in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. This means that every human being is realised through his or her position in this field of tension, that is, through temporary solutions to the limit-situations. The impossibility of a completely satisfying solution also carries dissatisfaction with it; all sides can not be lived to their maximum. There is no ideal solution for all perspectives, there are only temporary compromises and choices. Of course different persons solve or handle the limit-situations in different ways and in different ways at different times in life. This is what founds the differences between human beings and between different world-views, the differences that Psychologie der Weltanschauungen wants to examine.
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In Philosophie the limit-situations are rather described as situations that put humans in front of an abyss. The point here is the insolvability of the antinomy, the fact that the contradiction can not be solved but only deepened by “clear thoughts”. The antinomy can not become a whole, but instead puts individuals at the limit. That is, in Philosophie the relationship to the insolvability is emphasised when earlier, in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, the plurality of solutions was in focus. Rather than a choice within a field of tension, limitsituation is here described as a leap into the unknown, which clearly shows Kierkegaards influence on Jaspers (see Kierkegaard 1997, on Kierkegaard’s concept of “leap”, see also Kühnhold 1975). The specific limit-situations all point towards this paradoxical underlying structure. Jaspers’ specific limit-situations are some examples of concrete limit-situations, concrete expressions of the limit-situation of the human being that underlies all the specific examples. According to Jaspers it is through this paradoxical structure that human life can exist in all its variations.
Shell and leap – to live in limit-situation
Psychologie der Weltanschauungen describes, as we have seen, how an infinite number of reactions to limit-situations create the infinite multitude of the world. This process almost always comes to a seemingly stabile solution in a static world-view with a highest good. These static world-views are most often characterized by Jaspers as dogmatic and dualistic. “The living process” (“der lebendige Prozeß”) is Jaspers’ name for the way we react to limit-situations and thereby create world-views. Jaspers emphasises, though, that no single concept is general enough to capture this process since the process is itself also an antinomical structure. In his own attempts to articulate the inarticulable, Jaspers argues that the living process creates a “shell” (“Gehäuse”), a stable structure within which we can live. This shell founds a structure that is often understood as unchangeable; it orders the world and oneself within the world and thereby makes it graspable. These shells create life forms, world-views, and beliefs. Jaspers uses the image of the shell of a mussel as a metaphor for this house of objectivity and he phrases the dependence upon this shell in the following way: ‘When the shell no longer exists the human being can not live any more, as little as a mussel whose shell is taken away’ (Jaspers 1919, p. 248, my translation ).8 This process, which is life itself, brings with it a
8. Heidegger, following Jaspers, also uses the concept “Gehäuse” in Sein und Zeit, § 13, p. 60.
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continual metamorphosis, a continuing renewal of shell. The shell fixes the way an individual has chosen to solve the limit-situations. The human being thereby tries to escape the suffering of the limit-situation by creating a shell. We can here recognise one of the most central themes of existentialism as well as of philosophy of existence. That central theme is the constant search for peace and order, the refusal to accept continual movement. Humans want to justify what they do from an objective rationality instead of taking absolute responsibility for the living forces upon themselves. According to Jaspers the paradoxes arise no matter which life-strategy is chosen. The extremes are nihilism and dogmatism: the paradox of nihilism is the choice to continue one’s own life while at the same time stating that it is not worth more than any other life. One thereby risks becoming a pure spectator to one’s own life, unable to participate and act in favour of the own life and the own values. The paradox of dogmatism is total conviction, in contrast to an acknowledgement of the finitude of the self. Dogmatists close their eyes to the antinomies and acknowledge only one side as absolute being. In Philosophie (volume II, p. 204 ff) these two extremes are complemented with a third: If the singular human being enters the limit-situations with her eyes open, with awareness of their insolvability, the limit-situations force her to take three leaps: 1) After the insight that limit-situations can not be avoided, one tries to understand them through theorizing them. One thereby tries to reshape oneself into a universal will to knowledge. This isolation of knowledge leads to a distance from oneself since one sees oneself from the outside. One thereby also understands the limit-situations from the outside. One tries to become a pure eye without an eye. This attempt can also be characterized as a negation of one’s own facticity. But one can never succeed completely in stepping outside of oneself; one rather keeps searching for a way to do it. Theoretical knowledge can only help when the situation is transparent, but the limit-situations are never completely transparent. 2) This leads to the second leap. The I can not grasp the limit-situations with theoretical knowledge since they aren’t transparent, I can only grasp them existentially. I thereby realize that I, as the historical, empirical self I am, need to take active part in illuminating the limit-situations. The world is not only an object for my knowledge, an object that I can remain unaffected by; on the contrary, the limit-situations force me to risk my own life, the basis for all theorizing activity. I thereby understand the importance of facticity, but I do not succeed in realizing what I know as philosophizing. But this knowledge, or meta-knowledge, prepares me for what I can be. Jaspers thus calls it possible
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“Existenz” in contrast to mere empirical or mundane existence.9 3) The third leap involves realizing this knowledge through real Existenz in limit-situations. I am not only an individual with single situations that I need to handle; the limit-situations touch me as Existenz, that is, they reveal my own potential and thereby shows that “myself” means something more than an empirical I. I am not only an empirical thing in a world, but I discover “myself” in both everyday life and the transcendent. I discover that I myself need to take responsibility for my very own relationship to transcendence. These three leaps thereby result in a transition from empirical being to Existenz, from the empirical world to a discovery of, or rather the development of a conscious relationship to, transcendence.10 Jaspers understands this transcendence as necessary for all subject-object relations. This ordinary form of experience needs the transcendent in the form of ideas, since empirical existence is founded on this and asks questions that can not be answered within the empirical framework, questions such as: What am I, this experiencing subject? What is the uttermost cause for the objects? What is this world that the objects and subject share? Humans have always more or less thought through answers to these questions, preliminary answers that function as a framework and structure for empirical knowledge. It is the discovery of that something is lacking in these answers that leads to the three leaps, and thereby to a conscious relationship to the transcendent. This discovery is a new attitude rather than a discovery of new facts. The transcendent does not function as an answer, rather Jaspers understands the transcendent as: ‘the wholly Other that makes it [Existenz]aware of being not by itself alone’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 4 [1932, 2]). Founded by this dependence the existence comes forth as freedom, as an open opportunity and an opening in the transcendent. The limit here steps forth in its full power as an opening. The transcendent means that I speak from out of, rather than speak about (as a subject speaks about an object). The transcendent is thereby not to be understood as an unreachable beyond, but as an opening that is kept open by the antinomies: ‘Wherever it [existence] might tend to come to a conclusion, there are antinomies to prevent it’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 218 f. [1932, 250]). The specific limit-situations can thereby be said to show the antinomical
9. I here follow the translation of Philosophie by E. B. Ashton, who keeps the german concept “Existenz” untranslated. 10. These leaps should not be understood as a chronology that leads to an “enlightened” human being; it is not a one-way development, but different attitudes between which I move.
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structure of life, a structure that can be investigated further as an underlying structure of limit-situation. This structure is developed in Jaspers description of the meaning of intersubjectivity and of the mystics. As we have seen Jaspers uses the concept of limit-situation in two slightly different ways. He emphasises either the dualistic state of opposition or the abyss that these contraries open up. These two attitudes will be explored further in the following sections.
Communication – I through you
One part of Jasper’s philosophy that recently has attracted much attention is his theory of communication, which argues that intersubjectivity is foundational to human existence.11 Already in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen Jaspers points out that the “I” should be understood as more than an object among others in the world. In Philosophie he develops this position and points out that: ‘I’ is a pronoun and a form in which the language seeks to express the unique character of a being that is not an object but identifies itself as I. “The I” which we were discussing, on the other hand, is an artificial noun, a solecistic construction that has become habitual in philosophizing where it enables the I to be an imaginary object (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 27 [1932, 27]). Instead of understanding the I as an objectified self, we should understand it as an idea, something that can never fully be expressed, but can only be encircled by a variety of antinomies. Especially in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen Jaspers brings forth the antinomical situation of the I as something that is at once part of the general and something specific, at once always changing and yet continual, at the same time free and necessary. Yet another antinomical structure is developed in Philosophie (volume II, p. 45 ff) when the “I am” is given two meanings: 1) the empirical I, that which is always becoming in time and whose future this “I” can decide upon. The empirical I is one object among others, the specific traits of my personality. 2) Existentially, “I am” is not a statement about a fact; it is instead a non-objectifying act where “I am” reveals the existential I as an appearance from out of the eternal. The existential I needs to take responsibility for this appearance. The limit-situation of guilt means that a specific I can be created, a specific I created out of its special
11. Jaspers here anticipates Levinas’s aim to prioritize the ethical. In fact neither for Levinas or Jaspers theory of communication means a theory of dialogue. See Lichtigfeld (1996) for a closer discussion on Levinas and Jaspers.
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choices. (Whereas for the empirical I, the limit-situations mean the death of thinking.) The existential I is in itself no steady ground. It is rather exactly the ambiguous point at which the empirical I comes forth and, as appearance, creates itself; the point at which the existential I, as created out of eternity, does not create itself. Both meanings of “I am” are closely connected with the surrounding world and other selves. ‘The I grasps itself only in relation to everything else which is not I – in other words, in relation to the world it is in’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 27 [1932, p. 26]). The empirical I is created in interaction with the other and with other objects. The consciousness that is the knowing subject needs objects, something to be directed towards, in order to be conscious at all. Self-consciousness, in its turn, requires other self-consciousnesses since it can not ask and answer alone. “The I” is never created independently, it always needs others to be reflected in and to relate to. The consciousness of the limit-situations and the finitude of the self, forces it to accept and listen to other consciousnesses, the lack and insufficiency of the self opens it to the other. The I always strives toward independence, but this process also requires a “you” that also strives towards independence. Communication must take place between two unique “selves” to save the I from falling into non-consciousness. To be a “myself” one thus needs to avoid losing oneself, but neither can the I isolate itself since it then becomes only a punctual emptiness. True human Existenz thus demands a communicating self-consciousness, a differentiated duality. Only with the possibility of communication – that is, only with another with whom to communicate – can one also feel loneliness. If one does not risk being alone, the I will lose itself in the other. This situation forms one of the antinomies of the self: ‘I am only through others and at the same time I must be and am an independent I’. Communication manifests the I at the same time as it risks it, since the existence of the self not realized until it is engaged in communication. Neither the I nor the other exist as true selves before the communicative encounter. ‘[N]either the I nor the other have a solid substance of being previous to our communication. […] This is why the way we become ourself in communication seemed like a creation out of nothing’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 64 [1932, p. 70]). The I is thereby manifested not by its kernel, but by its borders to the other.12 Thus there is also always the risk of arresting communication if the I too much understands “me” and “you” as solid selves. The self thus risks becoming solipsistic.
12. This thought has a close parallel in Diedier Anzieus The skin ego.
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Jaspers argues that this creation ex nihilo is at the same time a creation from eternity. The process of creation takes place through an antinomical process between oneself and another. By always separating oneself out of the stream of experiences and thoughts, the I makes itself into an object among many, an object that has the capacity to experience the others and the self as differentiated objects among other objects. It is thus the same process that leads to the objectification of the self as to the objectification of other things in the world. The “I” and the “other” are both dependent upon this process. This objectification of the self is necessary for ones own freedom, for the I to be able to see the possibilities for this “I”. Without such objectification the I couldn”t understand or have any knowledge of itself. As self-consciousness, the I is in the same antinomical way dependent upon other self-consciousnesses. The limit-situation is thus foundational to the I. The empirical I arises in a drawing of a boundary through which different objects are separated from each other, the empirical objectified I on the one side and other objects on the other side. The existential “I am” is this “drawing of a line”. It is the I in the transcendent, the constant presence of ‘there is more to me still’ (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 33 [1932, p. 34]. In German: ‘Ich bin noch anderes’). The human activity that most consistently tries to reach this drawing of a line and leave the antinomical dualism is, according to Jaspers mysticism.
The mystics – turning point of the limit-situation
In this drawing of a line the mystics estrange themselves from the empirical self; they retreat from the I as an object as well as from the I as a subject separated from other subjects and objects. Jaspers sees this process as a betrayal of the world and thereby as a kind of suicide. The I as we know it is also annihilated in the mystical aspiration; this makes such attempts both intellectually and morally objectionable to Jaspers. In Philosophie Jaspers contrasts the mystic with the positivist. The positivist accepts only the purely mundane, empirical world and does not accept anything that is not within the totally immanent world, anything that does not strive or point out of itself. He tries to avoid the openness that the limit-situations reveal to him as far as possible. He can not see the open and inexplicable aspects of life – the very aspects that make life into life – since he reduces everything to mechanics. The mystic, on the other hand, focuses on the opening that is revealed by the crack of the antinomies.13 But such a focus carries with it several complications.
13. Several contemporary commentators have noted the similarity between Jaspers’ focus on
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One of them, which Jaspers points out in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, is that the mystical experience is ambiguous and impossible to fully express in language, since it exceeds the split between subjects and objects that language and its users are normally completely dependent on. But the mystical experience, as an overcoming of the split between subject and object, is not exclusively mystical. It is possible for anyone to experience a similar excess; to a certain degree and in a certain way, it is always present in human experience. It is in this sense that Jaspers wants to use the mystic experience in a positive and not self-negating way. Examples of everyday experiences that border on the mystical include the feeling of absorption into nature, or the feeling of waking up from deep sleep or narcosis. In these situations one can experience the non-definitive character of one’s own borders; one can experience one’s own subject as incompletely separated from the surrounding world. The I is here, as well as in the specific limit-situations, opened up by a lived experience centred around or on the lack of borders. Jaspers understands the Kantian ideas as the experience that lacks the subject–object distinction that is necessary to keep the categories and concepts of the understanding alive. It is thus in this Kantian sense that mysticism is fruitful to Jaspers. That is, the mystical focus proves rich only in relation to the mundane world of objects and never in the pure transcendence that Jaspers understand mystics to be searching for. The objectless experience is objectified only through the synthesis that the ideas try to express; they are thus communicable and repeatable. The extremes that Jaspers criticises are thus the positivism of pure object knowledge, which transforms the world into dead mechanics, and mysticism without communication, concepts or speculative thinking, which is a kind of suicide, a complete erasure of empirical being. Pure mysticism betrays the world while pure positivism makes the living world impossible. Nevertheless, the synthesis between these two extremes leads to an infinite, continuing, changing process in which object-subjectless experience is immediately transformed into mundane ideas. The ideas are thus Jaspers’ middle way, the fruitful way through which mystical experience can be understood. Jaspers thus understands Kantian ideas and the mystical experience as necessary elements of the process that creates the meaning of objects.
the possibility of questioning everything and the impossibility of absolute names and medieval negative theology. See for example Rodriguez de la Fuente (1983, p. 136) or Langley (1993, p. 354).
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This is, to Jaspers, an always ongoing process. The relation to the infinite is not something humans sometimes have and sometimes do not have, it is rather an ongoing relation that humans can be more or less aware of. We can thus understand specific limit-situations as one kind of expression of the limitsituation as the constitutive structure of human existence. Limit-situations can be said to formulate the human as Existenz, as the limit between the finite and the infinite, as the place in which the infinite is formed and formulated as something finite.
Concluding discussion
I have here given “limit-situation” a wider extension than Jaspers does. Jaspers rarely uses the concept of limit-situation outside of his discussion of specific limit-situations. Nevertheless, he implicitly shows how the antinomical structure, which is first formulated as the limit-situations of the human being, also constitutes the I. The I is not primarily an existing substance that finds itself in a present situation and then, in a second step, discovers its limits. Instead, the I arises through a situation and through a drawing of a limit. We have seen, in the discussion of the specific limit-situations, how two nuances of limit-situation appear. The dualistic structure was clearer in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, while in Philosophie, Jaspers stresses the abyss that the limit-situation lays bare. Perhaps “Grenzsituation” could more accurately be translated as “border-situation” in the first book and as “limitsituation” in the second, since the first focuses on a separating border and the second on the abyss that the self stands in front of. The same nuances come back in the two meanings that can be found in “I am”: the “I am” is partly the dualistic structure in which the I only appears as an opposite pole to the objects, and partly the self-consciousness that only appears as an opposite to other self-consciousnesses. That is, the I is an I that always needs to be related to another. This dualistic structure also shows itself as the relation between being and non-being, that is, being in relation to the transcendent as the nonbeing. It is the transcendent in the qualification of non-being that makes this concept necessary for Jaspers. The opposite would be an immanence in which the other side of the border is a specific and known other, and it is here that we see the slide between “border” and “limit”. It is this dualistic structure between being and non-being that leads to the second meaning of “I am,” as well as to the second nuance of limit-situation, the one that points to the abyss of the limit-situation. “I am,” as Existenz, refers to the point in which the I and the ideas are formulated, the ambiguous position at which the dualistic structure is born. The I is at once one side of the border and the border. Jaspers wants to
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point out that it is this second meaning of “I am” that is more foundational. Jaspers formulates this abyss that comes forth as “the transcendent.” He points out that ‘[t]he place of transcendence is neither this side nor that side, but limit’ (Jaspers 1932, volume III, my translation). As we can see, transcendence should not be understood as the other side of a border; transcendence is rather the zero point that gives birth to the one and the other. That is, transcendence is the primary limit that gives birth to the two sides of the border. The second “I am” is understood and realized in the third leap, the leap in which the self finds itself in transcendence. The I and the transcendent converge in a strange process in which the dualistic structure reveals itself once again, with the nonbeing of transcendence being doubled by the being of the I. The I is originally situated in the transcendent. After having discussed the conceptions of limit as border and limit as the maximum of one’s own possibilities (the standing in front of a abyss), we have thereby developed a third meaning of “Grenze”. This third conception can be called “terminus”. “Terminus” means, as we have seen, limit as a fixation or a setting of differences; that is, it refers to the limit itself, the God of the limit. “Terminus” also refers to the demarcation of a content. That which arises from this demarcation is concepts, or “terminology”. This continual and ongoing establishment of a limit creates an empirical world “out of” the gap of the transcendent. We can thus understand the limit-situation as a terminus and, in keeping with this interpretation, we can begin to understand our situation as limit, rather than the limit of our situation. That is, we can conceive of our situation as a drawing of a line instead of thinking of our situation as delimited. The I as Existenz occurs by holding opposites together without letting them merge into each other. The I is not only one side of a limit, one side that needs to fantasize about another side. The I is to a far greater extent simultaneously the point of unity and separation, the terminus that produces the own and the other. The limit should thus not be understood as an outside opposed to an inner self; rather, the I should be understood as the limit. The inner as well as the outer is continually open: it is always dependent, non-transparent and changing. The radical alterity thus lives in oneself as well as in the other. It is the point that all beings have in common at the same time as it is the point that demands difference between everyone. The development of the concept of the limit-situation, which I have here sketched out, opens up a line of questions that I understand to be central to contemporary philosophy. Limit-situation has here been described as knowledge producing, rather than as an object or an area for a certain kind of knowledge. This knowledge production constitutes an important area for further and wider
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investigation. To acknowledge the limit, or terminus, as the situation within which knowledge production happens, is to determine the foundational meaning of knowledge; it is also to admit limit as the place for experience. This place has been thematized within contemporary phenomenology and post-phenomenology as the dimension of body and flesh. But I would also claim that the connection between limit and body still needs to be founded; this could happen only within a “limit-ontology”. Such a limit-ontology could open up new existential horizons to the important question about radical alterity that characterizes contemporary philosophical debates. If limit-ontology would mean that dimension within which the “I” could also question its existential foundation, then a discussion about the conditions for a limit-ontology could also take its due part in regaining a new basis for a philosophy of existence. Jonna Bornemark Södertörn University College / Uppsala universitet
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Literature
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Kühnhold C (1975), Der Begriff des Sprunges und der Weg des Sprachdenkens. Eine Einführung in Kierkegaard, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Laucken U (1995), ‘Situation’, in: Ritter J and Gründer K (eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, band 9, Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe und co, pp 923–937. Lichtigfeld A (1993), ‘Jasper’s Chipher and Levina’s Trace’, in Ehrlich LH and Wisser R (eds.), Karl Jaspers, philosopher among philosophers, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Langley R (1996), ‘Review of Karl Jaspers: Basic Philosophical Writings’, International Philosophical Quarterly, volume 36, pp. 351–358. Malantschuk G (1977), ‘Die Begriffe Immanenz und Transcendenz bei Søren Kierkegaard’, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, volume 19, pp. 225–246. Rodriguez de la Fuente S (1983), Grenzbewusstsein und Transcendenzerfahrung: eine Studie über die philosophische Theologie von Karl Jaspers, München: Universität München.
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