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Text: English, German (translation)
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This review is from: Philosophy Is for Everyman: A Short Course in Philosophical Thinking (Hardcover)
This short volume from Karl Jaspers is based on a series of televised lectures intended to seduce the common citizen into the domain of philosophy. Jaspers is an existentialist of the Heidegger-Sartre variety, though he adopts an undeniably Nietzschean tone in sections of this book, particularly in the latter pages where he briefly discusses Nietzsche's theory of the eternal recurrence of the same.The tone of this book is a whimsical, lucid, and the structure is brief and preliminary. Jaspers devotes much of his attention to political philosophy; he advocated political freedom as the ultimate source of authentic existenz for mankind. Additionally, he notes the importance of historical narrative, writing that, "were we to step out of history we would fall into nothingness" (20), unfortunately, he does not address the greatest thinkers of historiality, Nietzsche, and his colleague Heidegger. Jaspers also discusses the empirical and social sciences and the difficulty they pose for thinkers. He writes that, "the fundamental difficulty in the humanities can be expressed in a single sentence: They are concerned with man's freedom, but for science there is no freedom" (62). He adopts a distinctly Kantian conception of the boundaries of human knowledge, writing: "There is no such thing as detached, pure understanding" (63). His political philosophy is slightly nebulous, he seems to be some sort of classical liberal, of the Kant-Locke school, always arguing in favor of personal freedom, and against totalitarianism. He writes: "Either I hold political freedom to be the highest good in the world, or I am ready for totalitarianism" (65). Yet I found Jasper's dismissal of Marx and Freud to be the most fascinating section of the book. He writes that, "[Freud and Marx] were men of hate, who, like prophets, inspired faith" (69). Jasper's dismisses dialectical materialism and sexual libido as reductive pan-theories that fail to adequately explain the intricacies of social history and the human psyche.
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