Customer Reviews

Reason and Existenz: Five Lectures (Marquette Studies in Philosophy)

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While Reason and Existenz remains one of Jaspers' more popular books, it is not one of his better books. I would argue this for several reasons. First, Jaspers' focus here is much narrower than his other works. To get a well-rounded view of Jaspers' thought, read Philosophy ("Philosophie," 3 vols), or his shorter overview Philosophy of Existence ("Existenzphilosophie").

Second, Jaspers' typically contorted language seems somehow worse in this book. Jaspers has always been heavy on jargon (Existenz, Transcendenz, the Encompassing, Dasein, etc.), but, to his benefit, he typically counters the confusing aspect of the jargon with a well-structured (and well outlined) argument. His careful structuring struck me as less prominent in this work. Again, Philosophy of Existence offered more bang for the buck on this one.

Third, my understanding of this work is that Jaspers intends to focus specifically on the problem of reason and how it relates to one's task (or act) of transcending. This is a fairly narrow topic within Jaspers' overall work. I think that to begin studies of Jaspers with this book might lead one to a mis-understanding of Jaspers' overarching philosophy. A more digestible approach to studying Jaspers is found in Ehrlich, Ehrlich, and Pepper's volume entitled (I think) "The Basic Writings of Karl Jaspers."

In summary, Reason and Existenz will be useful to the reader with a background in Jaspers -- especially if the reader has an interest in Jaspers' arguments for reason's place in mediating between the immanent and the transcendent. For most others, though, this may not be the best place to start.

Jasper's book is one of those books that you are so impressed by you work to memorize and apply in all thinking processes. His discription of existentialism in one's chaotic center of concealed knowledge with how we perceive reality is essential and the foundation behind all thinking in philosophy, science and religion.

Jasper speaks of all thinking within a horizon that can be transcended. All horizons being within a horizon he names "the encompassing," which can be seen in two modes, as all Being in itself, or as all Being within which we are. It is here within which we are, we perceive reality in three ways: by empirical existence, consciousness and spirit. In turn we use reason to formulate, objectify and create absolutes, yet at the same time we need to use our irrational concealed knowledge, that is, the dark ground and center, of all modes, the existenz, to allow our reason to be open and apart from mere intellectual indifference. All demarcations are relative, yet existenz without reason is unrelated to Transcendence. Each without the other loses the genuine continuity of Being, and therefore, the reliability ceases to be authentic.

Reason clarifies our existenz, while our existenz gives content to our reason. Jaspers also goes into the idea of communicating truth, the prioity and limits of ratonal thought and compares the ideas of Nietzsche and Kiergaard. The book is brilliant.

I agree with the other reviewers: Such as it was, the introduction to this book was not much of a guide, and for someone new to Jaspers (the Philosopher, rather than the activist), this made for a rough, rather uncharted, intellectual ride.

Given that the author coins his own phrases and makes up his own definitions as he proceeds (on the fly, as it were), a great deal of the writing here appears (at least to an untutored reader such as myself) as a bit context-less. Like a blind man, one has to feel his way around the dark features of the walls (with only intuition and Sartre as guides) to navigate his way thorough the maze that is the Jasperian "featureless" reality and "relativity-based" philosophical landscape.

That said, some solid and enduring ideas, and surely a new philosophical structure of consciousness if not a new novel picture of reality, do seem to fall out. Existence beyond ordinary awareness (Jaspers' Existenz), in the end is not just a featureless terrain. It does indeed have a well-defined structure.

By my way of thinking, the structure is that of a Mobius strip with transcendence being the diving line between (Sartre's) "Being in itself," and (Jaspers' own) "all Being within which we are." The strip itself is Jasper's "all encompassing," with reality at various times being on the outside of it, and then at others, (or at least it seems), on the inside.

Clearly, Jaspers crowning embedded concept is that existence pivots around transcendence, with awareness and lack of awareness being on opposite sides. And (again, in the Sartrian sense), only full authentic awareness can brings us into Existentz, or fully to an authentic life.

In Jaspers phenomenological scheme, awareness (the authentic form of Existentz) comes in three relativity-based flavors: empirical, as consciousness, and as (the Hegelian "free") spirit. Reason is the guiding light of the first two, and intuition or "unreason" is the touchstone of the third. It is this tripartite universe that makes us whole. But it is not something that we can apprehend or witness (other than academically), for as is the case in the Quantum split view experiment, observation itself, destroys the Existenz.

This is taken just from the first lecture, the others are equally deep, and require time to soak-in. I rented this book from Chegg's thinking that I did not want to buy it, but now I think I will keep it and pay the rental default price. Five stars