Abstract
In Jaspers’ historical work as in the formally philosophical, it is the principle of “transcending-thinking” as hic et nunc that compels the reader to interpretation and judgement. Jaspers states: “Genuine interpretation ... does not subsume but penetrates; it does not claim to know with finality but while always taking cognizance of what has just been apprehended, it proceeds by a method of questioning and answering. It thereby begins a process of assimilation, the conditions and limits of which it determines for itself ... False interpretation provides for the pleasurable illusion of a general survey by placing its object at a distance and viewing it ab extra as an exotic specimen; the true interpretation is a means to the possibility of self-involvement.”1
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References
Nietzsche, p. 6.
Chiffren der Transzendenz, p. 107.
The Great Philosophers, Vol. II, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World), p. 225. (Hereinafter cited as Great Phil.)
Ibid., p. 256.
Nietzsche, p. 219. Cf., also Von der Wahrheit, pp. 26–28.
Ibid., p. 237. As we will see in Part III, Jaspers’ differentiation between historie and Geschichte is more radical than Bultmann’s.
Nietzsche, p. 9.
Reason and Existenz, p. 36.
Nietzsche, p. 291, (emphasis, Jaspers’).
Wilhelm Windelband, although not a colleague of Jaspers, was one of his teachers and regarded by Jaspers as being of the same delimited frame of mind as Rickert since both, according to Jaspers, suffered from the misconception that philosophy could become “scientific” in the same manner as the natural sciences by simply imitating its methods. Cf. Jaspers’ “Philosophical Autobiography” in The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, Schilpp edition (New York: Tudor Press, 1957), pp. 24, 34; and “On My Philosophy” in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Meridian, 1956), pp. 136–137.
Way to Wisdom, pp. 96ff.; Origin and Goal of History, pp. 141ff.; Man in the Modern Age, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Doubleday, 1951), pp. 4–15.
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© 1979 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers bv, The Hague
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Olson, A.M. (1979). Transcending in Historical Consciousness. In: Transcendence and Hermeneutics. Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9270-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9270-2_4
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