ANALISIS RAZONADO

The core of Jaspers’ philosophical thinking is human existence, and in particular, Existenz. All his other philosophical ideas are related to this central issue. For Jaspers, genuine philosophy is concerned with the fundamental problems of human existence that each individual is confronted with in existence. One also finds that Jaspers’ thought structure is multi-layered, in the sense that his concepts, like empiri- cal reality, the transcendent realm and Being itself, are inseparably interwoven. His philosophical inquiry engages in human existence in multiple modes of Being, Being itself as ultimate reality, and the meta- physical realm of Transcendence and Existenz, all of which manifest themselves, in terms of ciphers, in the empirical world.

First and foremost, however, throughout his works Jaspers often uses the term ‘philosophising’ (philosophieren), rather than ‘philoso- phy’, to highlight the active nature of philosophical thinking.43 _For

him, philosophising is a mental activity, a constant movement of thought processes. True philosophy, for Jaspers, cannot offer absolute solutions for it remains inconclusive, that is, it remains unfixed with- out objective determinacy. Philosophy is in a sense ongoing philo- sophical reflection in solitude and in communication, and is an open-ended process rather than dogma. Jaspers also maintains that philosophising is ‘by no means merely contemplative’. He considers philosophising as an ever-present life activity which springs from man’s awareness of being in the world and of Being itself.

In his Way to Wisdom, Jaspers further describes philosophy as follows:

We can determine the nature of philosophy only by actually experi- encing it. Philosophy then becomes the realization of the living idea and the reflection upon this idea, action and discourse on action in one.44

It is clear that philosophising, for Jaspers, is closely connected with the activities and experiences of one’s life. In his view, philosophising is a reflective activity by means of which we can elucidate our exis- tence, and it can help clarify our thought processes. Jaspers reiterates that existence philosophy arises from the way man contemplates and questions his existence in the world. Man’s being-in-the-world pro- vides the grounds for his awareness of his predicament and the limit- ations of his empirical existence.45_{Through such awareness, Jaspers}

claims, one is capable of examining one’s inner self and inner attitude. This inner activity in turn may lead to transcending-thinking and to the realisation of one’s true self, namely Existenz. This is Jaspers’ way of appealing to man to find his true self. He emphasises that the choice belongs to the individual.

Jaspers stresses the history of philosophical thinking, and claims that genuine philosophising has to be based on ‘understanding of history’.46_{According to Olson, Jaspers believes that there is perennial}

scope of philosophy (philosophia perennis) which has to do with ‘transcending-thinking in relation to Transcendence which is formally the same throughout history’.47 _{Indeed, for Jaspers, philosophy is}

philosophia perennis (timeless philosophy), which means eternal phi-

losophy which provides the secure grounds for philosophical think- ing. Jaspers acknowledges that his Existenzphilosophie is not new but just another form of presenting ‘the one, primordial philosophy’. He maintains some prominent elements of the Western philosophical tradition, tries to adapt them to a new milieu and rearticulates them in a different form.48_{In Jaspers’ philosophical analysis, it is clear that}

he is disappointed with traditional metaphysics, because it fails to take note of the human mode of being. He observes that traditional metaphysics is concerned with beings rather than Being itself, and tends to assimilate human existence into the mode of being of enti- ties. Jaspers rejects the idea that an empirical description of a human being as an object is sufficient to understand man in his entirety.

According to Jaspers, reality can be explained without object- ifying either the individual being or existence itself within the framework of the Encompassing that transcends the subject/object dichotomy and encompasses both subject and object. To express his own kind of metaphysics, Jaspers uses a specific term, ‘periechon- tology’, which concerns his notion of the Encompassing. In Von

der Wahrheit, Jaspers declares that his goal is ‘not ontology, but

“periechontology” – an account of the encompassing’. Indeed, there is a clear distinction between his concepts of ontology and

periechontology. Jaspers is critical of how the term ‘ontology’ is used. In his view:

Ontology purports to be a doctrine of being itself as such and as a whole. In practice, however, it inevitably becomes a particular know- ledge of something within being, not a knowledge of being itself.49

And he concludes:

Ontology, even when it includes God, is ultimately a doctrine of immanence, of the subsisting, not of Being but of the Existent, in so far as it is known by man. True philosophy must not be confused with this ontological perversion of philosophical elucidation.50

The ultimate goal in Jaspers’ philosophy is to explore, search for and unveil Being itself, which mostly escapes one’s grasp. Jaspers’ main contention is that Being itself cannot be apprehended directly as an entity, but it should be considered as a presence elicited dialogically in communication. Although it may be difficult to grasp Being itself, as there is no direct access to it, Jaspers thinks that it is possible for the human being to have some intimation of it, even though it may only be momentarily in the Augenblick experience. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to understand the relationship between Existenz and Transcendence. Jaspers also asserts that the only reality one has is that one exists ‘in Being’ and Being appears in the immediacy of the present. Thus one can have awareness of Being only through its appearance, and the search for Being gives rise to transcending-thinking:

Awakening to myself, in my situation, I raised the questions of being. Finding myself in the situation as an indeterminate possibility, I must

search for being, if I want to find my real self. But it is not till I fail in

this search for intrinsic being that I begin to philosophize. This is what we call philosophizing on the ground of possible Existenz, and the method used is transcending.51

For Jaspers transcending is cognitive transcending, that is, tran- scending through an existential-phenomenological experience of transcending-thinking (transzendierenden Denken).52_{Jaspers’ method}

of transcending-thinking mirrors the Kantian concept of reality and the self in the sense that transcending is grounded in the world of human experience. In other words, for Jaspers Kant’s critical philosophy pro- vides the foundation of the method of transcending-thinking. Kant postulates that neither the phenomenal world nor the world of Ideas is sufficient to explain the true nature of reality. However, when these two realms are viewed in the context of a dialectical relationship, then

these dimensions of existence provide the ground for human experi- ence. For Jaspers, immanence and Transcendence, which are insep- arable, operate within dialectical dualities in transcending-thinking. In his Way to Wisdom he writes:

Fundamentally we can express the reality of the world as the phe-

nomenality of empirical existence. Everything we have said thus far:

that there is an element of suspension in all modes of reality; that world systems represent merely relative perspectives; that knowledge has the character of interpretation; that being is manifested in the dichotomy of subject and object – our whole characterization of the knowledge to which man can attain – implies that objects are mere appearances; no being that we know is being in itself and as a whole.53

The task of metaphysics is to bring out the nature of the boundary within these dialectical dualities. Jaspers seems to adopt certain Kantian critical epistemological insights, such as the distinction between appearance (phenomenon) and the thing-in-itself (noumenon). Like Kant, he emphasises that ‘the structure of knowledge begins with sen- sibility’.54_{In the Jaspersian sense, this signifies the dialectic of imma-}

nence and Transcendence for possible Existenz. In short, Jaspers’ concept of transcending-thinking is, as Olson says, ‘firmly rooted in Kant’s understanding of rationality’.55

Jaspers often reiterates that the world is not illusion but appearance, and that the phenomenal world is not intrinsic Being. He is convinced that human beings are able to transcend everyday reality by means of transcending-thinking.56_{Since this existential experience is inexpress-}

ible in propositions in ordinary language, one needs the language of ciphers. Thus, metaphysics for Jaspers becomes the reading of ciphers. Accordingly, only through reading ciphers can Transcendence make itself present to us, and philosophic truth can only be communicated indirectly through existential communication of Existenz.

In Jaspers’ philosophy, the principle of transcending-thinking in the here and now has three dimensions: world orientation, elucida- tion of Existenz and speculative metaphysics. These modes of tran- scending are inseparable and ‘united in the single task of becoming

Existenz in relation to Transcendence or Being itself’.57 _Jaspers’

Philosophy is arranged in three volumes corresponding to these three

dimensions in accordance with the mode of transcending.58

The modalities of ‘World’, ‘Self’ and ‘Speculative Metaphysics’ are complementary and are representative of one’s heightened conscious- ness. They manifest themselves in moments of existential experience.

Such moments indicate different levels of man’s philosophical reflec- tion upon his being-in-the-world and existence in general. The initial, formal mode of transcending in world orientation is associated with awareness of man’s dissatisfaction with the empirical realm. This is due to the uncertain and inconclusive nature of the empirical world and its limitation. This in turn throws the individual back upon himself and he begins to raise questions which involve thinking beyond the boundaries of the objectively and empirically given. As Jaspers says, consciousness is self-reflexive. In his view, Existenz can be made clear only through Existenzerhellung (the elucidation of

Existenz).59 _{Existenzerhellung gives a description of the subjective}

experience of transcending one’s empirical mode of being. This mode of transcending elucidates one’s understanding of self-being, but not of Being itself. For Jaspers, the questions of Being and Existenz cannot be resolved at the level of ‘Dasein analysis’ alone; as he says, ‘the self is always more than I can know’.60_{And this is the crux of Jaspers’ exis-}

tence philosophy that points to an ‘other’, i.e. Transcendence, which is ‘more than the world and self’.61

Now let us turn to the relationship between philosophy and science, and philosophy and religion. As noted earlier, Jaspers’ notion of transcending-thinking manifests itself in three basic modalities of human experience: world orientation, elucidation of Existenz and metaphysics. These modalities are closely connected with the realms of science, philosophy and religion, respectively.