Abstract

PERDIGAO, Antónia Cristina. A filosofia existencial de Karl Jaspers. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2001, vol.19, n.4, pp.539-557. ISSN 0870-8231.

The status of philosophy is that of the Philosophy of Existence (Existenzphilosophie). It is, therefore, extremely important to maintain open and in permanent tension its two extremes: Reason and its universality, Existence and its incommunicable singularity. In relation to the space of philosophy, it is that of the most universal truth, of the vaster reception and of the most bold decision as to understand and transcend everything or understand everything transcending. Finally, the sense of philosophy is to be the basis to life. It reveals itself to all and each man who was born to discover it and decides freely to seek it with a pure heart and conscious that this is the only way he can find it, since it is not constricted nor can, contrary to the truth, be universal. Faithful to Existence and its thought, Karl Jaspers never accepted the denomination of «existencialist» because he never defended «existencialism», that would mean reduce everything to existence transforming it into an absolute value and therefore annihilating its sense. Existence is not absolute, it is the possible Existence. It is a constant surpass of itself made of struggle, failure and philosophical faith. Existence is not a value nor a concept. It is freedom, communication, historicity: the fundamental compromise of the «I»-with-itself,-with-others-and-with-the-world. Thought, on the other hand, only has sense in a truly faithfulness to that Existence that is, in its essence, cipher of Transcendency. The value of that faithfulness concentrates on the constant decision of choice, despite failure and blame. A faithfulness that extends itself until death, where Dasein's possibilities end. In its whole, Karl Jaspers' work gives us, due to its authenticity and humanity, a hermeneutical key to the various oscillations of the being-in-the-world as an existential project. It gives us, above all, a way to a change of attitude capable of converting failure into victory and of transforming insufficiency and deception into élan and in existential certainty, death into life.

Keywords : Philosophy of Existence; Dasein; Existence; Transcendency; existential inquietude; limit-situations; freedom; choice/(to); choose; communication; historicity; failure; philosophical faith.

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