Karl Jaspers Quotes

I live in a kind of tension between the will to say yes to my suffering, and my inability to utter this yes with complete sincerity.

Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility.

Je v našem lidském založení – aspoň u nás v Evropě je tomu tak -, že jsme na jedné straně citliví k výčitkám, ale na druhé straně velmi lehce vyčítáme druhým. Nechceme si dát příliš ubližovat, ale rozhorlujeme se snadno, když morálně posuzujeme druhé. To je následek otravy moralismem. Nic nás obyčejně tak nepopuzuje jako jakýkoli náznak, že se nám dává vina. I ten, kdo je vinen, si to nechce dát říci. A dá-li si říci, nechce si to dát říci od každého. Čím větší je citlivost k výčitkám, tím větší bývá bezohlednost, s níž je člověk s to vyčítat druhým. Svět je až do malých všedních okolností plný obvinění – obvinění druhých, že způsobili nějaké neštěstí -, a tedy plný obětních beránků, kterých je všude našim zlým obviňovacím instinktům zapotřebí.

Ale u toho, kdo je vůči výčitkám popudlivý, může pozoruhodně snadno dojít k náhlému puzení vyznat se ze své viny. Taková vyznání viny - falešná, neboť sama ještě pudová a plná chtivosti – mají tento zjevný rys: protože jsou u téhož člověka živena stejnou vůlí po moci jako jejich opak, pozorujeme, jak si chce ten, kdo se vyznává, dodat hodnoty, jak se chce před druhými vyznamenat. Jeho vyznání viny má donutit i druhé k vyznání. V takovém vyznání je rys agresivity. Moralismus jako projev vůle po moci živí jak popudlivost vůči výčitkám, tak i vyznání vin, živí výčitky druhým i výčitky sobě a způsobuje, že jedno
psychologicky přechází do druhého.

Zabýváme-li se tedy filozoficky otázkami viny, je vždycky prvním požadavkem vnitřně se zabývat sebou samým.

Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward. ... We can no longer veil reality from ourselves by renouncing self-consciousness without simultaneously excluding ourselves from the historical course of human existence.

I do not know which impulse was stronger in me when I began to think: the original thirst for knowledge or the urge to communicate with man. Knowledge attains its full meaning only through the bond that unites men; however, the urge to achieve agreement with another human being was so hard to satisfy. I was shocked by the lack of understanding, paralyzed, as it were, by every reconciliation in which what had gone before was not fully cleared up. Early in my life and then later again and again I was perplexed by people’s rigid inaccessibility and their failure to listen to reasons, their disregard of facts, their indifference which prohibited discussion, their defensive attitude which kept you at a distance and at the decisive moment buried any possibility of a close approach, and finally their shamelessness, that bares its own soul without reserve, as though no one were present. When ready assent occurred I remained unsatisfied, because it was not based on true insight but on yielding to persuasion; because it was the consequence of friendly cooperation, not a meeting of two selves. True, I knew the glory of friendship (in common studies, in the cordial atmosphere of home or countryside). But then came the moments of strangeness, as if human beings lived in different worlds. Steadily the consciousness of loneliness grew upon me in my youth, yet nothing seemed more pernicious to me than loneliness, especially the loneliness in the midst of social intercourse that deceives itself in a multitude of friendships. No urge seemed stronger to me than that for communication with others. If the never-completed movement of communication succeeds with but a single human being, everything is achieved. It is a criterion of this success that there be a readiness to communicate with every human being encountered and that grief is felt whenever communication fails. Not merely an exchange of words, nor friendliness and sociability, but only the constant urge towards total revelation

Imminent seems the collapse of that which for millennium has constituted man's universe. The new world which has arisen as an apparatus for supply of the necessaries of life compels everything and everyone to serve it. It annihilates whatever it has no place for person seems to be going undergoing absorption into that which is nothing more than a means to an end, into that which is devoid of purpose of significance.

Mravnost vždy určují také cíle, které nepřesahují svět. Morálně mohu být povinen nasadit svůj život, je-li naděje na uskutečnění určitého cíle. Avšak z morálního hlediska neexistuje požadavek obětovat život, vím-li jistě, že se tím ničeho nedosáhne. Z morálního hlediska existuje požadavek dát život v sázku, ne však požadavek zvolit jistou záhubu. Morálně se v obou případech požaduje spíše opak: nečinit to, co je vzhledem k světským účelům nesmyslné, nýbrž zachovat si život pro jejich uskutečňování.

Ale je v nás vědomí viny, které má jiný zdroj. Metafyzická vina je nedostatek absolutní solidarity s člověkem jako člověkem. Tato solidarita zůstává trvalým požadavkem i tam, kde už morálně smysluplný požadavek končí. Je porušena, přihlížím-li, jak dochází k bezpráví a zločinu. Nestačí, že dávám obezřetně život v sázku, abych tomu zabránil. Jestliže k tomu dochází a jsem při tom, a zůstávám naživu, zatímco druhý je vražděn, pak je ve mně hlas, díky němuž si uvědomuji: to, že ještě žiji, je moje vina.

ყოველგვარი ახსნისა და შესაძლებელი ინტერპრეტაციის მიღმა არის არა არარა, არამედ ტრანსცენდენციის ყოფიერება

For one wishing to philosophize, it is of particular, indeed of crucial importance to ascertain the difference between the object cognition that is achieved in the sciences and the transcending thought that characterizes philosophy......which transcend[s] the limits of the knowable and of the world as a whole, so that through these limits we become aware of the phenomenality of empirical existence and hence of the Comprehensive nature of being, thus entering into the area of faith.

But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil — that is moral guilt.

Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition. The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

The general fellowship of our human situation has been rendered even more dubious than before, inasmuch as, though the old ties of caste have been loosened, a new restriction of the individual to some prescribed status in society is manifest. Less than ever, perhaps, is it possible for a man to transcend the limitations imposed by his social origins.

Existenz only becomes clear through reason; reason only has content through Existenz.

The masses are our masters; and for every one who looks facts in the face his existence has become dependent on them, so that the thought of them must control his doings, his cares, and his duties. Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstitions without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants.

Kdo se dosud z vlastního popudu neprosvěcuje a nechápe svou vinu, bude mít sklon obžalovávat žalobce