Karl Jaspers Quotes

There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

It is questionable whether there does not exist in man an obscure and blind will to make war; an impulse towards change, towards emergence from the familiarities of everyday life and from the stabilities of well-known conditions — something like a will to death as a will to annihilation and self-sacrifice, a vague enthusiasm for the upbuilding of a new world.

We must all continuously recapture ourselves from indecision.

Can truth be found? Is it possible to live with truth? All life-force stems from blindness. It grows from imagined knowledge, in myth taken for faith, and in the substitute myths; in unquestioning acceptance, and in mind-narrowing untruths. Within the human predicament the quest for truth presents an impossible task.

The individual who can help himself is precisely the one who wills that authority exist in the world.

(...) Cuando tenía dieciocho años me vino el pensamiento de abandonar la Iglesia. Era para mí una exigencia de autenticidad, porque el pertenecer a la Iglesia no constituía algo indiferente, sino realmente una confesión, y una confesión tal, que fomentaba mucha necedad en el mundo, puesto que con ella existía una institución que sembraba el error. (...)
Entre el destino y la voluntad/ Schicksal und Wille

Today war seems to have undergone a change of meaning, insofar as it is not a war of religion but a war of interests, not a war of conflicting cultures or civilizations but a war of national areas, not a war of human beings but a technical struggle of machines one against another and all against the non–combatant population.

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

Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such — an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive.

"Schumpeter remarked how pleased he was with the Russian Revolution. Socialism was now no longer a discussion on paper, but had to prove its viability. Max Weber responded in great agitation: Communism, at this stage in Russian development, was virtually a crime, the road would lead over unparalleled human misery and end in a terrible catastrophe. "Quite likely", Schumpeter answered, "but what a fine laboratory". "A laboratory filled with mounds of corpses", Weber answered heatedly."

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