limit situation in jaspers philosophy

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Sats Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2 Philosophia Press 2006

Limit-situationAntinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers Philosophy

Jonna Bornemark

AbstractIn this paper I will discuss the concept limit-situation1as it is de-

veloped in Karl Jaspers early writings, especially his Psychologie

der Weltanschauungen and Philosophie, and explore how this concept

could be understood in a broader way. After a discussion of the con-

cepts of limit and situation I will discuss Jaspers heritage from

Kant and Kierkegaard, in whose works the concepts of antinomy andparadox are central. Antinomy is worked out in Jaspers thinking as

single limit-situations in which the human being understands her fini-

tude and openness. It is through these single limit-situations that her

world-view is shaped. Through a discussion of Jaspers communication

theory and his understanding of the mystics, I will extend the concept

of limit-situation from the single limit-situations. I will argue that the

limit-situation should be understood, not only as a concept marking

the limits of the human situation, but as a way of exploring the human

situation as limit.

Introduction

The antinomicality of existence is the limit-situation of the antinomies

(Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 220 [1932, p 251]. Translation modified,

see footnote 1.)

we become ourselves by entering with open eyes into the limit-situa-tions (Jaspers 1970, volume II, pp. 278279 [1932, p. 204]. Translation

modified.)

The concept limit-situation, as well as Jaspers philosophy in general, has

1. Limit-situation is a translation of Jaspers Grenzsituation; it is translated in other texts as

boundary situation. My reasons for choosing limit rather than boundary will become clear

later on. Because of this translational difference I have modified some quotations and translate

Grenze as limit rather than border and border situation as limit-situation.


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52 Limit-situation Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers Philosophy

not attracted much attention in the last decades.2But when we today try to

understand the human being in the paradoxical situation between the own and

the different, the concept limit-situation can be helpful. Limit-situation is,

according to Jasper, the antinomic situation that makes up a foundational condi-

tion for human beings. This theme is relatively undeveloped in the secondaryliterature, but it is a central underlying theme in existential philosophy. In this

article I will try to sort out what the concept limit-situation means and show

how the concept can be developed and used today.

During the second half of the 2020thcentury, philosophy of existence often, philosophy of existence often

became identified with existentialism. But if existentialism was formulated by

Jean-Paul Sartre in the French philosophical tradition, the Germany concept

philosophy of existence (Existenzphilosophie) was used as to charac-

terise the work of Jaspers and Heidegger, among others3

. Both Jaspers andHeidegger were very suspicious of the concept existentialism, partly because

as an ism, it tried to formulate a systematic teaching, but also because ex-

istentialism, to a far too high degree, stressed human autonomy and freedom,

and therefore was often characterized as strongly individualistic; alone with

her freedom and her choices the individual must fulfil herself and create an

autonomous and responsible existence. However Jaspers as well as Heidegger

accepted the term philosophy of existence which had a strong connection to

Kierkegaard, to whom Jaspers was one of the first to pay attention to.

Jaspers philosophy of existence to a great degree shares the same start-

ing-points as existentialism. Jaspers formulates one such starting-point as

everything is essentially real for me only through that I am myself (Jaspers

1938, p. 1, my translation). This emphasis on the existence of the self as the

beginning of all philosophy is thus a common starting-point for both Jaspers

and the existentialists. The text just quoted continues: We are not only here,

but our existence is entrusted to us as place, as a body of the realisation of

2. The concept of limit-situation seldom occupies any central position in the secondary litera-The concept of limit-situation seldom occupies any central position in the secondary litera-The concept of limit-situation seldom occupies any central position in the secondary litera-

ture. One exception is Rodriguez de la Fuentes doctoral thesis, which focuses to a high degree

on the concept limit-situation. Bollnow is another exception; he has written about Jaspers

and Heidegger and takes as his starting-point the concept of the limit-situation. Heidegger is

probably the one philosopher who, following Jaspers, has most often used the concept in his

own philosophy. The interest in Jaspers today is mostly centred around general philosophy of

existence, discussions about how different world-views can meet each other, and communica-

tion theory.

3. InIn Sein und Zeit,Heidegger has several references to JaspersPsychologie der Weltanschau-

ungen. He also directly refers to the concept limit-situation in footnotes in 49, 60, 62He also directly refers to the concept limit-situation in footnotes in 49, 60, 62

and 68.


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53Jonna Bornemark

our origin (Jaspers 1938, p. 1, my translation). This entrustment shows a

doubleness, a passivity in the entrustment, but with a call or demand for activity.

This passivity moves away from the common understanding of existentialism.

The contemporary understanding of the individual is closely connected to

existentialist philosophy. If we today want to differentiate the concept of theindividual, it is important to examine how the individual was understood in

the early philosophy of existence.

In her 1948 essay Was ist Existenz-Philosophie, Hannah Arendt, who was

Jaspers student and friend, argues that the focus upon the individual arose

from the modern individuals feeling of not belonging in the world, of being

torn out of her context. Arendt goes on to claim that if it is in the philosophy

of existence that philosophy shows signs of uttermost isolation, it is also here

that it returns from such isolation. Arendts claim is that it is far more fruitfulto understand philosophy of existence as Jaspers presents it: as a discussion

of the necessary openness, incompleteness, and dependence. This openness

constitutes Jaspers central concept of limit-situation.

How should one understand the concept limit-situation? One possible

perspective is to focus upon the limit of the situation, upon the human being

as historically and psychologically situated and to study the ways in which

her situation is limited. I will employ a different focus, which seems more

promising to me; instead of thinking of limit in terms of situation, that is, the

limits of the situation, one could think situation in terms of limit, which also

means the situation of limit. We need to examine the concept of limit as

well as situation to better understand what this means. Thereafter we need

to examine how Jaspers uses the concept of limit-situation inPhilosophie der

Weltanschauungen and inPhilosophie, volume II,4the two books in which this

concept is most strongly developed.

Limit and situation

Jaspers is the first philosopher to use the concept situation as a technicalphilosophical term (Laucken 1995, p. 924). In Philosophie (volume II, p.

201203) he defines situation as a spatial order, or more precisely, as a reality

for an interested subject, with its limitations and opportunities. A situation is a

meaningful reality, physically as well as psychologically concrete. It continually

changes and exists only in virtue of continual change. The individual also has

4. All references to this work refer to the German edition (1932), except the quotations that refer

to the English translation (1970) with the German page in brackets.


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the capacity to change the situation actively, but she can never be outside of

all situations. If she steps out of one situation she steps into another. Situation

is thereby a concept of facticity. It is the human situation, which the individual

tries to control through knowledge. What one knows about a situation forms it

at the same time as the knower is immersed withinthe situation. Knowledgecan never stand outside of the situation: on the contrary, when new knowledge

arises it changes the situation. InPsychologie der Weltanschauungen(p. 202)

Jaspers differentiates limit-situations from temporary situations, by saying

that human beings never can leave the limit-situations, in contrast to tempo-

rary situations. Limit-situation is therefore constitutive for the human being.

Even if one can leave every temporary situation, one can never leave ones

situatedness, thus situatedness as such can be understood as a constitutive

limit-situation.The concept of situation has influenced 2020th-century philosophy to a largecentury philosophy to a large

degree. Philosophers understood themselves as situated and thus repudiate the

ideal perspective of an almighty god. Instead they found their knowledge within

existential limits. To Jaspers this means that the task of philosophy no longer

is to formulate universal doctrines; rather, philosophy is a unsetteling activity,

an uprooting of the situation even if this activity at the same time formulates

and orders. Jaspers further develops the concept of situation inPhilosophie

(volume II, p. 210 ff), in a discussion about the determination and historicity

of existence as a foundational limit-situation. By historicity, Jaspers means

that human beings always exist in a certain situation with an uncertain future.

Freedom is the capacity to accept the situation and with all its hindrances and

possibilities and make it ones own. Although the limit-situations are universal

and experienced by everyone, each individuals personal situation interacts

with the universal limit-situations in different and unique ways. This means

that all beings are to be understood as historical phenomena. This also means

that the relationship between the individual and the universal is reshaped (even

though this to Jaspers does not mean a negation of the universal). Historicityis universal since it means that everything is situated, but also since our way

of expressing historicity itself is historically bound.

Jaspers emphasis on situation shows the influence of Kierkegaardian phi-

losophy. Limit-situation concerns the specific individual as a foundational

structure. The paradoxes that the limit-situations carry are of concern not only

as an abstract mind-game but especially in factual life. Heidegger develops

this concept of the facticity of the situation further. He emphasises a concept of

situation that is partly founded on the determination of the being-in-the-world,

while at the same time this determination can only occur through openness.


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55Jonna Bornemark

Situation is exactly this determined openness that characterizes the being of

human beings (Heidegger 1993, p. 299). This structure that Heidegger bringsHeidegger 1993, p. 299). This structure that Heidegger bringsThis structure that Heidegger brings

forth (with explicit reference to Jaspers in the same paragraph) is also present,

though not as explicitly, in Jaspers texts. This openness can be understood

partly as a primary openness that allows a certain determination, but also asthat life that a certain situation opens up for, the same opening that is the

meaning of every life.5The concept of situation thus carries a double meaning

of determination and openness, but puts the emphasis on determination. We

can thus understand situation as the limit between an opening and a determi-

nation, which leads us to the second concept in focus here: limit, or rather

the German Grenze.

The history of the German philosophical concept Grenze is closely inter-

twined with the concept of Schranke. Both these concepts arose as theoreticalconcepts in German in the 1818thcentury. Schranke originates from a translation. Schranke originates from a translation

of the Latin limes and terminus (Fulda 1974, p. 875). Limes refers to a

border between two fields and terminus means determined border but also

border-mark or border-stone, as well as the personification of this border,

the border-god. Schranke can thus be understood as a border that splits

something similar into two parts, a border within a homogeneous area, which

in principle produces two similar parts. I will here use border to translate

Schranke.

Kant developed Schranke as the limitation of the finite, as lack, and under-

stood Schranke as derived from the more foundational concept of Grenze.

The concept of Grenze first got its meaning from the concept of the limit in

infinitesimal calculus and is understood by Kant as a negation that excludes

any belonging to a greater whole. A limit in this sense is that which contains

its own perfection; it refers to the point after which there can be no greater

value. This kind of limit can be understood as a philosophical interpretation

of the limit-value of infinitesimal calculus, the point of inflection of a graph

and after which no higher value can be reached. Kant claims that mathemat-ics and natural sciences only admit borders: something is always excluded,

something exists that the science, by definition, does not include. Science

tries, for example, to explain a part of reality that can be added to another

part (partes extra partes). Metaphysics, on the other hand, leads to the limits

of reason, the uttermost possibility of appearance. But Grenze still keeps

a positive meaning since it is the place where appearance touches upon the

5. This thought is also developed by Hannah Arendt.


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thing-in-itself, that which is beyond experience but which still needs to be as-

sumed and thereby thought, or it is rather included in thinking, even though it

can never be explicit. Appearance and the thing-in-itself are not two parts of

one reality; the thing-in-itself marks instead the limitation of reason. That the

thing-in-itself can not be thought on its own, that is, be represented, does notmean that it is not included in thought. The thing-in-itself points to that within

appearance that also points to an outside. Kant therefore means that humans

always exist on the limit (which is an argument that Jaspers emphasises even

further). This utterly other thereby delimits experience at the same time

as knowledge is always founded on the knowers relationship to this radical

alterity (see Kant 1985, 57).

Jaspers is to a very large extent influenced by Kants understanding of the

concept Grenze. Grenze or limit is not only relevant to knowledge inJaspers thinking, but it is also, as we will see, an even more important concept

for understanding human finitude. This finitude signifies the impossibility for

human existence to include everything, either in knowledge or in life. The

human being is surrounded by limits. It is in connection to this that we can

understand limit-situations as an expression for the limit of the situation, as

an expression for the insight that humans exist as limited by their situation.

But limit also marks that there is something else: The word limitimplies that

there is something else, but it indicates at the same time that this other thing

is not for an existing consciousness (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 179 [1932,

p. 203], translation modified).One problem in Jaspers philosophy is that he

marks this radical otherness assomethingother, which leads to an understand-

ing of his concept of transcendence as a transcendent something6(Jaspers

concept of transcendence has a close relation to Kants thing-in-itself). This

understanding and formulation easily leads to a misunderstanding of limit

as border. The risk consists in understanding the limit between the empirical

and the transcendent as a border between two areas, a border that can only be

seen from a birds-eye view. Such an understanding of limit can be found inJaspers writings when he claims, for example, that the limit-situations are

like a wall we run into, a wall on which we founder (Jaspers 1970, volume II,

p 178 [1932, p. 203]). Nevertheless, Jaspers philosophy in large part strongly

emphasises that such a birds-eye perspective, which can observe both sides of

a border, is impossible. It is not through knowledge that the radical alterity of

6. This trait in Jaspers philosophy was later developed into what he called periechontologie,

in which the transcendent is expressed as an all-embracing something.


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57Jonna Bornemark

the transcendent has meaning. We could instead, borrowing a phenomenologi-

cal term, say that this other side is appresented. The wall in the quotation

would not mean anything if one could not have a relationship to the other

side. It is exactly the unreachability of the other side that requires that we

understand Grenze not as border but as limit.This limit can thus not be thought from a birds eye perspective. Limit is

instead my finitude and inability, the limit of my ability. To be surrounded

by limits, to be delimited, is usually understood as being closed off or as an

introversion since there is something that can not be reached. But since this

should not be understood as a somethingin Jaspers concept of the limit-situ-

ation, this inability rather means an openness and a respect for that which can

not be thought or formulated. The opposite way of thinking is an immanence

where the I can understand everything and thus does not respect the other-ness of the other. It implies an over-confidence in the possibility of including

everything in ones own thinking. The limit as that which delimits the I

thereby also means an openness. That which limits also contains the possibility

for openness. To be limitless means to be inclusive and closed, whereas the

limit makes openness possible. To be open one needs to have limits. Limitation

also requires a location: individuals are situated on one side of the limit and

the limit thereby gives one situation. Limit and situation thus both contain a

doubleness. A situation is a determination that demands and creates an open-

ness in the shapes of a life with possibilities. In a similar way a limit makes

openness possible by establishing a situating limit. Limit-situation can be said

to double this doubleness. Jaspers analyses this structure of doubleness under

the concept of antinomy.

Antinomies as constitutionJaspers borrowed the concept of the antinomy from Kant whose thoughts on

the ideas Jaspers considered so central that he included a discussion of them

in an appendix toPsychologie der Weltanschuungen. We therefore need brieflyto explore Kants thoughts in order to understand Jaspers concept of antinomy.

In Kantian philosophy, the fragmented knowledge of the senses is ordered by

the categories of understanding, and as such they differ from the ideas that are

related to the Kantian concept of reason. In contrast to sensory knowledge,

the ideas relate to things that seem to be objects for the mind, but turn out to

be something different since they can not be thought without giving arise to

antinomies. The antinomies arise since ideas relate to a totality, but a totality

that is never given. But this does not mean that the ideas are meaningless; onthe contrary, they are necessary for systematic thinking and for all systematic


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understanding of experience. Systematic thinking needs regulative ideas that

precede the system and give it its comprehensive framework, a framework

within which knowledge and experience can be understood. Kant mainly

describes three ideas: 1) the idea of the full subject, that is the I or soul,

which is related to immortality, 2) the complete succession of conditions thatis formulated as world or cosmos, and 3) a complete concept, the whole

or God. These ideas are transcendent, which means that they exceed every

experience, at the same time as they are regulative. Therefore these ideas can

never become objects of experience. This transcendent quality of the ideas on

some occasions lead to antinomies, i.e. the ideas produce contrary thesies that

both seem to follow from the idea. Kant argues that these antinomies can only

be solved within his transcendental idealism by separating appearance from

the thing-in-itself (Jaspers 1919, s. 408428).Jaspers 1919, s. 408428).).It is obvious that Jaspers here uses Kants concepts of ideas and antino-

mies for his own purposes. But he states that he, in contrast to Kant, mean

that the antinomies do not only affect theoretical knowledge but also, and

above all shapes our concrete lives. He also claims that the antinomies can

never find a final solution in any philosophical doctrine. Jaspers finds support

from Kierkegaard in this criticism of Kant. The Kantian antinomies argue that

two well-founded statements that can be developed from the same maxim or

idea are incompatible. Kierkegaard uses the concept of paradox to denote the

meaning of the antinomies but also to characterise this incompatibility as an

unknowable and unsolvable thought. For Kierkegaard paradox signals a real

relationship; it is the category that expresses the human relationship to god

(Malantschuk 1977, p. 277280). For Kierkegaard the central characteristic ofMalantschuk 1977, p. 277280). For Kierkegaard the central characteristic of). For Kierkegaard the central characteristic of

the antinomy/paradox is thus not logical contradiction, which marks the limits

of knowledge. Rather, paradox is an expression for that which can not and

should not be solved.

Jaspers keeps the term antinomies but agrees with Kierkegaard that these

can never find satisfying solutions. Jaspers also expands this concept and arguesthat both the world and human existence should be understood as occurring in

an antinomical split. The antinomies are thus constitutive and a foundational

condition of life. The antinomies are, like contrasting colours, dependent

upon each other and produce their opposite. Attempts at solutions can only be

temporary since the opposites constitute each other.

InPsychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 204 ff.) Jaspers divides the an-

tinomies into three groups: logical opposites (x or non-x), real opposites (life

or death) and value opposites (useful or harmful). The logical opposites stand

at the limit, served to delimit the human consciousness from the infinite. In


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opposition to Kant, as we have seen, Jasper argues that the dialectical solu-

tions that are offered for the antinomies are only technical solutions. These

antinomies seldom create despair, since they are mostly antinomies of thinking

and not relevant for the whole existential individual. But ones relation to the

antinomies lays the foundation for the way in which one shapes a conceptionof the world. The opposite pairs of the antinomies, though dependent upon

each other, are isolated and made absolute and seemingly independent when

the mind allies itself with one pole against the other. Jaspers claims that only

mystic thinking functions differently; we will come back to this claim. Because

of this dualism, all rational thinking sooner or later falls into contradictions

within the system; Jaspers calls this failure or crack (Scheitern). This

crack is at the same time a negative name for an opening, for existence as a

whole remains unfinished. Wherever it might tend to come to a conclusion,there are antinomies to prevent it(Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 218 f., [1932, p.

250]). According to Jaspers, this openness is a necessary structure that makesAccording to Jaspers, this openness is a necessary structure that makes

thinking possible. Without the relationship to this otherness and infinitude

thinking as a changing process would be impossible.

The antinomical structure is the final and enabling thought necessary to

thinking, but in practical life it poses a problem that needs to be solved or

actively handled. As active beings humans need to act one way or another;

this need is the final proof of human finitude. Theoretically one can always

strive towards an understanding and inclusion of all perspectives (even if this

striving always fails), but in concrete decisions one needs to make excluding

choices. The value-contraries also belong to life. Every value demands the

existence of something of less worth, and every value is thereby also a value

that excludes another. The value-contraries are, as we will see, closely con-

nected to the specific limit-situations of guilt and struggle.

Jaspers understands all art, philosophy, poetry, religion etc, as attempts to cre-

ate harmonious solutions to the antinomies attempts that for the most part are

unconscious of the deceitfulness of their task. For individuals, the antinomiescan function as motivating forces to action and development, but they can also

lead to paralysis, frustration and cynicism. Alternatively, one can handle the

antinomies by closing ones eyes to them and letting the opposites live side

by side (which is often called double moral standards), or, more commonly,

by taking a dogmatic position, i.e. making one side absolute and ignoring the

other and thereby becoming able to act with full force. The antinomical situa-

tion always leads to an eternal process with an infinite number of solutions.

Jaspers agrees with both Kant and Kierkegaard when he states that the human

being never stays within the concrete finite, but that the concrete finite always


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has both a finite and an infinite character. The concrete finite needs the infinity

of the ideas to make a structure for action possible (even if Kant emphasises the

epistemological aspect); it is thus the antinomical structure that drives humans

forward and makes action possible. Jaspers, Kant and Kierkegaard also agree

that the transcendent only has significance within the sphere of immanence,that it is uninteresting and impossible to understand the transcendent solely

in terms of itself. The Kantian antinomies are, as we have seen, first and fore-

most antinomies of thinking, antinomies that are to be solved in a system. For

Jaspers, the antinomies signify the end of logical thinking, but to enable life to

be lived, they continually need to find temporary solutions. It is in this passage

from logical antinomies to unavoidable situations, which we continually need

to solve, that Jaspers starts to use the concept of limit-situation.

Specific limit-situations where we meet our opennessThe antinomies become crucial and urgent for every human life in the specific

limit-situations. InPsychologie der Weltanschauungen, and to a lesser degree

in Philosophie, limit is understood mainly as an opposition between two

contrasting concepts. These oppositions are antinomies in the sense that they

are both necessary for human life, and at the same time exclusive of each

other. The contradiction can not be solved since both poles are necessary,

both sides of the opposition need instead to be fulfilled. Both sides thus need

to be maintained and allowed. But the two sides are not equal; instead, one

side is usually understood as positive and the other as negative. One side is

saved at the expense of the other, and at the same time the positive needs to

be saved from the negative. But if one succeeds in dissolving the negative

side, the positive side will also be dissolved, since the negative is bound to

the positive, or rather the other way around; the negative pole is always the

primary to Jaspers, as life is bound to death.7One can never avoid or reduce

these limit-situations to something else; on the contrary, they are what form

ones seeing. Nor can they be explained or deduced from something else. Thespecific limit-situations, which are most clearly characterized as opposites,

are death and contingency:

1) InPhilosophie(p. 220 ff.), as well as inPsychologie der Weltanschau-

ungen (p. 229 ff.) death is characterized as the ultimate limit of all limits. It is

obvious through human mortality that the individual is not eternal and that she

always dies before she is completed; that is, her potential is never completely

7. Jaspers is closer to Heidegger than to Arendt on this point.


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61Jonna Bornemark

fulfilled. New life demands the death of old life at the same time as all life

is only life since it is mortal. Jaspers also points out that mortality in itself

is antinomically split, since although it is what gives attention to ones own

individuality, to human facticity and specific situation, it is at the same time

death that is common to all beings. Death only really happens to me; that isones own death signals a definite ending. Yet at the same time death always

occurs and the world keeps on going in spite of this.

2) Contingency and necessity are only mentioned as limit-situations inPsy-

chologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 239 ff). Contingency is there described as

a limit-situation in which all reality and knowledge is understood as a selection

from the infinite. The specific context might be necessary but the principle of

selection is always a contingency. The antinomy consists in the need to un-

derstand the world as necessary and coherent, at the same time as the worldshows itself as coincidental, chaotic and non-coherent and thereby impossible

to grasp from all aspects. The two sides are always limited by each other at the

same time as they are dependent upon each other. The discovery of coherence

demand something non-coherent that can be understood. The non-coherent,

can at the same time, only be thought from out of the search for coherence.

Psychologie der Weltanschauungen also treats the specific limit-situations

of struggle and guilt. But in these limit-situations a positive opposite cannot

be found to the same extent. Rather their antinomical structure opens up an

abyss in which the finitude of the self is understood. InPhilosophiethis abyssis emphasized to an even greater extent at the expense of the dualistic rela-

tionship. In this book suffering is also described as a specific limit-situation

(p. 230 ff).

3) Suffering is a characterization of our finitude within life. Suffering is

often understood as something that can be avoided through, for example, the

development of medicine and science. But to avoid to understand suffering as

a necessary part of human life leads to self-deception and a failure of seeing

the existential meaning of suffering. To avoid suffering can for example mean

a refusal to allow other human beings to come close, since with proximity

comes the power to harm. To avoid this limitation in myself thereby limits

me even further. By accepting suffering, on the other hand, one can bear ones

cross, facing suffering and accept that it belongs to me. Of course I try to

free myself from suffering, but I understand at the same time that it belongs to

me. I do not try to blame it or project it on someone else; instead I realize that

there is no such thing as a solution that is perfect in every respect. No matter

what choices one makes in life, a certain amount of suffering is unavoidable.

Pure happiness would be emptiness. True happiness must contain risk-takingand rebuilding with it.


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4) Death and suffering are situations to which humans will always be exposed,

without any action demanded from the subject. But there are limit-situations

that start out from actions. These are, as discussed in Philosophie(p. 227 ff

and 242 ff) the limit-situations of struggle and guilt. These limit-situations are

unavoidable results from ones own acting. Since acting can not be avoided,neither can the limit-situations. Trying to avoid them will only recreate them

in a different form or negate ones own self. Struggle can not be avoided, since

all acting is in favour of something and in the face of some kind of resistance.

Whatever is in favour of one thing is also necessarily against something else.

Cooperation is not a solution to this, since it basically repeats the same structure

in larger numbers. The struggle becomes an existential limit-situation when it

has to be understood from the first person perspective out of which I real-

ize that I need to fight in favour of something even though I do not have anyabsolute arguments for this something. It becomes an existential limit-situation

when I realize that the struggle needs to be carried out even though there is a

lack of foundation, when I accept that that which is important to me remains

important even though never absolute.

All action also carries existential guilt since all actions have unforeseen and

maybe unwanted consequences. Guilt is the limit-situation in which I feel

guilty for being unable to do justice to all perspectives. The human beings

experience of her inability to perform universal acts makes her understand

herself as finite. The only other solution would be not to act at all and thereby

to negate ones own existence. A life always needs to be a specific life, to be

my life; guilt thus points back to the situatedness and facticity of a singular

human being. Rationality leads to attempts to defend singular acts, my acts,

and transforming them into universal acts, our acts, and thereby building a

system to explain the actions as the best possible choices in order to get away

from existential guilt.

The oppositional pairs of the limit-situations are described as a field of tension

in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. This means that every human beingis realised through his or her position in this field of tension, that is, through

temporary solutions to the limit-situations. The impossibility of a completely

satisfying solution also carries dissatisfaction with it; all sides can not be

lived to their maximum. There is no ideal solution for all perspectives, there

are only temporary compromises and choices. Of course different persons

solve or handle the limit-situations in different ways and in different ways at

different times in life. This is what founds the differences between human be-

ings and between different world-views, the differences thatPsychologie der

Weltanschauungen wants to examine.


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63Jonna Bornemark

InPhilosophie the limit-situations are rather described as situations that put

humans in front of an abyss. The point here is the insolvability of the antinomy,

the fact that the contradiction can not be solved but only deepened by clear

thoughts. The antinomy can not become a whole, but instead puts individu-

als at the limit. That is, inPhilosophiethe relationship to the insolvability isemphasised when earlier, inPsychologie der Weltanschauungen, the plurality

of solutions was in focus. Rather than a choice within a field of tension, limit-

situation is here described as a leap into the unknown, which clearly shows

Kierkegaards influence on Jaspers (see Kierkegaard 1997, on Kierkegaards

concept of leap, see also Khnhold 1975).

The specific limit-situations all point towards this paradoxical underlying

structure. Jaspers specific limit-situations are some examples of concrete

limit-situations, concrete expressions of the limit-situation of the human beingthat underlies all the specific examples. According to Jaspers it is through this

paradoxical structure that human life can exist in all its variations.

Shell and leap to live in limit-situationPsychologie der Weltanschauungen describes, as we have seen, how an infi-

nite number of reactions to limit-situations create the infinite multitude of the

world. This process almost always comes to a seemingly stabile solution in a

static world-view with a highest good. These static world-views are most often

characterized by Jaspers as dogmatic and dualistic. The living process (der

lebendige Proze) is Jaspers name for the way we react to limit-situations

and thereby create world-views. Jaspers emphasises, though, that no single

concept is general enough to capture this process since the process is itself also

an antinomical structure. In his own attempts to articulate the inarticulable,

Jaspers argues that the living process creates a shell (Gehuse), a stable

structure within which we can live. This shell founds a structure that is often

understood as unchangeable; it orders the world and oneself within the world

and thereby makes it graspable. These shells create life forms, world-views,and beliefs. Jaspers uses the image of the shell of a mussel as a metaphor for

this house of objectivity and he phrases the dependence upon this shell in the

following way: When the shell no longer exists the human being can not

live any more, as little as a mussel whose shell is taken away (Jaspers 1919,

p. 248, my translation).8This process, which is life itself, brings with it a

8. Heidegger, following Jaspers, also uses the concept Gehuse in Sein und Zeit, 13, p.

60.


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continual metamorphosis, a continuing renewal of shell. The shell fixes the

way an individual has chosen to solve the limit-situations. The human being

thereby tries to escape the suffering of the limit-situation by creating a shell.

We can here recognise one of the most central themes of existentialism as well

as of philosophy of existence. That central theme is the constant search for

peace and order, the refusal to accept continual movement. Humans want to

justify what they do from an objective rationality instead of taking absolute

responsibility for the living forces upon themselves. According to Jaspers

the paradoxes arise no matter which life-strategy is chosen. The extremes are

nihilism and dogmatism: the paradox of nihilism is the choice to continue

ones own life while at the same time stating that it is not worth more than

any other life. One thereby risks becoming a pure spectator to ones own life,

unable to participate and act in favour of the own life and the own values. Theparadox of dogmatism is total conviction, in contrast to an acknowledgement

of the finitude of the self. Dogmatists close their eyes to the antinomies and

acknowledge only one side as absolute being. InPhilosophie(volume II, p. 204

ff) these two extremes are complemented with a third: If the singular human

being enters the limit-situations with her eyes open, with awareness of their

insolvability, the limit-situations force her to take three leaps:

1) After the insight that limit-situations can not be avoided, one tries to un-

derstand them through theorizing them. One thereby tries to reshape oneselfinto a universal will to knowledge. This isolation of knowledge leads to a

distance from oneself since one sees oneself from the outside. One thereby

also understands the limit-situations from the outside. One tries to become a

pure eye without an eye. This attempt can also be characterized as a negation

of ones own facticity. But one can never succeed completely in stepping

outside of oneself; one rather keeps searching for a way to do it. Theoretical

knowledge can only help when the situation is transparent, but the limit-situ-

ations are never completely transparent.2) This leads to the second leap. The I can not grasp the limit-situations with

theoretical knowledge since they arent transparent, Ican only grasp them

existentially. I thereby realize that I, as the historical, empirical self I am, need

to take active part in illuminating the limit-situations. The world is not only

an object for my knowledge, an object that I can remain unaffected by; on the

contrary, the limit-situations force me to risk my own life, the basis for all

theorizing activity. I thereby understand the importance of facticity, but I do

not succeed in realizing what I know as philosophizing. But this knowledge, or

meta-knowledge, prepares me for what I can be. Jaspers thus calls it possible


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65Jonna Bornemark

Existenz in contrast to mere empirical or mundane existence.9

3) The third leap involves realizing this knowledge through real Existenz in

limit-situations. I am not only an individual with single situations that I need

to handle; the limit-situations touch me as Existenz, that is, they reveal my

own potential and thereby shows that myself means something more than an

empirical I. I am not only an empirical thing in a world, but I discover myself

in both everyday life and the transcendent. I discover that I myself need to take

responsibility for my very own relationship to transcendence.

These three leaps thereby result in a transition from empirical being to

Existenz, from the empirical world to a discovery of, or rather the develop-

ment of a conscious relationship to, transcendence.10Jaspers understands

this transcendence as necessary for all subject-object relations. This ordinary

form of experience needs the transcendent in the form of ideas, since empiri-cal existence is founded on this and asks questions that can not be answered

within the empirical framework, questions such as: What am I, this experienc-

ing subject? What is the uttermost cause for the objects? What is this world

that the objects and subject share? Humans have always more or less thought

through answers to these questions, preliminary answers that function as a

framework and structure for empirical knowledge. It is the discovery of that

something is lacking in these answers that leads to the three leaps, and thereby

to a conscious relationship to the transcendent. This discovery is a new attituderather than a discovery of new facts. The transcendent does not function as an

answer, rather Jaspers understands the transcendent as: the wholly Other that

makes it [Existenz]aware of being not by itself alone (Jaspers 1970, volume

II, p. 4 [1932, 2]). Founded by this dependence the existence comes forth

as freedom, as an open opportunity and an opening in the transcendent. The

limit here steps forth in its full power as an opening. The transcendent means

that I speakfrom out of, rather than speak about (as a subject speaks about an

object). The transcendent is thereby not to be understood as an unreachablebeyond, but as an opening that is kept open by the antinomies: Wherever it

[existence] might tend to come to a conclusion, there are antinomies to prevent

it (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 218 f. [1932, 250]).

The specific limit-situations can thereby be said to show the antinomical

9. I here follow the translation ofPhilosophieby E. B. Ashton, who keeps the german concept

Existenz untranslated.

10. These leaps should not be understood as a chronology that leads to an enlightened human

being; it is not a one-way development, but different attitudes between which I move.


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structure of life, a structure that can be investigated further as an underlying

structure of limit-situation. This structure is developed in Jaspers description

of the meaning of intersubjectivity and of the mystics. As we have seen Jaspers

uses the concept of limit-situation in two slightly different ways. He emphasises

either the dualistic state of opposition or the abyss that these contraries openup. These two attitudes will be explored further in the following sections.

Communication I through youOne part of Jaspers philosophy that recently has attracted much attention is his

theory of communication, which argues that intersubjectivity is foundational to

human existence.11Already in hisPsychologie der WeltanschauungenJaspers

points out that the I should be understood as more than an object among others

in the world. InPhilosophie he develops this position and points out that:

I is a pronoun and a form in which the language seeks to express the

unique character of a being that is not an object but identifies itself as

I. The I which we were discussing, on the other hand, is an artificial

noun, a solecistic construction that has become habitual in philoso-

phizing where it enables the I to be an imaginary object (Jaspers 1970,

volume II, p. 27 [1932, 27]).

Instead of understanding the I as an objectified self, we should understand it as

an idea, something that can never fully be expressed, but can only be encircled

by a variety of antinomies. Especially in hisPsychologie der Weltanschauungen

Jaspers brings forth the antinomical situation of the I as something that is at

once part of the general and something specific, at once always changing and

yet continual, at the same time free and necessary. Yet another antinomical

structure is developed inPhilosophie(volume II, p. 45 ff) when the I am

is given two meanings: 1) the empirical I, that which is always becoming in

time and whose future this I can decide upon. The empirical I is one object

among others, the specific traits of my personality. 2) Existentially, I am isnot a statement about a fact; it is instead a non-objectifying act where I am

reveals the existential I as an appearance from out of the eternal. The existential

I needs to take responsibility for this appearance. The limit-situation of guilt

means that a specific I can be created, a specific I created out of its special

11. Jaspers here anticipates Levinass aim to prioritize the ethical. In fact neither for Levinas

or Jaspers theory of communication means a theory of dialogue. See Lichtigfeld (1996) for a

closer discussion on Levinas and Jaspers.


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67Jonna Bornemark

choices. (Whereas for the empirical I, the limit-situations mean the death of

thinking.) The existential I is in itself no steady ground. It is rather exactly

the ambiguous point at which the empirical I comes forth and, as appearance,

creates itself; the point at which the existential I, as created out of eternity,

does not create itself.Both meanings of I am are closely connected with the surrounding world

and other selves. The I grasps itself only in relation to everything else which

is not I in other words, in relation to the world it is in (Jaspers 1970, vol-

ume II, p. 27 [1932, p. 26]). The empirical I is created in interaction with the

other and with other objects. The consciousness that is the knowing subject

needs objects, something to be directed towards, in order to be conscious at

all. Self-consciousness, in its turn, requires other self-consciousnesses since

it can not ask and answer alone. The I is never created independently, italways needs others to be reflected in and to relate to. The consciousness of

the limit-situations and the finitude of the self, forces it to accept and listen

to other consciousnesses, the lack and insufficiency of the self opens it to the

other. The I always strives toward independence, but this process also requires a

you that also strives towards independence. Communication must take place

between two unique selves to save the I from falling into non-consciousness.

To be a myself one thus needs to avoid losing oneself, but neither can the

I isolate itself since it then becomes only a punctual emptiness. True human

Existenz thus demands a communicating self-consciousness, a differentiated

duality. Only with the possibility of communication that is, only with another

with whom to communicate can one also feel loneliness. If one does not risk

being alone, the I will lose itself in the other. This situation forms one of the

antinomies of the self: I am only through others and at the same time I must

be and am an independent I. Communication manifests the I at the same time

as it risks it, since the existence of the self not realized until it is engaged in

communication. Neither the I nor the other exist as true selves before the com-

municative encounter. [N]either the I nor the other have a solid substance ofbeing previous to our communication. [] This is why the way we become

ourself in communication seemed like a creation out of nothing (Jaspers 1970,

volume II, p. 64 [1932, p. 70]). The I is thereby manifested not by its kernel,

but by its borders to the other.12Thus there is also always the risk of arresting

communication if the I too much understands me and you as solid selves.

The self thus risks becoming solipsistic.

12. This thought has a close parallel in Diedier Anzieus The skin ego.


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Jaspers argues that this creation ex nihilo is at the same time a creation from

eternity. The process of creation takes place through an antinomical process

between oneself and another. By always separating oneself out of the stream

of experiences and thoughts, the I makes itself into an object among many, an

object that has the capacity to experience the others and the self as differenti-ated objects among other objects. It is thus the same process that leads to the

objectification of the self as to the objectification of other things in the world.

The I and the other are both dependent upon this process. This objecti-

fication of the self is necessary for ones own freedom, for the I to be able to

see the possibilities for this I. Without such objectification the I couldnt

understand or have any knowledge of itself. As self-consciousness, the I is in

the same antinomical way dependent upon other self-consciousnesses.

The limit-situation is thus foundational to the I. The empirical I arises in

a drawing of a boundary through which different objects are separated from

each other, the empirical objectified I on the one side and other objects on the

other side. The existential I am is this drawing of a line. It is the I in the

transcendent, the constant presence of there is more to me still (Jaspers 1970,

volume II, p. 33 [1932, p. 34]. In German: Ich bin noch anderes).

The human activity that most consistently tries to reach this drawing of a line

and leave the antinomical dualism is, according to Jaspers mysticism.

The mystics turning point of the limit-situationIn this drawing of a line the mystics estrange themselves from the empirical self;

they retreat from the I as an object as well as from the I as a subject separated

from other subjects and objects. Jaspers sees this process as a betrayal of the

world and thereby as a kind of suicide. The I as we know it is also annihilated

in the mystical aspiration; this makes such attempts both intellectually and

morally objectionable to Jaspers.

InPhilosophieJaspers contrasts the mystic with the positivist. The positivist

accepts only the purely mundane, empirical world and does not accept anything

that is not within the totally immanent world, anything that does not strive or

point out of itself. He tries to avoid the openness that the limit-situations reveal

to him as far as possible. He can not see the open and inexplicable aspects of

life the very aspects that make life into life since he reduces everything

to mechanics.

The mystic, on the other hand, focuses on the opening that is revealed by the

crack of the antinomies.13But such a focus carries with it several complications.

13. Several contemporary commentators have noted the similarity between Jaspers focus on


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69Jonna Bornemark

One of them, which Jaspers points out inPsychologie der Weltanschauungen,

is that the mystical experience is ambiguous and impossible to fully express

in language, since it exceeds the split between subjects and objects that lan-

guage and its users are normally completely dependent on. But the mystical

experience, as an overcoming of the split between subject and object, is notexclusively mystical. It is possible for anyone to experience a similar excess; to

a certain degree and in a certain way, it is always present in human experience.

It is in this sense that Jaspers wants to use the mystic experience in a positive

and not self-negating way. Examples of everyday experiences that border on

the mystical include the feeling of absorption into nature, or the feeling of

waking up from deep sleep or narcosis. In these situations one can experience

the non-definitive character of ones own borders; one can experience ones

own subject as incompletely separated from the surrounding world. The I ishere, as well as in the specific limit-situations, opened up by a lived experience

centred around or on the lack of borders.

Jaspers understands the Kantian ideas as the experience that lacks the sub-

jectobject distinction that is necessary to keep the categories and concepts

of the understanding alive. It is thus in this Kantian sense that mysticism is

fruitful to Jaspers. That is, the mystical focus proves rich only in relation to

the mundane world of objects and never in the pure transcendence that Jaspers

understand mystics to be searching for. The objectless experience is objectified

only through the synthesis that the ideas try to express; they are thus com-

municable and repeatable.

The extremes that Jaspers criticises are thus the positivism of pure object

knowledge, which transforms the world into dead mechanics, and mysticism

without communication, concepts or speculative thinking, which is a kind of

suicide, a complete erasure of empirical being. Pure mysticism betrays the

world while pure positivism makes the living world impossible. Neverthe-

less, the synthesis between these two extremes leads to an infinite, continu-

ing, changing process in which object-subjectless experience is immediatelytransformed into mundane ideas. The ideas are thus Jaspers middle way, the

fruitful way through which mystical experience can be understood. Jaspers thus

understands Kantian ideas and the mystical experience as necessary elements

of the process that creates the meaning of objects.

the possibility of questioning everything and the impossibility of absolute names and medieval

negative theology. See for example Rodriguez de la Fuente (1983, p. 136) or Langley (1993,

p. 354).


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This is, to Jaspers, an always ongoing process. The relation to the infinite

is not something humans sometimes have and sometimes do not have, it is

rather an ongoing relation that humans can be more or less aware of. We can

thus understand specific limit-situations as one kind of expression of the limit-

situation as the constitutive structure of human existence. Limit-situationscan be said to formulate the human as Existenz, as the limit between the finite

and the infinite, as the place in which the infinite is formed and formulated as

something finite.

Concluding discussionI have here given limit-situation a wider extension than Jaspers does. Jaspers

rarely uses the concept of limit-situation outside of his discussion of specific

limit-situations. Nevertheless, he implicitly shows how the antinomical struc-ture, which is first formulated as the limit-situations of the human being, also

constitutes the I. The I is not primarily an existing substance that finds itself

in a present situation and then, in a second step, discovers its limits. Instead,

the I arises through a situation and through a drawing of a limit.

We have seen, in the discussion of the specific limit-situations, how two

nuances of limit-situation appear. The dualistic structure was clearer in Psy-

chologie der Weltanschauungen, while in Philosophie, Jaspers stresses the

abyss that the limit-situation lays bare. Perhaps Grenzsituation could more

accurately be translated as border-situation in the first book and as limit-

situation in the second, since the first focuses on a separating border and the

second on the abyss that the self stands in front of. The same nuances come

back in the two meanings that can be found in I am: the I am is partly

the dualistic structure in which the I only appears as an opposite pole to the

objects, and partly the self-consciousness that only appears as an opposite to

other self-consciousnesses. That is, the I is an I that always needs to be related

to another. This dualistic structure also shows itself as the relation between

being and non-being, that is, being in relation to the transcendent as the non-being. It is the transcendent in the qualification of non-being that makes this

concept necessary for Jaspers. The opposite would be an immanence in which

the other side of the border is a specific and known other, and it is here that we

see the slide between border and limit. It is this dualistic structure between

being and non-being that leads to the second meaning of I am, as well as

to the second nuance of limit-situation, the one that points to the abyss of the

limit-situation. I am, as Existenz, refers to the point in which the I and the

ideas are formulated, the ambiguous position at which the dualistic structureis born. The I is at once one sideof the border and theborder. Jaspers wants to


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71Jonna Bornemark

point out that it is this second meaning of I am that is more foundational.

Jaspers formulates this abyss that comes forth as the transcendent. He

points out that [t]he place of transcendence is neither this side nor that side, but

limit (Jaspers 1932, volume III, my translation). As we can see, transcendence

should not be understood as the other side of a border; transcendence is ratherthe zero point that gives birth to the one and the other. That is, transcendence

is the primary limit that gives birth to the two sides of the border. The second

I am is understood and realized in the third leap, the leap in which the self

finds itself in transcendence. The I and the transcendent converge in a strange

process in which the dualistic structure reveals itself once again, with the non-

being of transcendence being doubled by the being of the I. The I is originally

situated in the transcendent.

After having discussed the conceptions of limit as border and limit as themaximum of ones own possibilities (the standing in front of a abyss), we have

thereby developed a third meaning of Grenze. This third conception can be

called terminus. Terminus means, as we have seen, limit as a fixation or a

setting of differences; that is, it refers to the limit itself, the God of the limit.

Terminus also refers to the demarcation of a content. That which arises from

this demarcation is concepts, or terminology. This continual and ongoing

establishment of a limit creates an empirical world out of the gap of the

transcendent. We can thus understand the limit-situation as a terminus and,

in keeping with this interpretation, we can begin to understand our situation

as limit, rather than the limit of our situation. That is, we can conceive of our

situation as a drawing of a line instead of thinking of our situation as delimited.

The I as Existenz occurs by holding opposites together without letting them

merge into each other. The I is not only one side of a limit, one side that needs

to fantasize about another side. The I is to a far greater extent simultaneously

the point of unity and separation, the terminus that produces the own and the

other. The limit should thus not be understood as an outside opposed to an

inner self; rather, the I should be understood asthe limit. The inner as wellas the outer is continually open: it is always dependent, non-transparent and

changing. The radical alterity thus lives in oneself as well as in the other. It

is the point that all beings have in common at the same time as it is the point

that demands difference between everyone.

The development of the concept of the limit-situation, which I have here

sketched out, opens up a line of questions that I understand to be central to con-

temporary philosophy. Limit-situation has here been described as knowledge

producing, rather than as an object or an area for a certain kind of knowledge.

This knowledge production constitutes an important area for further and wider


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investigation. To acknowledge the limit, or terminus, as the situation within

which knowledge production happens, is to determine the foundational mean-

ing of knowledge; it is also to admit limit as the place for experience. This

place has been thematized within contemporary phenomenology and post-phe-

nomenology as the dimension of body and flesh. But I would also claim thatthe connection between limit and body still needs to be founded; this could

happen only within a limit-ontology. Such a limit-ontology could open up

new existential horizons to the important question about radical alterity that

characterizes contemporary philosophical debates. If limit-ontology would

mean that dimension within which the I could also question its existential

foundation, then a discussion about the conditions for a limit-ontology could

also take its due part in regaining a new basis for a philosophy of existence.

Jonna Bornemark

Sdertrn University College / Uppsala universitet

[email protected]

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