First published in English in 1933, this detailed philosophical examination of the contemporary state and nature of mankind is a seminal work by influential German philosopher Karl Jaspers. Elucidating his theories on a variety of topics pertaining to contemporary and future human existence, Man in the Modern Age is an ambitious and wide-ranging work, which meditates upon such diverse subjects as the tension between mass-order and individual human life, our present conception of human life and the potential for mankinda (TM)s future existence. Written shortly before the accession to power of Hitler and National Socialism, this is not only an important philosophical work, but also an insightful and intriguing historical document.

Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher and one of the most original European thinkers of the twentieth century. As a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, he had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. He was Hannah Arendt's supervisor before her emigration to the United States in the 1930s and himself experienced the consequences of Nazi persecution. He was removed from his position at the University of Heidelberg in 1937, due to his wife being Jewish. Published in 1949, the year in which the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, The Origin and Goal of History is a vitally important book. It is renowned for Jaspers' theory of an 'Axial Age', running from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. Jaspers argues that this period witnessed a remarkable flowering of new ways of thinking that appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world, in striking parallel development but without any obvious direct cultural contact between them. Jaspers identifies key thinkers from this age, including Confucius, Buddha, Zarathustra, Homer and Plato, who had a profound influence on the trajectory of future philosophies and religions. For Jaspers, crucially, it is here that we see the flowering of diverse philosophical beliefs such as scepticism, materialism, sophism, nihilism, and debates about good and evil, which taken together demonstrate human beings' shared ability to engage with universal, humanistic questions as opposed to those mired in nationality or authoritarianism. At a deeper level, The Origin and Goal of History provides a crucial philosophical framework for the liberal renewal of German intellectual life after 1945, and indeed of European intellectual life more widely, as a shattered continent attempted to find answers to what had happened in the preceding years. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Christopher Thornhill.

First published in 1965. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1965, this collection of three essays by influential German philosopher Karl Jaspers deals with the response of the philosophical mind to the world of reality, with the search for truth. In Leonardo, this search is shown in the thinking and the works of a supreme artist whose means of apperception are the senses.

The essay on Max Weber commemorates a man Jaspers knew personally and ardently admired.

The main essay in the collection is an exhaustive, three part study of Descartes: analysing Descartes' new philosophical operation, Descartes' Method, and the position of his philosophy within the wider historical context of philosophical thought.

A masterful exploration of Kant's intellectual development, theory of knowledge, politics, and ethics. Edited by Hannah Arendt; Index. Translated by Ralph Manheim.

A part of Jaspers's planned universal history of philosophy, focusing on the four paradigmatic individuals who have exerted a historical influence of incomparable scope and depth. Edited by Hannah Arendt; Index. Translated by Ralph Manheim.

Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher and one of the most original European thinkers of the twentieth century. As a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, he had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. He was Hannah Arendt's supervisor before her emigration to the United States in the 1930s and himself experienced the consequences of Nazi persecution. He was removed from his position at the University of Heidelberg in 1937, due to his wife being Jewish. Published in 1949, the year in which the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, The Origin and Goal of History is a vitally important book. It is renowned for Jaspers' theory of an 'Axial Age', running from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. Jaspers argues that this period witnessed a remarkable flowering of new ways of thinking that appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world, in striking parallel development but without any obvious direct cultural contact between them. Jaspers identifies key thinkers from this age, including Confucius, Buddha, Zarathustra, Homer and Plato, who had a profound influence on the trajectory of future philosophies and religions. For Jaspers, crucially, it is here that we see the flowering of diverse philosophical beliefs such as scepticism, materialism, sophism, nihilism, and debates about good and evil, which taken together demonstrate human beings' shared ability to engage with universal, humanistic questions as opposed to those mired in nationality or authoritarianism. At a deeper level, The Origin and Goal of History provides a crucial philosophical framework for the liberal renewal of German intellectual life after 1945, and indeed of European intellectual life more widely, as a shattered continent attempted to find answers to what had happened in the preceding years. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Christopher Thornhill.

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First published in English in 1933, this detailled philosophical examination of the contemporary state and nature of mankind is a seminal work by influential German philsopher Karl Jaspers. Elucidating his theories on a variety of topics pertaining to contemporary and future human existence, Man in the Modern Age is a key text by a man whose influence in the field continues to be felt.

Taken from the Great Philosphers, Volume II.

One of the founders of existentialism, the eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers here presents for the general reader an introduction to philosophy. In doing so, he also offers a lucid summary of his own philosophical thought. In Jaspers' view, the source of philosophy is to be found "in wonder, in doubt, in a sense of forsakenness," and the philosophical quest is a process of continual change and self-discovery. In a new foreword to this edition, Richard M. Owsley provides a brief overview of Jaspers' life and achievement. "An eloquent expression of a great hope that philosophy may again become an activity really relevant not only to the perennial problems of life and death but to the unusual configurations of such problems in our time."-Julian N. Hartt, Yale Review "Original, sincere, cultivated, and stimulating."-Philosophy

Shortly after the Nazi government fell, a philosophy professor at Heidelberg University lectured on a subject that burned the consciousness and conscience of thinking Germans. aAre the German people guilty?a These lectures by Karl Jaspers, an outstanding European philosopher, attracted wide attention among German intellectuals and students; they seemed to offer a path to sanity and morality in a disordered world. Jaspers, a life-long liberal, attempted in this book to discuss rationally a problem that had thus far evoked only heat and fury. Neither an evasive apology nor a wholesome condemnation, his book distinguished between types of guilt and degrees of responsibility. He listed four categories of guilt: criminal guilt (the commitment of overt acts), political guilt (the degree of political acquiescence in the Nazi regime), moral guilt (a matter of private judgment among oneas friends), and metaphysical guilt (a universally shared responsibility of those who chose to remain alive rather than die in protest against Nazi atrocities). Karl Jaspers (1883a1969) took his degree in medicine but soon became interested in psychiatry. He is the author of a standard work of psychopathology, as well as special studies on Strindberg, Van Gogh and Nietsche. After World War I he became Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he achieved fame as a brilliant teacher and an early exponent of existentialism. He was among the first to acquaint German readers with the works of Kierkegaard. Jaspers had to resign from his post in 1935. From the total isolation into which the Hitler regime forced him, Jaspers returned in 1945 to a position of central intellectual leadership of the younger liberalelements of Germany. In his first lecture in 1945, he forcefully reminded his audience of the fate of the German Jews. Jaspersas unblemished record as an anti-Nazi, as well as his sentient mind, have made him a rallying point center for those of his compatriots who wish to reconstruct a free and democratic Germany.

"Of the countless essays on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, the complete overview by Karl Jaspers continues to stand out as a unique achievement. Nietzsche is presented as a 'great philosopher' in historical and systematically comprehensive terms. The expert opinion formulated by Jaspers, a psychiatrist, on Nietzsche's illness, which was based on all available medical data, remains of undiminished importance." Prof. Dr. Volker Gerhardt

Es ist philosophische Aufgabe gewesen, eine Weltanschaung zu- gleich als wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis und als Lebenslehre zu ent- wickeln. Die rationale Einsicht sollte der Halt sein. Statt dessen wird in diesem Buch der Versuch gemacht, nur zu verstehen, welche letzten Positionen die Seele einnimmt, welche Krafte sie bewegen. Die faktische Weltanschauung dagegen bleibt Sache des Lebens. Statt einer Mitteilung dessen, worauf es im Leben ankomme, sollen nur Klarungen und Moeglichkeiten als Mittel zur Selbstbesinnung gegeben werden. Wer direkte Antwort auf die Frage will, wie er leben solle, sucht sie in diesem Buche vergebens. Das Wesentliche, das in den konkreten Entscheidungen persoenlichen Schicksals liegt, bleibt ver- schlossen. Das Buch hat nur Sinn fur Menschen, die beginnen, sich zu verwundern, auf sich selbst zu reflektieren, Fragwurdigkeiten des Daseins zu sehen, und auch nur Sinn fur solche, die das Leben als persoenliche, irrationale, durch nichts aufhebbare Verantwortung er- fahren. Es appelliert an die freie Geistigkeit und Aktivitat des Lebens durch Darbietung von Orientierungsmitteln, aber es versucht nicht, Leben zu schaffen und zu lehren. Heidelberg. Kar! Jaspers. VORWORT ZUR VIERTEN AUFLAGE. Dies Buch meiner Jugend aus der Zeit, als ich von der Psychiatrie her zum Philosophieren kam, aus der Zeit des ersten Weltkriegs und der Er- schutterung unserer uberlieferung, ist das Ergebnis der Selbstbesinnung jener Tage. Es erscheint jetzt, nachdem es fast zwei Jahrzehnte vergriffen war, unverandert in neuer Auflage.