La concettualità metafisica è sempre stata un presupposto della nozione di identità. Ne è risultato un legame che ha messo in evidenza le più svariate distorsioni speculative della realtà sotto forma di una chiusura verso l’alterità. Rispetto a essa il pensiero di Karl Jaspers emerge con la visione di una filosofia unificante, ultra-concettuale, sopra-identitaria, che – nella radice comune dell’umanità – vede la possibilità del suo futuro sostenibile.
A partire dalla realtà concreta del momento, questo numero propone e problematizza la nozione jaspersiana di filosofia mondiale (Weltphilosophie) in una duplice direzione: da una parte essa si confronta con l’esigenza umana di andare oltre ogni determinazione logica e concettuale per aprirsi all’alterità in una unione esistenziale tra esseri umani, dall’altra parte essa si apre alla dimensione della storia nella sua concretezza.
Prendere in esame una storia mondiale della filosofia significa cercare un principio di unità in grado di superare le differenze: lo scontro tra culture, l’intransigenza dei fanatismi, la costruzione dei muri, il sospetto reciproco che può alimentare le paure e persino il terrore del diverso e dell’”altro”, quando può essere difficile da capire e accettare.
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Kurt Salamun (University of Graz, Austria)
This article tries to reconstruct different meanings of Jaspers´s vague and utopian concept of World-Philosophy. First, in a methodological approach specific contexts of Jaspers´s use of this concept are analysed. In a second approach some possible relations are drawn between the concept in question and basic tendencies in Jaspers´s whole philosophy. Those tendencies consist of an anti-dogmatic and anti-monistic attitude as well as a demand for a universal communication and a liberal ethos of humanity. From this point of view some reflections are presented about the political relevance of Jaspers´s concept of World-Philosophy in our time.
Boško Pešić (Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia)
Given the fact that the completeness of Jaspers’s idea of ‘world philosophy’ was hindered by his departure from life, this paper aims to speculate about the possible further directions of this peculiar philosophical concept of his. In particular, by taking into account the general principles of Jaspers’s philosophy, as well as the spiritual situation of our age, the paper makes a tripartite emphasis on man’s existential self-creation in the world through which philosophy receives its genuine content and, by such a ‘truthing’ of philosophy, a possible instruction for its future, going beyond all the attempts of its present and hopeless surrogates. Being fully personally immersed in his philosophy, Jaspers offered a clear demonstration of the true meaning of inseparability of the philosophical opus and the person behind it. From this position, the paper also reflects on the basic question of how to understand an idea that cannot be thought of unless it is something we live by.
Amos Nascimiento (University of Washington, USA)
This article focuses on Jaspers’s writings and argues that his concept of world philosophy has a cosmopolitan intention that helps us address a tension between universality and plurality within globalization. This text is divided into five parts. First, I highlight a traditional notion of “world” [Welt] in German philosophy which connects plurality and universality in a relational and open-ended way. Secondly, I discuss how Jaspers’s existential,cultural, and historical explorations of this term evolve to the concepts of “worldview” [Weltbild] and “world intuition” [Weltanschauung]. Thirdly, I show how his experiences in World War I, the National Socialist dictatorship, and World War II moved him toward a more direct engagement with “world politics” [Weltpolitik], world peace, and “world citizenship” [Weltbürgerrecht] based on universal human rights. Fourthly, I show how Jaspers links these processes in the concept of “Axial Age” [Achsenzeit] and attempts to perform a “decentering” of Eurocentric views. I conclude by interpreting his project for a “world philosophy” [Weltphilosophie] as a cosmopolitan way to promote world plurality.
Pavao Žitko (Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia)
The basic thesis of this research paper is that an omitted systematic treatment of the notion of Weltphilosophie in Karl Jaspers’s philosophical production is not to be understood negatively as a neglect or non-observance of his speculation, but as a confirmation of a natural belonging of this concept to the theoretical framework of the philosophy of existence. The spontaneous introduction of this notion into the lexicon of the Existenzphilosophie is justified and the reasons are to be found in the very structure of Jaspers’s worldview and in its key concepts.
Marco Viscomi (Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italy)
The essay intends to clarify the theoretical essence of the Jaspersian conception of Weltphilosophie, “world philosophy”. The argumentation tracks down a parallelism between this concept and that of the Weltgeschichte, “world history”. In both of these two notions,there is an interesting key of comprehension for the definition of what in Jaspers is to be understood as “worldwide”. In the sense of what is “universal” and “perennial”, this determination allows us to understand the way in which Jaspers cites and refers to the philosophia perennis. In fact, the thinker associates his thought with the eternal thinking that philosophy embodies in its own research. In showing this nexus between the “worldwide” meaning of both history and philosophy, this article analyzes the themes of science, technology and personal existence, with specific reference to the original theoretical essence of Jaspersian meditation.
Marco Deodati (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy)
It is well known that Weltphilosophie is one of most significant concepts of Jaspers’s late reflection, although it is not developed in a systematic and univocal way. According to the German thinker, the idea of Weltphilosophie shows a wide range of perspectives and levels of interpretation, which intersect and overlap without allowing one to delineate an uniform layout. Starting from this hermeneutical richness, the paper aims to consider the connection between the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, and ethics, which can lead to an understanding of the notion of Weltphilosophie from two fundamental points of view: on the one hand, as a historical-philosophical perspective capable of going beyond the classic Eurocentric reconstructions in the field of the history of philosophy; and on the other, as a task to be carried out, in which the very future of philosophy is at stake.
Paola Ricci Sindoni (Università degli Studi di Messina, Italy)
This study intends to investigate the ways in which Jaspers approached the creative world of Leonardo, which he grasped as a universal figure, an emblematic expression in the history of Western culture of the perfect adaequatio between the creative act and philosophical knowledge. Is it certainly no coincidence that after his Lionardo (1953), Jaspers published Gibt es eine Weltgeschichte der Philosohie? (1955) and a few years later Die Grossen Philosophen, where a grandiose scenario emerged, within which the European philosophical tradition, together with the Indian and Eastern ones, offered the opportunity to re-read the intuitions of some philosophers of the past, together with the thoughts of other important figures including religious reformers, poets, and artists such as Leonardo, indicative of significant ways of facing the truth about oneself and the world. Jaspers connected, in this sense, truth and communication, so evident in Leonardo’s pictorial and scientific works, placing them with an unavoidable need to know the ability to come to a common ground of understanding between different peoples. The world is still marked, after the disasters of the Second World War, by bloody conflicts, violent divisions, and difficult communication, which puts the survival of all humanity at risk. In this sense, Jaspers’s Leonardo represents an important stage in the study and relaunch of this grandiose project.
Clementina Cantillo (Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy)
This article means to shed light upon some connections between José Ortega y Gasset’s and Karl Jaspers’s philosophical considerations. Specifically, it ponders the central role that the historical dimension occupies in human existence. Always tied to actual situations, it is within this context that it qualifies as a feasible and responsible choice.
Danijel Tolvajčić (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
The contribution seeks to point out the cognation between the Neoplatonic tradition and Jaspers’s philosophy, especially its metaphysical part. The thesis we seek to elaborate in the contribution is that Jaspers in his philosophy takes many insights from Neoplatonism, although sometimes in somewhat different terminology. To prove this, in the contribution we analyse some of the key metaphysical solutions of four significant Neoplatonic thinkers: Plotinus, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, and Nicholas of Cusa.
Marco Palladino (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, Italy)
Karl Jaspers dealt with Buddhist teachings in various works. Such a comparison only reached its full development in Die groβen Philosophen. For the German philosopher, Buddhism is a soteriological knowledge that, transcending any dogmatic reference, presents significant affinities with the concept of philosophical faith. The confrontation with Buddha’s teaching highlights the value of suffering. It is relationship to the limit, thoroughly lived, that is responsible for disclosing Transcendence’s redeeming reality. However, the relationship with Buddhism is not exhausted in the confrontation with Buddha and Nāgārjuna. Furthermore, it is possible to relate Jaspers’s transcending to the teachings of Dōgen, founder of Sōtō Zen. The thought of the Umgreifende as the thought that seeks to grasp the nature-of-buddha is a thought that results in non-thinking (hishiryō 非思量), because it does not have an object to grasp, but can only experience the radical transcendence of being. It is solely by rediscovering one’s own original location that one can attain liberation from suffering.
Massimiliano Cabella (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy)
The dialogue with Chinese thought, starting from Jaspers’s interpretation, may be a harbinger of new insights and new ideas, opening up new horizons not as bleak as the world’s picture today which appears more and more dystopian. Together with Karl Jaspers’s existentialist philosophy, Chinese thought may become a source of new concrete utopias.
Giuseppe Ciraolo (Independent researcher)
The present work tries to demonstrate how the question of demythization developed in the 1953 dialogue between Jaspers and Bultmann can be of considerable importance for the elaboration of a possible history of world philosophy. An intercultural and interreligious dialogue, essential for the purposes of a Weltphilosophie, must in fact consider the distortions that Jaspers found in Bultmann’s demythologization: on the one hand the dogmatic closure of the contents of faith, on the other the construction of a rationalization, this latter made rigid and equally dogmatic by scientific superstition even if – and mainly – in existentialistic terms. The «space of possibility» opened by a history of world philosophy formulated with an existential method must at the same time encourage the abandonment of any exclusivism and protect the unconditionality of every choice of faith – in the awareness that it is itself nothing more than a faith among the faiths. The development of more comprehensive ciphers – which Existenzphilosophie could facilitate for the future – is in fact not the fruit of an intellectual abstraction but the problematic and incessant search for a reason and communication capable of connecting the universal to the existential.
Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann, Gewalt, Macht, individueller Widerstand. Staatsverständnisse im Existenzialismus (Elena Alessiato, Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy)
Karl Jaspers, Ausgewählte Verlagsund Übersetzerkorrespondenzen, hrsg. v. Dirk Fonfara (Karl Jaspers Gesamtausgabe, Bd. III/8.1); Karl Jaspers, Ausgewählte Korrespondenzen mit dem Piper Verlag und Klaus Piper 1942-1968, (Karl Jaspers Gesamtausgabe, Bd. III/8.2) (Luca Scafoglio, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy)