Abstract

Jaspers uses the third Critique as a foundation for his own approach to metaphysics in the third volume of Philosophy. Kant's "Reflective judgement" is claimed to be the origin of Jaspers' "ciphers", and the term itself is examined in its Kantian context. The Existential antinomies in volume III are shown to be developments of Kant's descriptions of beauty as that which comforts and unifies, and sublimity as that which challenges and disrupts harmony. Any experience wherein the object is regarded as lacking determinate conceptualization can serve a "regulative" function for Existenz, but aren't regarded as "constitutive" for knowledge. The importance of this account of ciphers and reflective judgement is applied to the question of whether a "philosophical anthropology" is possible, and it is argued that only an indirect use of reason is possible. ;The relationship between Kant's second Critique and Jaspers' "elucidation of Existenz" in volume II of Philosophy is much less close, but it is argued that even here Jaspers is engaged in a kind of Kantian interpretation. Jaspers accepts the claim that reason can be practical if it can produce some change in reality, or in "Existenz". Using the "temporalized schemata" of the first Critique as a way of organizing his "concepts of Existenz", Jaspers examines how man's noumenal Existenz can be altered by reason. The relationship between "Existenz" and Kant's "noumenal self", is explored to clarify what "Existenz" means. In using the schemata within his criticism of Kant's formalism, Jaspers is thus still working within a Kantian context, but one which places more emphasis upon temporality. The transformations of the Categorical Imperative into unconditional action is examined, as is the criticism Jaspers offers of Kant's claim that "perfection" is inadequate as a foundation for ethics because it is too "empirical". ;Jaspers' discussions of the "ideals" of reason, "world-orientation", "transcending logic", the "systematics" of philosophy, and philosophical methodology are all presented as continuations of specific sections of the first "Critique. ;The radical interpretation that Jaspers makes claims that the Deduction is neither a patchwork nor a consistent unified argument, but is comprised of four separable but connected 'threads' woven together. Although critics have attacked Kant's attempt to speak meaningfully about the possibility of a transphenomenal realm, Jaspers defends Kant even though "objectively" his arguments fail, because the philosophical discussion of the nature of "objects" must preceed a purely formal logic that systematizes such objects. ;Failure to see Kant's underlying method as one that radically separates the methods of understanding and reason yields complementary misunderstandings or "antinomies." Jaspers' discussion of positivism and idealism thus grows out of these antinomies. Jaspers interprets the "island" metaphor Kant uses to mean that one fails to see the need for relating experience to the "ocean" of non-knowledge surrounding it, and the other tries to extend concepts valid in experience as valid in the same way beyond the shores of experience only to suffer necessary "shipwreck." ;Although many writers have pointed to Kantian influences in the works of Karl Jaspers, there has been little systematic examination of the way that Jaspers is a self-proclaimed Kantian. This study considers the Kantian elements in Jasper's three-volume Philosophy, and argues that Jaspers systematically transforms Kant's three Critiques into his own work by a radical interpretation of Kant's method, especially in the transcendental deduction. Excluded from this study is all that is original in Jaspers, or owes its origin to the existential tradition, in the belief that placing certain elements in a Kantian context makes them much less problematic and helps in understanding Jaspers' work