Von der Wahrheit by Karl Jaspers (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 278 however implicitly, not necessarily the same speculative concept, but at least the same practical concept of man and life ..." {pp. 15-16). There are no less than thirty-one thinkers represented in the book by their essays. Four appendices are attached: the first gives the "memorandum and questionnaire circulated· by Unesco on the theoretical bases of the rights ·of man "; the second, " The grounds of an international declaration of human-rights " drafted by a Unesco committee of experts; the third, is a universal declaration of human rights adopted on December 10th, 1948 by the UN; the fourth is an index of contributors and members of the Unesco committee on the philosophic bases of human rights. Dominican House of Studi68, River FOT68t, Ill. WALTER FARRELL, 0. P. Von der Wahrheit. By KARL JASPERS. Munich: R. Piper & Co., 1947. Pp. 1126, with index. Readers who raise an eyebrow at the size of the present work will raise both of them ~n learning {pp. 26 ff.) that it is only the initial volume in a series of four· studies on " philosophical logic." Yet in the inkwell are books on the categories, methodology, and the theory of knowledge. Taking logic in a sense akin to the metaphysical meaning it held for Hegel, Jaspers, in his upper sixties, is now opening a new phase of a career which has alreadys swept him from psychiatry across phenomenology into the very heart and heat of the moral crisis facing present-day man. In his present study, On Trutlv-huge in form, wide in scope, and deep in purpose--he gives to existentialism the most powerful and positive apology it has yet claimed. Though not solving philosophy's great problems, he must, at least, be credited with raising them. In this respect, he stands opposite Sartre whose existentialism, as Blonde! remarked, prevents the real questions of philosophy from even being raised. In view of the broad scan of Jaspers, it is astonishing to find in the present book so many serious blunders about Catholic theology. For instance, as he sees things, Catholicism is a closed system while reason, by contrast, is ever open and searching and organic. It is true that the deposit of revelation is complete, but this does not ·shut off revealed religion into a stagnant systemism. Our insights into dogma can always be enriched, and in the practical order, there is no limit up0n the holiness of the Church in its members. Rendering man capax Dei, grace has an effect exactly opposite to the closure, limitation,. and arid formalization which Jaspers .seems to find in Catholic thought. Inviting man to participate in infinity, Catholicism is open; it iS existentialism that is closed8 274 BOOK REVIEWS closed by the anti-intellectualism which makes anything beyond experience unnatural and anything beyond nature impossible. Definitions of faith and morals do not close off man's mind or, as Dewey would have it, stifle the spirit of inquiry. They are guarantees when accepted and obeyed that the Catholic Christian has his roots in infinity, his mind clear of error, his will free of evil, that he does not wander off sinfully into the finite and the creaturely seeking them for themselves alone. Defined truth is a map toward the attainment of infinity as the supernatural destiny of man. Jaspers' unfortunate comparison of Catholic faith and human reason ought to be obverted. It is reason, closed off from the visio~ of God by its native limits, that is finite and highly formal. Faith opens to man the vast and eternal riches of infinity itself. Reason for Jaspers is not of the sort to be completed by faith. It is not reason, philosophically informed and open to the supernatural, but reason searching blindly and fruitlessly, too fallen and feeble even to know the preambulae fidei. Reason in this existentialist caricature of its nature is open only because it is vacuous and completely formal. With arguments similar to his logic against Catholicism in general, Jaspers rejects the notion of the Incarnation. It is at odds with his philosophy of history. Granted that there was the Incarnation, it would have been the central point of all· time as Christopher Hollis put...