Karl Jaspers and Scientific Philosophy

KarlJaspers and Scientific Philosophy JAMES O. BENNETT 1. INTRODUCTION Karl Jaspers was a lifelong critic of the view that philosophy is a form of science. He regarded that view as reflecting a misunderstanding of the nature of philosophy, and its relationship to science. As he sought to understand and correct the error made by proponents of wissenschaftliche Philosophie, the relationship of philosophy and science became one of the central themes of his thought. Indeed, he states that the intent of his favorite work, Philosophy, is "to demonstrate the philosophy-science relation."' However, the importance of this topic goes far beyond an accurate understanding of Jaspers's philosophy. It goes to the very heart of what philosophy essentially is, and what philosophers hope to accomplish in their philosophic activity. With the following remarks, I wish to indicate why this is so. It is often noted that Wissenschaft has a broader meaning in German than does "science" in English. In the words of one commentator, the former "means any methodical inquiry that results in an intersubjectively (i.e., 'universally ') valid knowledge whose mode and degree of certainty can be clearly determined," while the latter tends to refer only to the exact sciences--usually the natural ones.' Thus, the affirmation in German that philosophy is scientific is a weaker claim than it is in English. However, for the same reason, the den/al that philosophy is scientific represents a more radical claim. To the extent that philosophy is not wissenschaftlich in character, it cannot present itself as an organized discipline yielding intersubjective results. Thus, Jaspers's KarlJaspers, Philosophy,trans. E. B. Ashton (Chicago:The Universityof ChicagoPress, 1969),Vol.l, "Epiloguet955,"5-6. 9Ehrlichand Pepper,KarlJaspers:BasicPhilosophicalWritings,Selections(Athens,Ohio:Ohio UniversityPress,x986),355. [437] 438 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:3 JULY 1993 doubts about the scientific character of philosophy constitute nothing less than a challenge to the legitimacy of academic philosophy. Jaspers's general approach to the subject of the philosophy/science relation is illuminated by an understanding of his basic categories of "consciousness in general" and Existenz.s As human beings, each of us is potentially both. The lattcr is our potential to exist as unique, self-determining beings, capable of unconditional action, originated and sustained through communication with other Existenz. On the other hand, in our ability to function as consciousness in general, we are theoretically interchangeable knowers of objective truth. Theoretical replaceability excludes uniqueness, and that exclusion is essentially what it means to say that objective cognition is impersonal in nature. Generally speaking, we may say that Jaspers conceives of philosophy as the process wherein possible Existenz actualizes itself, while the core of science is the functioning of consciousness in general, or the pursuit of what can be known by interchangeable observers, in which personal states of being are irrelevant to the forms of sense experience and logical inference upon which a particular mode of inquiry is founded. Seen in this broad perspective, it should be evident that Jaspers's lifelong attempt to delineate the philosophy/ science relation is a foundational enterprise. No one aspiring to a selfconscious practice of philosophy can hope to evade the basic issues raised in his work. I shall argue that in his discussion of the philosophy/science relation, Jaspers presents not one but two different views of the nature of philosophy-what I term "the exclusive view" and "the dual aspect view." Of these, I maintain that the latter is more adequate. Like the other view, it provides a foundation for Jaspers's rejection of the claim that philosophy is a form of science, but it does not carry with it the radical implications of the other view, in which the objective elements of philosophical concern are eliminated entirely . My thesis in a broad sense, then, is that Jaspers's account of the philosophy/science relation is not unified hut pluralistic; in a narrower sense, it is that the dual aspect view is preferable. I begin with a brief historical sketch of the context of Jaspers's thought on this subject, which is followed by the main body of the paper. 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Jaspers began his philosophic career at Heidelberg...