Limit-situation

Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers Philosophy

Jonna Bornemark
Abstract
In this paper I will discuss the concept limit-situation1 as it is developed in Karl Jaspers early writings, especially his Psychologie
der Weltanschauungen and Philosophie, and explore how this concept
could be understood in a broader way. After a discussion of the concepts of limit and situation I will discuss Jaspers heritage from
Kant and Kierkegaard, in whose works the concepts of antinomy and
paradox are central. Antinomy is worked out in Jaspers thinking as
single limit-situations in which the human being understands her finitude and openness. It is through these single limit-situations that her
world-view is shaped. Through a discussion of Jaspers communication
theory and his understanding of the mystics, I will extend the concept
of limit-situation from the single limit-situations. I will argue that the
limit-situation should be understood, not only as a concept marking
the limits of the human situation, but as a way of exploring the human
situation as limit.

Introduction
The antinomicality of existence is the limit-situation of the antinomies
(Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 220 [1932, p 251]. Translation modified,
see footnote 1.)
we become ourselves by entering with open eyes into the limit-situations (Jaspers 1970, volume II, pp. 278279 [1932, p. 204]. Translation
modified.)
The concept limit-situation, as well as Jaspers philosophy in general, has

1. Limit-situation is a translation of Jaspers Grenzsituation; it is translated in other texts as

boundary situation. My reasons for choosing limit rather than boundary will become clear
later on. Because of this translational difference I have modified some quotations and translate
Grenze as limit rather than border and border situation as limit-situation.
Sats Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2 Philosophia Press 2006

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Limit-situation Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers Philosophy

not attracted much attention in the last decades.2 But when we today try to
understand the human being in the paradoxical situation between the own and
the different, the concept limit-situation can be helpful. Limit-situation is,
according to Jasper, the antinomic situation that makes up a foundational condition for human beings. This theme is relatively undeveloped in the secondary
literature, but it is a central underlying theme in existential philosophy. In this
article I will try to sort out what the concept limit-situation means and show
how the concept can be developed and used today.
During the second half of the 20th century,, philosophy of existence often
became identified with existentialism. But if existentialism was formulated by
Jean-Paul Sartre in the French philosophical tradition, the Germany concept
philosophy of existence (Existenzphilosophie) was used as to characterise the work of Jaspers and Heidegger, among others 3. Both Jaspers and
Heidegger were very suspicious of the concept existentialism, partly because
as an ism, it tried to formulate a systematic teaching, but also because existentialism, to a far too high degree, stressed human autonomy and freedom,
and therefore was often characterized as strongly individualistic; alone with
her freedom and her choices the individual must fulfil herself and create an
autonomous and responsible existence. However Jaspers as well as Heidegger
accepted the term philosophy of existence which had a strong connection to
Kierkegaard, to whom Jaspers was one of the first to pay attention to.
Jaspers philosophy of existence to a great degree shares the same starting-points as existentialism. Jaspers formulates one such starting-point as
everything is essentially real for me only through that I am myself (Jaspers
1938, p. 1, my translation). This emphasis on the existence of the self as the
beginning of all philosophy is thus a common starting-point for both Jaspers
and the existentialists. The text just quoted continues: We are not only here,
but our existence is entrusted to us as place, as a body of the realisation of

2. The concept of limit-situation seldom occupies any central position in the secondary literature. One exception is Rodriguez de la Fuentes doctoral thesis, which focuses to a high degree
on the concept limit-situation. Bollnow is another exception; he has written about Jaspers
and Heidegger and takes as his starting-point the concept of the limit-situation. Heidegger is
probably the one philosopher who, following Jaspers, has most often used the concept in his
own philosophy. The interest in Jaspers today is mostly centred around general philosophy of
existence, discussions about how different world-views can meet each other, and communication theory.
3. In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger has several references to Jaspers Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. He also directly refers to the concept limit-situation in footnotes in 49, 60, 62
and 68.

Jonna Bornemark

our origin (Jaspers 1938, p. 1, my translation). This entrustment shows a

doubleness, a passivity in the entrustment, but with a call or demand for activity.
This passivity moves away from the common understanding of existentialism.
The contemporary understanding of the individual is closely connected to
existentialist philosophy. If we today want to differentiate the concept of the
individual, it is important to examine how the individual was understood in
the early philosophy of existence.
In her 1948 essay Was ist Existenz-Philosophie, Hannah Arendt, who was
Jaspers student and friend, argues that the focus upon the individual arose
from the modern individuals feeling of not belonging in the world, of being
torn out of her context. Arendt goes on to claim that if it is in the philosophy
of existence that philosophy shows signs of uttermost isolation, it is also here
that it returns from such isolation. Arendts claim is that it is far more fruitful
to understand philosophy of existence as Jaspers presents it: as a discussion
of the necessary openness, incompleteness, and dependence. This openness
constitutes Jaspers central concept of limit-situation.
How should one understand the concept limit-situation? One possible
perspective is to focus upon the limit of the situation, upon the human being
as historically and psychologically situated and to study the ways in which
her situation is limited. I will employ a different focus, which seems more
promising to me; instead of thinking of limit in terms of situation, that is, the
limits of the situation, one could think situation in terms of limit, which also
means the situation of limit. We need to examine the concept of limit as
well as situation to better understand what this means. Thereafter we need
to examine how Jaspers uses the concept of limit-situation in Philosophie der
Weltanschauungen and in Philosophie, volume II,4 the two books in which this
concept is most strongly developed.

Limit and situation

Jaspers is the first philosopher to use the concept situation as a technical

philosophical term (Laucken 1995, p. 924). In Philosophie (volume II, p.
201203) he defines situation as a spatial order, or more precisely, as a reality
for an interested subject, with its limitations and opportunities. A situation is a
meaningful reality, physically as well as psychologically concrete. It continually
changes and exists only in virtue of continual change. The individual also has

4. All references to this work refer to the German edition (1932), except the quotations that refer
to the English translation (1970) with the German page in brackets.

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the capacity to change the situation actively, but she can never be outside of
all situations. If she steps out of one situation she steps into another. Situation
is thereby a concept of facticity. It is the human situation, which the individual
tries to control through knowledge. What one knows about a situation forms it
at the same time as the knower is immersed within the situation. Knowledge
can never stand outside of the situation: on the contrary, when new knowledge
arises it changes the situation. In Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 202)
Jaspers differentiates limit-situations from temporary situations, by saying
that human beings never can leave the limit-situations, in contrast to temporary situations. Limit-situation is therefore constitutive for the human being.
Even if one can leave every temporary situation, one can never leave ones
situatedness, thus situatedness as such can be understood as a constitutive
limit-situation.
The concept of situation has influenced 20th-century
century philosophy to a large
degree. Philosophers understood themselves as situated and thus repudiate the
ideal perspective of an almighty god. Instead they found their knowledge within
existential limits. To Jaspers this means that the task of philosophy no longer
is to formulate universal doctrines; rather, philosophy is a unsetteling activity,
an uprooting of the situation even if this activity at the same time formulates
and orders. Jaspers further develops the concept of situation in Philosophie
(volume II, p. 210 ff), in a discussion about the determination and historicity
of existence as a foundational limit-situation. By historicity, Jaspers means
that human beings always exist in a certain situation with an uncertain future.
Freedom is the capacity to accept the situation and with all its hindrances and
possibilities and make it ones own. Although the limit-situations are universal
and experienced by everyone, each individuals personal situation interacts
with the universal limit-situations in different and unique ways. This means
that all beings are to be understood as historical phenomena. This also means
that the relationship between the individual and the universal is reshaped (even
though this to Jaspers does not mean a negation of the universal). Historicity
is universal since it means that everything is situated, but also since our way
of expressing historicity itself is historically bound.
Jaspers emphasis on situation shows the influence of Kierkegaardian philosophy. Limit-situation concerns the specific individual as a foundational
structure. The paradoxes that the limit-situations carry are of concern not only
as an abstract mind-game but especially in factual life. Heidegger develops
this concept of the facticity of the situation further. He emphasises a concept of
situation that is partly founded on the determination of the being-in-the-world,
while at the same time this determination can only occur through openness.

Jonna Bornemark

Situation is exactly this determined openness that characterizes the being of

human beings (Heidegger
Heidegger 1993, p. 299). This structure that Heidegger brings
forth (with explicit reference to Jaspers in the same paragraph) is also present,
though not as explicitly, in Jaspers texts. This openness can be understood
partly as a primary openness that allows a certain determination, but also as
that life that a certain situation opens up for, the same opening that is the
meaning of every life.5 The concept of situation thus carries a double meaning
of determination and openness, but puts the emphasis on determination. We
can thus understand situation as the limit between an opening and a determination, which leads us to the second concept in focus here: limit, or rather
the German Grenze.
The history of the German philosophical concept Grenze is closely intertwined with the concept of Schranke. Both these concepts arose as theoretical
concepts in German in the 18th century.. Schranke originates from a translation
of the Latin limes and terminus (Fulda 1974, p. 875). Limes refers to a
border between two fields and terminus means determined border but also
border-mark or border-stone, as well as the personification of this border,
the border-god. Schranke can thus be understood as a border that splits
something similar into two parts, a border within a homogeneous area, which
in principle produces two similar parts. I will here use border to translate
Schranke.
Kant developed Schranke as the limitation of the finite, as lack, and understood Schranke as derived from the more foundational concept of Grenze.
The concept of Grenze first got its meaning from the concept of the limit in
infinitesimal calculus and is understood by Kant as a negation that excludes
any belonging to a greater whole. A limit in this sense is that which contains
its own perfection; it refers to the point after which there can be no greater
value. This kind of limit can be understood as a philosophical interpretation
of the limit-value of infinitesimal calculus, the point of inflection of a graph
and after which no higher value can be reached. Kant claims that mathematics and natural sciences only admit borders: something is always excluded,
something exists that the science, by definition, does not include. Science
tries, for example, to explain a part of reality that can be added to another
part (partes extra partes). Metaphysics, on the other hand, leads to the limits
of reason, the uttermost possibility of appearance. But Grenze still keeps
a positive meaning since it is the place where appearance touches upon the

5. This thought is also developed by Hannah Arendt.

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thing-in-itself, that which is beyond experience but which still needs to be assumed and thereby thought, or it is rather included in thinking, even though it
can never be explicit. Appearance and the thing-in-itself are not two parts of
one reality; the thing-in-itself marks instead the limitation of reason. That the
thing-in-itself can not be thought on its own, that is, be represented, does not
mean that it is not included in thought. The thing-in-itself points to that within
appearance that also points to an outside. Kant therefore means that humans
always exist on the limit (which is an argument that Jaspers emphasises even
further). This utterly other thereby delimits experience at the same time
as knowledge is always founded on the knowers relationship to this radical
alterity (see Kant 1985, 57).
Jaspers is to a very large extent influenced by Kants understanding of the
concept Grenze. Grenze or limit is not only relevant to knowledge in
Jaspers thinking, but it is also, as we will see, an even more important concept
for understanding human finitude. This finitude signifies the impossibility for
human existence to include everything, either in knowledge or in life. The
human being is surrounded by limits. It is in connection to this that we can
understand limit-situations as an expression for the limit of the situation, as
an expression for the insight that humans exist as limited by their situation.
But limit also marks that there is something else: The word limit implies that
there is something else, but it indicates at the same time that this other thing
is not for an existing consciousness (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 179 [1932,
p. 203], translation modified). One problem in Jaspers philosophy is that he
marks this radical otherness as something other, which leads to an understanding of his concept of transcendence as a transcendent something6 (Jaspers
concept of transcendence has a close relation to Kants thing-in-itself). This
understanding and formulation easily leads to a misunderstanding of limit
as border. The risk consists in understanding the limit between the empirical
and the transcendent as a border between two areas, a border that can only be
seen from a birds-eye view. Such an understanding of limit can be found in
Jaspers writings when he claims, for example, that the limit-situations are
like a wall we run into, a wall on which we founder (Jaspers 1970, volume II,
p 178 [1932, p. 203]). Nevertheless, Jaspers philosophy in large part strongly
emphasises that such a birds-eye perspective, which can observe both sides of
a border, is impossible. It is not through knowledge that the radical alterity of

6. This trait in Jaspers philosophy was later developed into what he called periechontologie,
in which the transcendent is expressed as an all-embracing something.

Jonna Bornemark

the transcendent has meaning. We could instead, borrowing a phenomenological term, say that this other side is appresented. The wall in the quotation
would not mean anything if one could not have a relationship to the other
side. It is exactly the unreachability of the other side that requires that we
understand Grenze not as border but as limit.
This limit can thus not be thought from a birds eye perspective. Limit is
instead my finitude and inability, the limit of my ability. To be surrounded
by limits, to be delimited, is usually understood as being closed off or as an
introversion since there is something that can not be reached. But since this
should not be understood as a something in Jaspers concept of the limit-situation, this inability rather means an openness and a respect for that which can
not be thought or formulated. The opposite way of thinking is an immanence
where the I can understand everything and thus does not respect the otherness of the other. It implies an over-confidence in the possibility of including
everything in ones own thinking. The limit as that which delimits the I
thereby also means an openness. That which limits also contains the possibility
for openness. To be limitless means to be inclusive and closed, whereas the
limit makes openness possible. To be open one needs to have limits. Limitation
also requires a location: individuals are situated on one side of the limit and
the limit thereby gives one situation. Limit and situation thus both contain a
doubleness. A situation is a determination that demands and creates an openness in the shapes of a life with possibilities. In a similar way a limit makes
openness possible by establishing a situating limit. Limit-situation can be said
to double this doubleness. Jaspers analyses this structure of doubleness under
the concept of antinomy.

Antinomies as constitution

Jaspers borrowed the concept of the antinomy from Kant whose thoughts on
the ideas Jaspers considered so central that he included a discussion of them
in an appendix to Psychologie der Weltanschuungen. We therefore need briefly
to explore Kants thoughts in order to understand Jaspers concept of antinomy.
In Kantian philosophy, the fragmented knowledge of the senses is ordered by
the categories of understanding, and as such they differ from the ideas that are
related to the Kantian concept of reason. In contrast to sensory knowledge,
the ideas relate to things that seem to be objects for the mind, but turn out to
be something different since they can not be thought without giving arise to
antinomies. The antinomies arise since ideas relate to a totality, but a totality
that is never given. But this does not mean that the ideas are meaningless; on
the contrary, they are necessary for systematic thinking and for all systematic

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understanding of experience. Systematic thinking needs regulative ideas that

precede the system and give it its comprehensive framework, a framework
within which knowledge and experience can be understood. Kant mainly
describes three ideas: 1) the idea of the full subject, that is the I or soul,
which is related to immortality, 2) the complete succession of conditions that
is formulated as world or cosmos, and 3) a complete concept, the whole
or God. These ideas are transcendent, which means that they exceed every
experience, at the same time as they are regulative. Therefore these ideas can
never become objects of experience. This transcendent quality of the ideas on
some occasions lead to antinomies, i.e. the ideas produce contrary thesies that
both seem to follow from the idea. Kant argues that these antinomies can only
be solved within his transcendental idealism by separating appearance from
the thing-in-itself (Jaspers
Jaspers 1919, s. 408428).
).
It is obvious that Jaspers here uses Kants concepts of ideas and antinomies for his own purposes. But he states that he, in contrast to Kant, mean
that the antinomies do not only affect theoretical knowledge but also, and
above all shapes our concrete lives. He also claims that the antinomies can
never find a final solution in any philosophical doctrine. Jaspers finds support
from Kierkegaard in this criticism of Kant. The Kantian antinomies argue that
two well-founded statements that can be developed from the same maxim or
idea are incompatible. Kierkegaard uses the concept of paradox to denote the
meaning of the antinomies but also to characterise this incompatibility as an
unknowable and unsolvable thought. For Kierkegaard paradox signals a real
relationship; it is the category that expresses the human relationship to god
(Malantschuk
Malantschuk 1977, p. 277280).
). For Kierkegaard the central characteristic of
the antinomy/paradox is thus not logical contradiction, which marks the limits
of knowledge. Rather, paradox is an expression for that which can not and
should not be solved.
Jaspers keeps the term antinomies but agrees with Kierkegaard that these
can never find satisfying solutions. Jaspers also expands this concept and argues
that both the world and human existence should be understood as occurring in
an antinomical split. The antinomies are thus constitutive and a foundational
condition of life. The antinomies are, like contrasting colours, dependent
upon each other and produce their opposite. Attempts at solutions can only be
temporary since the opposites constitute each other.
In Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 204 ff.) Jaspers divides the antinomies into three groups: logical opposites (x or non-x), real opposites (life
or death) and value opposites (useful or harmful). The logical opposites stand
at the limit, served to delimit the human consciousness from the infinite. In

Jonna Bornemark

opposition to Kant, as we have seen, Jasper argues that the dialectical solutions that are offered for the antinomies are only technical solutions. These
antinomies seldom create despair, since they are mostly antinomies of thinking
and not relevant for the whole existential individual. But ones relation to the
antinomies lays the foundation for the way in which one shapes a conception
of the world. The opposite pairs of the antinomies, though dependent upon
each other, are isolated and made absolute and seemingly independent when
the mind allies itself with one pole against the other. Jaspers claims that only
mystic thinking functions differently; we will come back to this claim. Because
of this dualism, all rational thinking sooner or later falls into contradictions
within the system; Jaspers calls this failure or crack (Scheitern). This
crack is at the same time a negative name for an opening, for existence as a
whole remains unfinished. Wherever it might tend to come to a conclusion,
there are antinomies to prevent it (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 218 f., [1932, p.
250]). According to Jaspers, this openness is a necessary structure that makes
thinking possible. Without the relationship to this otherness and infinitude
thinking as a changing process would be impossible.
The antinomical structure is the final and enabling thought necessary to
thinking, but in practical life it poses a problem that needs to be solved or
actively handled. As active beings humans need to act one way or another;
this need is the final proof of human finitude. Theoretically one can always
strive towards an understanding and inclusion of all perspectives (even if this
striving always fails), but in concrete decisions one needs to make excluding
choices. The value-contraries also belong to life. Every value demands the
existence of something of less worth, and every value is thereby also a value
that excludes another. The value-contraries are, as we will see, closely connected to the specific limit-situations of guilt and struggle.
Jaspers understands all art, philosophy, poetry, religion etc, as attempts to create harmonious solutions to the antinomies attempts that for the most part are
unconscious of the deceitfulness of their task. For individuals, the antinomies
can function as motivating forces to action and development, but they can also
lead to paralysis, frustration and cynicism. Alternatively, one can handle the
antinomies by closing ones eyes to them and letting the opposites live side
by side (which is often called double moral standards), or, more commonly,
by taking a dogmatic position, i.e. making one side absolute and ignoring the
other and thereby becoming able to act with full force. The antinomical situation always leads to an eternal process with an infinite number of solutions.
Jaspers agrees with both Kant and Kierkegaard when he states that the human
being never stays within the concrete finite, but that the concrete finite always

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has both a finite and an infinite character. The concrete finite needs the infinity
of the ideas to make a structure for action possible (even if Kant emphasises the
epistemological aspect); it is thus the antinomical structure that drives humans
forward and makes action possible. Jaspers, Kant and Kierkegaard also agree
that the transcendent only has significance within the sphere of immanence,
that it is uninteresting and impossible to understand the transcendent solely
in terms of itself. The Kantian antinomies are, as we have seen, first and foremost antinomies of thinking, antinomies that are to be solved in a system. For
Jaspers, the antinomies signify the end of logical thinking, but to enable life to
be lived, they continually need to find temporary solutions. It is in this passage
from logical antinomies to unavoidable situations, which we continually need
to solve, that Jaspers starts to use the concept of limit-situation.

Specific limit-situations where we meet our openness

The antinomies become crucial and urgent for every human life in the specific
limit-situations. In Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, and to a lesser degree
in Philosophie, limit is understood mainly as an opposition between two
contrasting concepts. These oppositions are antinomies in the sense that they
are both necessary for human life, and at the same time exclusive of each
other. The contradiction can not be solved since both poles are necessary,
both sides of the opposition need instead to be fulfilled. Both sides thus need
to be maintained and allowed. But the two sides are not equal; instead, one
side is usually understood as positive and the other as negative. One side is
saved at the expense of the other, and at the same time the positive needs to
be saved from the negative. But if one succeeds in dissolving the negative
side, the positive side will also be dissolved, since the negative is bound to
the positive, or rather the other way around; the negative pole is always the
primary to Jaspers, as life is bound to death.7 One can never avoid or reduce
these limit-situations to something else; on the contrary, they are what form
ones seeing. Nor can they be explained or deduced from something else. The
specific limit-situations, which are most clearly characterized as opposites,
are death and contingency:
1) In Philosophie (p. 220 ff.), as well as in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 229 ff.) death is characterized as the ultimate limit of all limits. It is
obvious through human mortality that the individual is not eternal and that she
always dies before she is completed; that is, her potential is never completely

7. Jaspers is closer to Heidegger than to Arendt on this point.

Jonna Bornemark

fulfilled. New life demands the death of old life at the same time as all life
is only life since it is mortal. Jaspers also points out that mortality in itself
is antinomically split, since although it is what gives attention to ones own
individuality, to human facticity and specific situation, it is at the same time
death that is common to all beings. Death only really happens to me; that is
ones own death signals a definite ending. Yet at the same time death always
occurs and the world keeps on going in spite of this.
2) Contingency and necessity are only mentioned as limit-situations in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (p. 239 ff). Contingency is there described as
a limit-situation in which all reality and knowledge is understood as a selection
from the infinite. The specific context might be necessary but the principle of
selection is always a contingency. The antinomy consists in the need to understand the world as necessary and coherent, at the same time as the world
shows itself as coincidental, chaotic and non-coherent and thereby impossible
to grasp from all aspects. The two sides are always limited by each other at the
same time as they are dependent upon each other. The discovery of coherence
demand something non-coherent that can be understood. The non-coherent,
can at the same time, only be thought from out of the search for coherence.
Psychologie der Weltanschauungen also treats the specific limit-situations
of struggle and guilt. But in these limit-situations a positive opposite cannot
be found to the same extent. Rather their antinomical structure opens up an
abyss in which the finitude of the self is understood. In Philosophie this abyss
is emphasized to an even greater extent at the expense of the dualistic relationship. In this book suffering is also described as a specific limit-situation
(p. 230 ff).
3) Suffering is a characterization of our finitude within life. Suffering is
often understood as something that can be avoided through, for example, the
development of medicine and science. But to avoid to understand suffering as
a necessary part of human life leads to self-deception and a failure of seeing
the existential meaning of suffering. To avoid suffering can for example mean
a refusal to allow other human beings to come close, since with proximity
comes the power to harm. To avoid this limitation in myself thereby limits
me even further. By accepting suffering, on the other hand, one can bear ones
cross, facing suffering and accept that it belongs to me. Of course I try to
free myself from suffering, but I understand at the same time that it belongs to
me. I do not try to blame it or project it on someone else; instead I realize that
there is no such thing as a solution that is perfect in every respect. No matter
what choices one makes in life, a certain amount of suffering is unavoidable.
Pure happiness would be emptiness. True happiness must contain risk-taking
and rebuilding with it.

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4) Death and suffering are situations to which humans will always be exposed,
without any action demanded from the subject. But there are limit-situations
that start out from actions. These are, as discussed in Philosophie (p. 227 ff
and 242 ff) the limit-situations of struggle and guilt. These limit-situations are
unavoidable results from ones own acting. Since acting can not be avoided,
neither can the limit-situations. Trying to avoid them will only recreate them
in a different form or negate ones own self. Struggle can not be avoided, since
all acting is in favour of something and in the face of some kind of resistance.
Whatever is in favour of one thing is also necessarily against something else.
Cooperation is not a solution to this, since it basically repeats the same structure
in larger numbers. The struggle becomes an existential limit-situation when it
has to be understood from the first person perspective out of which I realize that I need to fight in favour of something even though I do not have any
absolute arguments for this something. It becomes an existential limit-situation
when I realize that the struggle needs to be carried out even though there is a
lack of foundation, when I accept that that which is important to me remains
important even though never absolute.
All action also carries existential guilt since all actions have unforeseen and
maybe unwanted consequences. Guilt is the limit-situation in which I feel
guilty for being unable to do justice to all perspectives. The human beings
experience of her inability to perform universal acts makes her understand
herself as finite. The only other solution would be not to act at all and thereby
to negate ones own existence. A life always needs to be a specific life, to be
my life; guilt thus points back to the situatedness and facticity of a singular
human being. Rationality leads to attempts to defend singular acts, my acts,
and transforming them into universal acts, our acts, and thereby building a
system to explain the actions as the best possible choices in order to get away
from existential guilt.
The oppositional pairs of the limit-situations are described as a field of tension
in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. This means that every human being
is realised through his or her position in this field of tension, that is, through
temporary solutions to the limit-situations. The impossibility of a completely
satisfying solution also carries dissatisfaction with it; all sides can not be
lived to their maximum. There is no ideal solution for all perspectives, there
are only temporary compromises and choices. Of course different persons
solve or handle the limit-situations in different ways and in different ways at
different times in life. This is what founds the differences between human beings and between different world-views, the differences that Psychologie der
Weltanschauungen wants to examine.

Jonna Bornemark

In Philosophie the limit-situations are rather described as situations that put

humans in front of an abyss. The point here is the insolvability of the antinomy,
the fact that the contradiction can not be solved but only deepened by clear
thoughts. The antinomy can not become a whole, but instead puts individuals at the limit. That is, in Philosophie the relationship to the insolvability is
emphasised when earlier, in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, the plurality
of solutions was in focus. Rather than a choice within a field of tension, limitsituation is here described as a leap into the unknown, which clearly shows
Kierkegaards influence on Jaspers (see Kierkegaard 1997, on Kierkegaards
concept of leap, see also Khnhold 1975).
The specific limit-situations all point towards this paradoxical underlying
structure. Jaspers specific limit-situations are some examples of concrete
limit-situations, concrete expressions of the limit-situation of the human being
that underlies all the specific examples. According to Jaspers it is through this
paradoxical structure that human life can exist in all its variations.

Shell and leap to live in limit-situation

Psychologie der Weltanschauungen describes, as we have seen, how an infinite number of reactions to limit-situations create the infinite multitude of the
world. This process almost always comes to a seemingly stabile solution in a
static world-view with a highest good. These static world-views are most often
characterized by Jaspers as dogmatic and dualistic. The living process (der
lebendige Proze) is Jaspers name for the way we react to limit-situations
and thereby create world-views. Jaspers emphasises, though, that no single
concept is general enough to capture this process since the process is itself also
an antinomical structure. In his own attempts to articulate the inarticulable,
Jaspers argues that the living process creates a shell (Gehuse), a stable
structure within which we can live. This shell founds a structure that is often
understood as unchangeable; it orders the world and oneself within the world
and thereby makes it graspable. These shells create life forms, world-views,
and beliefs. Jaspers uses the image of the shell of a mussel as a metaphor for
this house of objectivity and he phrases the dependence upon this shell in the
following way: When the shell no longer exists the human being can not
live any more, as little as a mussel whose shell is taken away (Jaspers 1919,
p. 248, my translation ).8 This process, which is life itself, brings with it a

8. Heidegger, following Jaspers, also uses the concept Gehuse in Sein und Zeit, 13, p.
60.

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continual metamorphosis, a continuing renewal of shell. The shell fixes the

way an individual has chosen to solve the limit-situations. The human being
thereby tries to escape the suffering of the limit-situation by creating a shell.
We can here recognise one of the most central themes of existentialism as well
as of philosophy of existence. That central theme is the constant search for
peace and order, the refusal to accept continual movement. Humans want to
justify what they do from an objective rationality instead of taking absolute
responsibility for the living forces upon themselves. According to Jaspers
the paradoxes arise no matter which life-strategy is chosen. The extremes are
nihilism and dogmatism: the paradox of nihilism is the choice to continue
ones own life while at the same time stating that it is not worth more than
any other life. One thereby risks becoming a pure spectator to ones own life,
unable to participate and act in favour of the own life and the own values. The
paradox of dogmatism is total conviction, in contrast to an acknowledgement
of the finitude of the self. Dogmatists close their eyes to the antinomies and
acknowledge only one side as absolute being. In Philosophie (volume II, p. 204
ff) these two extremes are complemented with a third: If the singular human
being enters the limit-situations with her eyes open, with awareness of their
insolvability, the limit-situations force her to take three leaps:
1) After the insight that limit-situations can not be avoided, one tries to understand them through theorizing them. One thereby tries to reshape oneself
into a universal will to knowledge. This isolation of knowledge leads to a
distance from oneself since one sees oneself from the outside. One thereby
also understands the limit-situations from the outside. One tries to become a
pure eye without an eye. This attempt can also be characterized as a negation
of ones own facticity. But one can never succeed completely in stepping
outside of oneself; one rather keeps searching for a way to do it. Theoretical
knowledge can only help when the situation is transparent, but the limit-situations are never completely transparent.
2) This leads to the second leap. The I can not grasp the limit-situations with
theoretical knowledge since they arent transparent, I can only grasp them
existentially. I thereby realize that I, as the historical, empirical self I am, need
to take active part in illuminating the limit-situations. The world is not only
an object for my knowledge, an object that I can remain unaffected by; on the
contrary, the limit-situations force me to risk my own life, the basis for all
theorizing activity. I thereby understand the importance of facticity, but I do
not succeed in realizing what I know as philosophizing. But this knowledge, or
meta-knowledge, prepares me for what I can be. Jaspers thus calls it possible

Jonna Bornemark

Existenz in contrast to mere empirical or mundane existence.9

3) The third leap involves realizing this knowledge through real Existenz in
limit-situations. I am not only an individual with single situations that I need
to handle; the limit-situations touch me as Existenz, that is, they reveal my
own potential and thereby shows that myself means something more than an
empirical I. I am not only an empirical thing in a world, but I discover myself
in both everyday life and the transcendent. I discover that I myself need to take
responsibility for my very own relationship to transcendence.
These three leaps thereby result in a transition from empirical being to
Existenz, from the empirical world to a discovery of, or rather the development of a conscious relationship to, transcendence.10 Jaspers understands
this transcendence as necessary for all subject-object relations. This ordinary
form of experience needs the transcendent in the form of ideas, since empirical existence is founded on this and asks questions that can not be answered
within the empirical framework, questions such as: What am I, this experiencing subject? What is the uttermost cause for the objects? What is this world
that the objects and subject share? Humans have always more or less thought
through answers to these questions, preliminary answers that function as a
framework and structure for empirical knowledge. It is the discovery of that
something is lacking in these answers that leads to the three leaps, and thereby
to a conscious relationship to the transcendent. This discovery is a new attitude
rather than a discovery of new facts. The transcendent does not function as an
answer, rather Jaspers understands the transcendent as: the wholly Other that
makes it [Existenz]aware of being not by itself alone (Jaspers 1970, volume
II, p. 4 [1932, 2]). Founded by this dependence the existence comes forth
as freedom, as an open opportunity and an opening in the transcendent. The
limit here steps forth in its full power as an opening. The transcendent means
that I speak from out of, rather than speak about (as a subject speaks about an
object). The transcendent is thereby not to be understood as an unreachable
beyond, but as an opening that is kept open by the antinomies: Wherever it
[existence] might tend to come to a conclusion, there are antinomies to prevent
it (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 218 f. [1932, 250]).
The specific limit-situations can thereby be said to show the antinomical

9. I here follow the translation of Philosophie by E. B. Ashton, who keeps the german concept
Existenz untranslated.
10. These leaps should not be understood as a chronology that leads to an enlightened human
being; it is not a one-way development, but different attitudes between which I move.

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structure of life, a structure that can be investigated further as an underlying

structure of limit-situation. This structure is developed in Jaspers description
of the meaning of intersubjectivity and of the mystics. As we have seen Jaspers
uses the concept of limit-situation in two slightly different ways. He emphasises
either the dualistic state of opposition or the abyss that these contraries open
up. These two attitudes will be explored further in the following sections.

Communication I through you

One part of Jaspers philosophy that recently has attracted much attention is his
theory of communication, which argues that intersubjectivity is foundational to
human existence.11 Already in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen Jaspers
points out that the I should be understood as more than an object among others
in the world. In Philosophie he develops this position and points out that:
I is a pronoun and a form in which the language seeks to express the
unique character of a being that is not an object but identifies itself as
I. The I which we were discussing, on the other hand, is an artificial
noun, a solecistic construction that has become habitual in philosophizing where it enables the I to be an imaginary object (Jaspers 1970,
volume II, p. 27 [1932, 27]).
Instead of understanding the I as an objectified self, we should understand it as
an idea, something that can never fully be expressed, but can only be encircled
by a variety of antinomies. Especially in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen
Jaspers brings forth the antinomical situation of the I as something that is at
once part of the general and something specific, at once always changing and
yet continual, at the same time free and necessary. Yet another antinomical
structure is developed in Philosophie (volume II, p. 45 ff) when the I am
is given two meanings: 1) the empirical I, that which is always becoming in
time and whose future this I can decide upon. The empirical I is one object
among others, the specific traits of my personality. 2) Existentially, I am is
not a statement about a fact; it is instead a non-objectifying act where I am
reveals the existential I as an appearance from out of the eternal. The existential
I needs to take responsibility for this appearance. The limit-situation of guilt
means that a specific I can be created, a specific I created out of its special

11. Jaspers here anticipates Levinass aim to prioritize the ethical. In fact neither for Levinas
or Jaspers theory of communication means a theory of dialogue. See Lichtigfeld (1996) for a
closer discussion on Levinas and Jaspers.

Jonna Bornemark

choices. (Whereas for the empirical I, the limit-situations mean the death of
thinking.) The existential I is in itself no steady ground. It is rather exactly
the ambiguous point at which the empirical I comes forth and, as appearance,
creates itself; the point at which the existential I, as created out of eternity,
does not create itself.
Both meanings of I am are closely connected with the surrounding world
and other selves. The I grasps itself only in relation to everything else which
is not I in other words, in relation to the world it is in (Jaspers 1970, volume II, p. 27 [1932, p. 26]). The empirical I is created in interaction with the
other and with other objects. The consciousness that is the knowing subject
needs objects, something to be directed towards, in order to be conscious at
all. Self-consciousness, in its turn, requires other self-consciousnesses since
it can not ask and answer alone. The I is never created independently, it
always needs others to be reflected in and to relate to. The consciousness of
the limit-situations and the finitude of the self, forces it to accept and listen
to other consciousnesses, the lack and insufficiency of the self opens it to the
other. The I always strives toward independence, but this process also requires a
you that also strives towards independence. Communication must take place
between two unique selves to save the I from falling into non-consciousness.
To be a myself one thus needs to avoid losing oneself, but neither can the
I isolate itself since it then becomes only a punctual emptiness. True human
Existenz thus demands a communicating self-consciousness, a differentiated
duality. Only with the possibility of communication that is, only with another
with whom to communicate can one also feel loneliness. If one does not risk
being alone, the I will lose itself in the other. This situation forms one of the
antinomies of the self: I am only through others and at the same time I must
be and am an independent I. Communication manifests the I at the same time
as it risks it, since the existence of the self not realized until it is engaged in
communication. Neither the I nor the other exist as true selves before the communicative encounter. [N]either the I nor the other have a solid substance of
being previous to our communication. [] This is why the way we become
ourself in communication seemed like a creation out of nothing (Jaspers 1970,
volume II, p. 64 [1932, p. 70]). The I is thereby manifested not by its kernel,
but by its borders to the other.12 Thus there is also always the risk of arresting
communication if the I too much understands me and you as solid selves.
The self thus risks becoming solipsistic.

12. This thought has a close parallel in Diedier Anzieus The skin ego.

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Jaspers argues that this creation ex nihilo is at the same time a creation from
eternity. The process of creation takes place through an antinomical process
between oneself and another. By always separating oneself out of the stream
of experiences and thoughts, the I makes itself into an object among many, an
object that has the capacity to experience the others and the self as differentiated objects among other objects. It is thus the same process that leads to the
objectification of the self as to the objectification of other things in the world.
The I and the other are both dependent upon this process. This objectification of the self is necessary for ones own freedom, for the I to be able to
see the possibilities for this I. Without such objectification the I couldnt
understand or have any knowledge of itself. As self-consciousness, the I is in
the same antinomical way dependent upon other self-consciousnesses.
The limit-situation is thus foundational to the I. The empirical I arises in
a drawing of a boundary through which different objects are separated from
each other, the empirical objectified I on the one side and other objects on the
other side. The existential I am is this drawing of a line. It is the I in the
transcendent, the constant presence of there is more to me still (Jaspers 1970,
volume II, p. 33 [1932, p. 34]. In German: Ich bin noch anderes).
The human activity that most consistently tries to reach this drawing of a line
and leave the antinomical dualism is, according to Jaspers mysticism.

The mystics turning point of the limit-situation

In this drawing of a line the mystics estrange themselves from the empirical self;
they retreat from the I as an object as well as from the I as a subject separated
from other subjects and objects. Jaspers sees this process as a betrayal of the
world and thereby as a kind of suicide. The I as we know it is also annihilated
in the mystical aspiration; this makes such attempts both intellectually and
morally objectionable to Jaspers.
In Philosophie Jaspers contrasts the mystic with the positivist. The positivist
accepts only the purely mundane, empirical world and does not accept anything
that is not within the totally immanent world, anything that does not strive or
point out of itself. He tries to avoid the openness that the limit-situations reveal
to him as far as possible. He can not see the open and inexplicable aspects of
life the very aspects that make life into life since he reduces everything
to mechanics.
The mystic, on the other hand, focuses on the opening that is revealed by the
crack of the antinomies.13 But such a focus carries with it several complications.

13. Several contemporary commentators have noted the similarity between Jaspers focus on

Jonna Bornemark

One of them, which Jaspers points out in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen,

is that the mystical experience is ambiguous and impossible to fully express
in language, since it exceeds the split between subjects and objects that language and its users are normally completely dependent on. But the mystical
experience, as an overcoming of the split between subject and object, is not
exclusively mystical. It is possible for anyone to experience a similar excess; to
a certain degree and in a certain way, it is always present in human experience.
It is in this sense that Jaspers wants to use the mystic experience in a positive
and not self-negating way. Examples of everyday experiences that border on
the mystical include the feeling of absorption into nature, or the feeling of
waking up from deep sleep or narcosis. In these situations one can experience
the non-definitive character of ones own borders; one can experience ones
own subject as incompletely separated from the surrounding world. The I is
here, as well as in the specific limit-situations, opened up by a lived experience
centred around or on the lack of borders.
Jaspers understands the Kantian ideas as the experience that lacks the subjectobject distinction that is necessary to keep the categories and concepts
of the understanding alive. It is thus in this Kantian sense that mysticism is
fruitful to Jaspers. That is, the mystical focus proves rich only in relation to
the mundane world of objects and never in the pure transcendence that Jaspers
understand mystics to be searching for. The objectless experience is objectified
only through the synthesis that the ideas try to express; they are thus communicable and repeatable.
The extremes that Jaspers criticises are thus the positivism of pure object
knowledge, which transforms the world into dead mechanics, and mysticism
without communication, concepts or speculative thinking, which is a kind of
suicide, a complete erasure of empirical being. Pure mysticism betrays the
world while pure positivism makes the living world impossible. Nevertheless, the synthesis between these two extremes leads to an infinite, continuing, changing process in which object-subjectless experience is immediately
transformed into mundane ideas. The ideas are thus Jaspers middle way, the
fruitful way through which mystical experience can be understood. Jaspers thus
understands Kantian ideas and the mystical experience as necessary elements
of the process that creates the meaning of objects.

the possibility of questioning everything and the impossibility of absolute names and medieval
negative theology. See for example Rodriguez de la Fuente (1983, p. 136) or Langley (1993,
p. 354).

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This is, to Jaspers, an always ongoing process. The relation to the infinite
is not something humans sometimes have and sometimes do not have, it is
rather an ongoing relation that humans can be more or less aware of. We can
thus understand specific limit-situations as one kind of expression of the limitsituation as the constitutive structure of human existence. Limit-situations
can be said to formulate the human as Existenz, as the limit between the finite
and the infinite, as the place in which the infinite is formed and formulated as
something finite.

Concluding discussion

I have here given limit-situation a wider extension than Jaspers does. Jaspers
rarely uses the concept of limit-situation outside of his discussion of specific
limit-situations. Nevertheless, he implicitly shows how the antinomical structure, which is first formulated as the limit-situations of the human being, also
constitutes the I. The I is not primarily an existing substance that finds itself
in a present situation and then, in a second step, discovers its limits. Instead,
the I arises through a situation and through a drawing of a limit.
We have seen, in the discussion of the specific limit-situations, how two
nuances of limit-situation appear. The dualistic structure was clearer in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, while in Philosophie, Jaspers stresses the
abyss that the limit-situation lays bare. Perhaps Grenzsituation could more
accurately be translated as border-situation in the first book and as limitsituation in the second, since the first focuses on a separating border and the
second on the abyss that the self stands in front of. The same nuances come
back in the two meanings that can be found in I am: the I am is partly
the dualistic structure in which the I only appears as an opposite pole to the
objects, and partly the self-consciousness that only appears as an opposite to
other self-consciousnesses. That is, the I is an I that always needs to be related
to another. This dualistic structure also shows itself as the relation between
being and non-being, that is, being in relation to the transcendent as the nonbeing. It is the transcendent in the qualification of non-being that makes this
concept necessary for Jaspers. The opposite would be an immanence in which
the other side of the border is a specific and known other, and it is here that we
see the slide between border and limit. It is this dualistic structure between
being and non-being that leads to the second meaning of I am, as well as
to the second nuance of limit-situation, the one that points to the abyss of the
limit-situation. I am, as Existenz, refers to the point in which the I and the
ideas are formulated, the ambiguous position at which the dualistic structure
is born. The I is at once one side of the border and the border. Jaspers wants to

Jonna Bornemark

point out that it is this second meaning of I am that is more foundational.

Jaspers formulates this abyss that comes forth as the transcendent. He
points out that [t]he place of transcendence is neither this side nor that side, but
limit (Jaspers 1932, volume III, my translation). As we can see, transcendence
should not be understood as the other side of a border; transcendence is rather
the zero point that gives birth to the one and the other. That is, transcendence
is the primary limit that gives birth to the two sides of the border. The second
I am is understood and realized in the third leap, the leap in which the self
finds itself in transcendence. The I and the transcendent converge in a strange
process in which the dualistic structure reveals itself once again, with the nonbeing of transcendence being doubled by the being of the I. The I is originally
situated in the transcendent.
After having discussed the conceptions of limit as border and limit as the
maximum of ones own possibilities (the standing in front of a abyss), we have
thereby developed a third meaning of Grenze. This third conception can be
called terminus. Terminus means, as we have seen, limit as a fixation or a
setting of differences; that is, it refers to the limit itself, the God of the limit.
Terminus also refers to the demarcation of a content. That which arises from
this demarcation is concepts, or terminology. This continual and ongoing
establishment of a limit creates an empirical world out of the gap of the
transcendent. We can thus understand the limit-situation as a terminus and,
in keeping with this interpretation, we can begin to understand our situation
as limit, rather than the limit of our situation. That is, we can conceive of our
situation as a drawing of a line instead of thinking of our situation as delimited.
The I as Existenz occurs by holding opposites together without letting them
merge into each other. The I is not only one side of a limit, one side that needs
to fantasize about another side. The I is to a far greater extent simultaneously
the point of unity and separation, the terminus that produces the own and the
other. The limit should thus not be understood as an outside opposed to an
inner self; rather, the I should be understood as the limit. The inner as well
as the outer is continually open: it is always dependent, non-transparent and
changing. The radical alterity thus lives in oneself as well as in the other. It
is the point that all beings have in common at the same time as it is the point
that demands difference between everyone.
The development of the concept of the limit-situation, which I have here
sketched out, opens up a line of questions that I understand to be central to contemporary philosophy. Limit-situation has here been described as knowledge
producing, rather than as an object or an area for a certain kind of knowledge.
This knowledge production constitutes an important area for further and wider

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investigation. To acknowledge the limit, or terminus, as the situation within

which knowledge production happens, is to determine the foundational meaning of knowledge; it is also to admit limit as the place for experience. This
place has been thematized within contemporary phenomenology and post-phenomenology as the dimension of body and flesh. But I would also claim that
the connection between limit and body still needs to be founded; this could
happen only within a limit-ontology. Such a limit-ontology could open up
new existential horizons to the important question about radical alterity that
characterizes contemporary philosophical debates. If limit-ontology would
mean that dimension within which the I could also question its existential
foundation, then a discussion about the conditions for a limit-ontology could
also take its due part in regaining a new basis for a philosophy of existence.
Jonna Bornemark
Sdertrn University College / Uppsala universitet
jonna.bornemark@sh.se

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