In this pattern we find also Karl Jaspers. As a young man beginning his university studies, philosophy from far from his mind. Hans Saner, who worked with Jaspers, writes:
Shortly before the end of his high school years, the father one day summoned his son. He showed him his books, oriented him about income and property, and said to him, " ... I think that you can assume that you have ten years to study independently and work, before you will need to earn your own living." The high school graduate decided to study law, and then as a lawyer or a businessman to enter "practical life."
In fact, however, Jaspers abandoned the study of law, not for philosophy, but for medicine. His interest in medicine was more than casual: he suffered from diseases which threaten to kill him. He did well, passed his examinations, and began a successful career as a physician. A fellow who studied first law, and then medicine, would hardly seem to be a likely candidate for a philosopher:
Jaspers had never begun the academic study of philosophy under the direction of a teacher. He did indeed occasionally detect the inclination toward it; but he considered himself in his youth to be insufficiently gifted for this. Even choosing philosophy as a profession in a planned way would have seemed to him like a presumption. Philosophy was for him not a subject among subjects, which one could learn; whoever approached it this way continually ran the danger of end up in mere babble. "The path to philosophy does not go via abstract thought," but rather via the recognition of reality: of nature and of humanity. For this reason, Jaspers, even in regard to philosophy, had studied natural sciences and medicine. "It was the path to philosophy which had determined my choice of studies."
It is, then, love of truth which drives the philosopher. Whichever subjects he may study, the underlying urge is the same.
This gaze toward philosophy had emerged during the loneliness of the high school and university years and in face of the awareness of being constantly threatened by illness. What meaning could lie in an existence which was necessarily separated from that of other humans? What meaning did the exertion toward activity have, if no objective result was to be expected because of the probability of an early death? No science answered these questions. "There remained only one path: philosophy must show the truth, the meaning, and the goal of our lives."
His questions about truth and about the meaning of life were motivated by a very personal sense that he was on the verge of meaninglessness.
For this reason, Jaspers began early to read the philosophers: Spinoza, Lucretius, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche; Plotinus, Schelling, Kant, only later (after around 1913) Kierkegaard and Hegel. Above all, the reading of Spinoza brought him into a state in which he could bear, and even often affirm, sickness. "Philosophy is of amazing value. If it did not exist, life would be terrible." This was true not only for reading, but rather above all for thoughts, which arose at that time in his own philosophizing: "I suddenly marvel, that I exist at all. Out of an unknown darkness, the individual human climbs step by step to the consciousness of his existence ... he feels, that in an isolated existence, he has no significance." His existence must, without surrendering his solitude, be open to other people and to God. One "must have the strength to retain these categories, despite the way the pastors have botched them up." But the biggest problems "on which everything seems to depend" are the questions "what death, and what an individuality, mean." The consciousness of the inevitability of death distinguishes humans, and bestows uniqueness upon their actions. One should therefore continually listen to the memento mori. Only in the presence of death does one learn to understand: "we are always on the border ...", and only in understanding finality do we become aware: "we must struggle."
The questions which drive Jaspers, then, are about the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and about discovering the truth. Living with an awareness of death brings us closer to discovering the meaning of life, and to discovering truth. Openness brings us closer to these discoveries: relationships to our fellow human being, and our relationship to God will help us to learn the truth. Jaspers is clear: despite the fact that some people who call themselves religious have "botched up" concepts of life, death, and God, we must continue to pursue the study of these things. Merely because other people have made a mess of spiritual thought is no reason for us to abandon it - we must rather fix it. Jaspers is encouraging philosophers to engage in thought which will clarify our understanding of God, thought which will correct the errors of sloppy thinking by other people in the past.
