KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA60 (Grandpierre)

Commentary 11

(JASPERS, EVOLUTION, AND GENERAL INTEREST)
by Glenn C Wood
28 November 2003, posted 7 December 2003

<1>
Just returned from a home construction in the Northwest and have been doing a little KJForum reading and would like to first respond to your footnote in TA60C9 and an editor's note to PM's TA63C6. (I was sorry to see Jalali withdraw from the Forum and would have liked to have defended what appeared to be an appropriation of the Transcendental spirit of KJ. Unsuccessful attempts were made to e Jalali today.)

<2>
Your reference to the KJ statement of purpose -- that construct, existant, that which stands out of your Karl Jaspers experience, that thesis -- doesn't nullify the prior reality of encompassing complexity. The philosophically minded might wonder more about these causes than about evolution, for the former is in the realm of possibility while you can still give testimony whereas the latter is but reason's culdesac-like pastime. Nor does the stated purpose lend credence to an off-the-wall-of-zero-derivation liberality which encourages meaningless unlimited verbalizations about our predicament of thinking. Namely a predicament of thinking in terms of definitive beginnings, about origins as though such can produce a conjured revelation through reductionistic analysis and thereby avoid the complexity, that 0-D ... complex ... that should not so easily be avoided by referring to an arbitrary foundation, i.e. a stated purpose of a construct.

<3>
The stated purpose does not alter precipitating data that led to the use of Karl Jaspers. If the editor had some accountable reference from Karl Jaspers which shows an approval of the editor's understanding of Karl Jaspers, that would be a precipitating factor. If you had had direct involvement with KJ, that would be another, but, in the latter case, though you had the obvious intellectual potential and corresponding timeliness for such it was not taken advantage of -- for you had studied in Europe if recollection serves me correctly. Also, if someone with an agenda -- that you might be innocent of -- suggested to you the need, knowing your potential for reducing KJ to something less meaningful and threatening; that would be a precipitating factor. No less a tempting factor too is reducing the factors to something so clear and distinct as " I simply thought" this or that and that's all there is to it. Such a simplification is possibly an avoidance of the complexity of the encompassing you might refer to as objectivity or the ground for your structures. (See your comment to Mutnick who says you cannot say where experience is, and then rather than say it is no-where you imply it is now-here. I think you say ultimate being is what we experience and the ground (formed inside experience) of God and one's identity. Then God and identity is referred to as a working fiction -- fiction being an emotive word and easily interpreted atheistically. If you mean God cannot be talked about except while realizing what we are doing that is not only representative of KJ thinking but also Biblical. Is it proper to think you would probably not admit to this clearly for it would not be generally of interest?

<4>
So ... it isn't that I mind "sparks flying", it is that KJ is being reduced to something of general interest. He has never been of general interest but there may be some wishing he could be subjected to such. The challenge to do a TA on the matter of evolution would in my judgement contribute to the futility of general interest. I've in other comments already said what KJ has, to my knowledge, to say about the subject, and the little amount said is insignificant compared to his extraordinary philosophy and psychology.

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Glenn C Wood

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REPLY

The chief point of interest for me is the openness that Jaspers had to all views (or in negative terms, the absence of narrow-mindedness). He showed this to an exceptional degree. Secondly, it is his central concept of the encompassing, which in my opinion is fundamental, and related to Anaximander's apeiron. Both these aspects I try to foster as qualities of the KJF. Thirdly, he was held in great personal esteem by a friend of mine who was his student. And furthermore, he worked in psychiatry as well as in philosophy, which is an important feature for my own work.

Whether to structure the encompassing theistically or in other terms is a personal decision which all make as they see fit - but I believe it is important to deal with this question because it is central, and that to neglect it leads into blind alleys.

I don't agree that a philosopher's work can be not "of general interest", nor that that is a bad sign, as I understand you to be saying in <3> and <4>. Most of them claim that it is, because they try to find out about the bases of thinking. Indeed, by this definition, philosophers cannot be esoteric, and in case they try to be esoteric (as for instance the Pythagoreans did) they miss their task. Jaspers himself said that everybody has a philosophy, there is no choice, and the only questions are whether it is aware or hidden, and whether it clear or confused. Philosophy applies to everyone, simply because thinking is or should be everyone's responsibility. For this reason I don't think that philosophers' work follows the same rules as that of astronomers, chemists, or archaeologists, who have knowledge that is defined by their experience, to some extent outside of that of other people.

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Herbert FJ Müller