Meaning of Life:

According to Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel

Presented by Group 5
Leader: Abilay, Mark Gilbert
Biuag, Vinz Edward
Escueta, Alyssa Mae
Miranda, Jasmine
Nonisa, Diana
Olorvida, Rebecca
Santos, Maria Anna Victoria
Ureta, Nicole

KARL JASPERS

Born February 23, 1883 in Oldenburg, Germany

German Philosopher, one of the most important Existentialist in Germany who
approached the subject from mans direct concern with his own existence.
He was the first German to address the question of guilt: of Germans, of humanity
implicated by the cruelty of the Holocaust.
He concluded that caution must be exercised in assigning collective responsibility since
this notion has no sense from either the judicial, moral or, metaphysical point of view.
In his later work, as a reaction to disruptions of Nazi rule in Germany and World War II,
he searched for a new unity of thinking that he called philosophy.
After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry
and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system. He was often viewed
as a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, though he did not accept this label.
Jaspers was the oldest of the three children of Karl Wilhelm Jaspers and Henriette
Tantzen. His ancestors on both sides were peasants, merchants, and pastors who had
lived in northern Germany for generations. His father, a lawyer, was a high constable of
the district and eventually a director of a bank.
During most of the Nazi period, Jaspers, whose wife was Jewish and who refused to
make any concessions to the Nazi authorities, was prevented from teaching. In 1948 he
accepted a professorship in philosophy at Basel, Switzerland.
Jaspers Philosophy

His philosophy places the persons temporal existence in the face of the
transcendent God, an absolute imperative.
Transcendence relates to us through limit-situations.
In the face of sickness, unemployment, guilt or death, we are at the end of our line. At
the limit, one comes to grief and become aware of the phenomenon of ones existence.
Once involve on a limit-situations, a lonely individual has to go through these alone.
Meaning, the decision that one makes as how to face these situations are his/her own
and only his/her own.

One possibility is to guide a person to the limits of what scientific thinking can do and
then let him/her confront the darkness stretching out from there.
Authentic Existence
To live an authentic existence always requires a leap of faith.
Authentic Existence is Freedom and God.
Freedom alone opens the door to humanitys being: what he decides to be rather
than being what circumstances choose to make him. In freedom the person becomes
aware of God as never before. Freedom reveals itself as a gift from somewhere beyond
itself.
Freedom without God only leads to a persons searching for a substitute to God closer
to oneself. Usually, he himself tries to be God.
Jaspers asked that human beings be loyal to their own faiths without impugning the
faith of others. If openness of communication is to preserve, then we must become
concerned with the historically different without becoming untrue to our own historicity.

Gabriel Marcel
Marcels Philosophy
Philosophy has the tension (essence of drama) and the harmony (essence of music).
Philosophys starting point is a metaphysical disease. The search for a home in the
wilderness, a harmony in disharmony, takes place through a reflective process that
Marcel calls secondary reflection.
Marcels Phenomenological Method
A. Primary Reflection
This method looks at the world or at any object as a problem, detached from the
self and fragment. This is the foundation of scientific knowledge. Subject does not
enter into the object investigated. The data of primary reflection lie in the public
domain and are equally available to any qualified observer.

B. Secondary Reflection

It is concrete, individual, heuristic and open. This reflection is concerned not with
object but with presences. It recaptures the unity of original experience. It does not
go against the date of primary reflection but goes beyond it by refusing to accept the
data of primary reflection as final.

This reflection is the area of the mysterious because we enter into the realm of
the personal. What is needed in secondary reflection is an ingathering, a
recollection, a pulling together of the scattered fragments of our experience.
The question that proved unanswerable on the human level turns into an appeal.
Beyond ones experience, beyond the circle of fellow human being, one turns to the
Absolute Thou, the unobjectifiable Transcendent Thou.
When a person loves and experiences the inevitable deficiencies of human love, he or
she sees the glimpse of an absolute I-Thou relationship between the totality of ones
being. Thus, in this sense, philosophy leads to adoration.

Questions:

1.
2.
3.
4.

It is the unobjectifiable transcendent Thou.

It is a mystery and not a problem.
A total commitment to the other which involves intersubjectivity of faith, hope and love.
He was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic, and leading Christian extentialist.

5-6 Marcels phenomenological methods.

7-8. For Marcel, philosophy has 2 essence.
9-10. Authentic existence is what to Jaspers.

True or False.
11. I-Thou relationship in Gabriel Marcel is an extentialism analysis.
12. Marcel was born on December 7, 1889.
13. Mystery of being is a well-known two volume of Marcel.
14. marcel was born and died in Paris.
15. Karl Jaspers is a German philosopher.
16. Jasper was the oldest of the children of Karl.
17. Transcendence relates to us through limit-situations.
18. Once involve on a limit situation, a lonely-individual has to go through there alone.
19.

Answers:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Absolute thou
Life
I-Thou relationship
Gabriel Marcel

5-6. Primary Reflection

Secondary Reflection
7-8. tension
Harmony
9-10. freedom
God
11-20. True