The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.
Karl JaspersRead
There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The absence of belief in God leads to a loss of moral values and self-worth in individuals.
In this quote, Karl Jaspers highlights the existential crisis that arises when people abandon belief in God. He suggests that such a loss not only disrupts the traditional sense of values and meaning in life but also results in individuals feeling insignificant and lost, as they struggle to find purpose in a world devoid of divine significance.
Themes
GodValuesExistentialismMoralityMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical discussion about meaning in modern society, this quote can be used to illustrate the impact of secularism.
More from Karl Jaspers
All quotes →The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.
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We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.
Karl JaspersRead
The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.
Karl JaspersRead
If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.
Karl JaspersRead
Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought
Karl JaspersRead
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