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
At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the loss of a unified philosophical framework that has persisted through history.
Karl Jaspers suggests that there has been a significant shift in philosophy, where the cohesive understanding that connected thinkers from Parmenides to Hegel has now fractured. This loss implies a challenge in finding a stable foundation for philosophical inquiry in contemporary times, leading to a state of disarray in understanding life's fundamental truths.
Themes
PhilosophyKnowledgeUnderstandingCoherenceHistorical
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on the history of philosophy, one might quote Jaspers to highlight the challenges of modern philosophical thought.
More from Karl Jaspers
All quotes βThe 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.
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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.
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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.
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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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