Karl Jaspers: Life and Times, existentialism and Karl Jaspers, the Realm of Existentialism at DividingLine.com

German psychiatrist and philosopher. A founder of modern existentialism, he was concerned with human reactions to extreme situations. His works include Man and the Modern World (1931) and The Future of Mankind (1957). Jaspers, Karl (1883-1969), German philosopher, one of the originators of existentialism, whose work influenced modern theology and psychiatry as well as philosophy. Born in Oldenburg, Jaspers taught psychiatry and philosophy at Heidelberg University. During most of the Nazi period in the 1930s and 1940s, he was prevented from teaching. In 1948 he accepted a professorship in philosophy in Basel, Switzerland.

Jaspers's major work, Philosophy (1932), gives his view of the history of philosophy and introduces his major themes. He identified philosophy with philosophical thinking itself, not with any particular set of conclusions. His philosophy is an effort to explore and describe the margins and limits of experience. In Existenzphilosophie (1938) Jaspers described the experience of freedom and possibility for individuals who become aware of the ultimate limits of being. This experience comes from such limitations as chance, suffering, conflict, guilt, and death. --Encarta Encyclopedia