Jaspers, Karl | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), who was born in Oldenburg, Germany on February 23, became one of the most important representatives of existential philosophy. He died in Basel, Switzerland on February 26.

Jaspers developed an existential analysis of technology in two distinct phases. His early conception of technology, which he put forth in Man in the Modern Age (1931), revolved around the transformation of human society into a mass, mechanized culture. His initial assessment of this transformation was negative. He wrote of the demonism of technology, describing technology as an independent power that had been summoned into existence by human beings but that now has turned against them. According to Jaspers, technology transforms human society into a mass culture, alienating human beings from themselves and from the world around them.

Jaspers considered mass-rule a byproduct of the close interaction between technological development and population growth, which results in a vast number of human beings whose existence becomes utterly dependent on technology. This dependency requires a quite specific social and cultural formation. Besides a mechanization of labor, society needs a smoothly operating bureaucratic organization in order to keep functioning. Society becomes a machine itself, described by Jaspers as The Apparatus.

This apparatus of workers, machines, and bureaucracy increasingly determines how human beings carry out their daily lives. It has two different but related effects. First its system of mass production fosters a homogenization of the material environment in which human beings live. No attachment is possible to mass produced objects, which only exist as exemplars of a general form and are primarily present in terms of their functionality. Second the apparatus approaches human beings not as unique individuals, but as fulfillers of functions who are in principle interchangeable. Both effects of the technological transformation of society impede human beings from being present as authentic existences, and from living their lives authentically and in existential proximity to the world around them. From an existential point of view, therefore, technology deprives human beings of their highest possibilities.

After World War II, Jaspers's analysis of technology changed course. Rather than viewing technology as a threat to authentic human existence, in The Origin and Goal of History (1949) and The Atom Bomb and the Future of Man (1958), Jaspers saw technology as what was at stake in it. He concluded that technology is ultimately neutral or no more than a means for human goals, because it is incapable of generating its own goals. This neutrality makes human beings responsible for what they make of technology: Technology requires human guidance.

Jaspers no longer considered demonism to be an intrinsic property of technology, but a result of the fact that humans have handled it as an end in itself, rather than a means for human ends. To overcome this demonism, therefore, humanity needs to ask itself the question of what it wants to do with technology. The task for human beings is to reassert sovereignty over technology.

This sovereignty, according to Jaspers, requires a reversal in thinking in which technological thought, or intellect (Verstand), is transformed into an existential way of thinking that he calls reason (Vernunft), and in which individuals are present authentically as themselves. Only this way of thinking will allow humans to experience the situation in which they find themselves as their situation, for which they are responsible. Reason can turn the contemporary situation into a task, and allow humanity to seek new goals for applying technology.

Jaspers's later perspective allowed him to discern not only a threatening side of technology but also ways in which it opened up new existential possibilities. These include new proximity to reality, by understanding the laws of nature lying behind the functioning of technology; recognition of the beauty of technological constructs; and making use of the possibilities opened up by media and transportation technologies, which allow humans to experience the Earth as one whole for which they can feel responsible.

Jaspers's analysis is important as an existential philosophy of technology. Yet in light of later understandings, his separation of technology and society—with autonomous technology dominating society or a sovereign society guiding technology—has become problematic. An existential analysis of technology should take as a starting point the interrelationship of human existence and technology, and investigate how technologies mediate the ways in which human beings realize their existence, by impeding specific aspects of human existence and creating space for new ones.

Existentialism;; German Perspectives.

Jaspers, Karl. (1931). Die geistige Situation der Zeit. Berlin: Göschen (Band 1000). Published in English as Man in the Modern Age, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul. (1973). New York: AMS Press.

Jaspers, Karl. (1932). Philosophie. Berlin: Springer (3 volumes). Published in English as Philosophy, trans. E. B. Ashton (1969–1971). Chicago: University of Chicago Press (3 volumes).

Jaspers, Karl. (1949). Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte. Zurich: Artemis. Published in English as The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock (1953). London: Routledge; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Jaspers, Karl. (1958). Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen. Munich: Piper. Published in English as The Future of Mankind; also as The Atom Bomb and the Future of Man, trans. E. B. Ashton. (1961). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jaspers, Karl. (1994). Basic Philosophical Writings, 2nd edition. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

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