Philosophy of Existence Quotes

“The individual who can help himself is precisely the one who wills that authority exist in the world.”
― Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence

“In his finitude each individual begins anew. For his maturing he depends upon authority in order to appropriate the content that can be handed on by tradition. As he grows up within authority, the arena in which he everywhere encounters being opens up to him. If he grows up without authority, he will indeed come to possess knowledge, he will master speaking and thinking, but he will remain at the mercy of the empty possibilities of the realm where Nothingness stares him in the face.”
― Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence

“Then the exception would be as if he did not exist at all.”
― Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence

“No science of religion (history, psychology, or sociology of religion) understands the reality of religion. Science can know and understand religions without the investigator’s belonging to or having faith in any of them. Real faith is not knowable.”
― Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence