Elena Alessiato
Karl Jaspers and Politics: the First World War and the Politische Stimmungen
The traditional philosophical historiography is used to present Karl Jaspers as an „apolitical“ scholar with no sense of reality until 1945. Against this image the following paper explains Jaspers’ political thought under the sign of continuity. Beginning from the necessary and mutual relationship between philosophy and politics, it states that Jaspers’ interest in politics has its deepest origin in the peculiar Jaspers’ idea of philosophy, meant as a practice of endless transformation of human spiritual life, dependent on the responsible choices of each individual. The aim of this study is to show that Jaspers’ interest in politics dates back to the time of the First World War: in fact the War made the politics as an “essential thing” also for the “apolitical” Jaspers. In 1917 he gave a lecture at a meeting of a political club, of which he was member, formed in Heidelberg during the First World War: Politische Stimmungen. This is first Jaspers’ political writing, remained nearly unknown until it was transcribed and published for the first time in 1999 in Germany. The first part of the text analyses the peculiar autonomy of politics, picked out in the relationship of power and force among people. The second part deals with the historical and political situation of that time with reference to the connection between politics and Weltanschauung. The heavy influence of Max Weber is clearly recognizable both in Jaspers’ approach to political world, that is possible to call as realistic, and in the use of ideal type system.