Original scientific paper
Politics as the Realization of Humaneness. Jaspers' Critique of Political Failures
Richard Wisser
; University of Mainz, Germany
Abstract
The author emphasizes the necessity of linking thought and action in order to avoid the dangers of calamitous abstractions of sheer philosophy and sheer politics. Only a tension between philosophy and politics can be fruitful both for philosophy and politics. Jaspers' political writings, the author thinks, are not just an appendage of philosophy but its component part. Philosophy is political in itself because it exists and functions solely in freedom. Nevertheless, Jaspers is not an acolyte of Plato's thesis about rulers-philosophers but of Kant's demand that philosophers have the right to speak in public. A man as a man is not only a political but also a philosophical being whose freedom depends on the encounter of philosophy and politics. This does not mean to neglect the fact that philosophers and politicians are faced with a different set of tasks.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
110857
URI
Publication date:
1.2.1995.
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