The Forgotten Father: Freedom and its Foes in Karl Jaspers’ Post-war Writings

Largely forgotten today, Karl Jaspers was one of the foremost public figures in post-war Germany to champion the idea of liberty, offering a unique blend of paternalist and populist politics. Freedom for Jaspers was both ideal and real, tied closely to the depths of existential being yet made concrete through the actions and choices of thinking individuals. Alongside developing this multi-layered conception of freedom, Jaspers also set out a number of ways that a culture of freedom could be fostered on both a national and an international level. A nationwide political education, guided by both paternalist great statesmen and by the people themselves, was to form the bedrock of Germany’s transition to democracy. Internationally, Jaspers believed that a decentralised system of cooperation, one which rose above the world’s increasingly irrelevant nation states, was the only means to stave off the dangers of totalitarianism. By placing Jaspers in his historical and intellectual contexts and comparing him with his contemporaries, we can shine new light into the tensions behind the polemics of this philosopher turned political pundit and highlight his important role as one of the Bundesrepublik’s intellectual fathers.

advantage in being an intellectual less tainted by the Nazi catastrophe than most, a white-listed friend of the new post-war American establishment, and thus a moral authority in a nation looking to revive its reputation, all things we might expect to have lined him up for a celebrated legacy as one of the new Germany's intellectual founding fathers. 1 By the end of his life, the popular press certainly seems to have seen Jaspers as a paternal role model in this vein: the German local newspaper Honnefer Volkzeitung reported his ailing physical health as front-page news; 2 the French-Swiss paper L'impartial lamented the passing of 'le grand philosophe allemand', a master of the existential school, upon his death; 3 and the German-language paper Freiburger Nachrichten declared him to be one of the year's 'grossen Toten' alongside figures such as Franz von Papen and Ho Chi Minh. 4 Yet this fame at the end of his life never sustained itself and interest in Jaspers has dwindled over time.A slew of reasons have been given for why this might be, among themto name but a few -Jaspers' failure to inculcate apostles, 5 the dismissal of his work by prominent figures such as Jürgen Habermas, 6 and his uncanny ability to make political enemies, simultaneously being denounced by the Left as 'NATO's philosopher' and accused by the Right of 'Vaterlandsverrat'. 7t should also be noted, however, that perhaps Jaspers scholarship has also played a role in his fall into obscurity.Balanced portrayals of his work which bring out the most innovative aspects of his thought can still be hard to come by.Critical accounts such as that of Richard Wolin, for example, suggest that, even in the post-war period, Jaspers never became a 'convinced democrat'. 8At the same time, we find more positive appraisals from those such as Indu Sarin who suggests, perhaps overenthusiastically, that Jaspers' philosophy of universal communication 'contributes significantly in bringing world peace'. 9n effective way to redress some of this imbalance and do justice to Jaspers' legacy is to re-examine and re-emphasise the driving force behind his post-war politics: freedom.As Golo Mann astutely points out, the importance of freedom for Jaspers is difficult to overstate as it is held by him to be 'das höchste menschliche Anliegen', no mere 'Ding unter anderen Dingen'. 10 Freedom for Jaspers is both ideal and real, tied closely to the depths of existential being yet made concrete through the actions and choices of thinking individuals.It lies at the spiritual core of what it means to be human but may still be threatened by worldly developments, the brutal rise of totalitarianism chief among them.It is thus both historical and transcendent.
Contrary to the many critics who have, as Kurt Salamun notes, stereotyped him as 'ein wirklichkeitsferner Moralist und politischer Neo-Romantiker', 11 Jaspers does not shy away from the messy realities of freedom.He declares in his 1947 pamphlet Europa der Gegenwart, for example, that the European conception of freedom is one which seeks 'die Extreme, die Tiefe der Zerrissenheit', taking us 'durch den Nihilismus zum gegründeten Seinsbewußtsein'. 12Jaspers' discussions of freedom in politics are thus not the product of an intellectual patriarch far removed from the struggles of the day.In reality, they form an important and considered strain of his wider thought, one which separates him from other existentialists such as Heidegger and Sartre who opposed liberalism and at various points showed support for authoritarian, even totalitarian, political movements.As we shall see, Jaspers' politics undeniably contain a paternalist streak in that he believes the German masses need to be educated towards freedom and takes a high-minded view towards the role played by petty, squabbling nation states.Unlike his more illiberal colleagues, however, this is not where his thought ends.Like any good parent or teacher, Jaspers takes the Socratic idea of an education seriously: the end of an education towards freedom must be a democratic and self-governing German people, one immunised against the dangers of demagoguery and ready to enter into dialogue with a wider community of nations.
FROM AUSCHWITZ TO THE GULAG: BETWEEN TOTALITARIANISMS Jaspers' philosophical and political inquiries into the nature of freedom are not formed in an ahistorical vacuum and are not intended by him to be a set of eternally valid axioms.They are, on the contrary, reactions to developments in the real world.For Jaspers, two threats loom large in the post-war era, both of which are expanded upon in his 1957 work Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen.Unsurprisingly given the title of the work, the first of these is the atomic bomb, a device which for the first time threatens to erase humanity in its entirety if a significant change in consciousness does not occur.The second is the antithesis against which freedom must struggle: Der Atombombe, als dem Problem des Daseins der Menschheit schlechthin, ist nur ein einziges anderes Problem gleichwertig: die Gefahr der totalitären Herrschaft (nicht schon das Problem von Diktatur, Marxismus, Rassentheorie) mit ihrer alle Freiheit und Menschenwürde vertilgenden terroristischen Struktur.Dort ist das Dasein, hier das lebenswerte Dasein verloren. 13he only catastrophe which can compete on equally terrifying terms with the destruction of human life altogether is its miserable continuation in a form simply not worth living.As Jaspers sees it, totalitarianism threatens to strip away any prospect of individual autonomy or any hope of a tolerant and pluralistic society.For him, this danger is not as distant or insignificant as we might hope.The pluralism of the West, the spring of its freedom, is also a potential source of weakness: 'Der Osten hat eine Ideologie, der Westen keine, weil beliebig viele'. 14n contrast to the Soviet Union which enforces ideological conformity through active repression, the West's ideological incoordination brings with it a vulnerability to external manipulation and internal division, helping to explain some of the urgency that Jaspers feels in attempting, as Philipp Batthyány puts it, to 'concretise' what freedom really is in order to provide a pillar around which Western nations may rally. 15owever, Jaspers' concern for concretising or defining freedom is not simply the product of this general Cold-War context.Its roots also lie in his earlier experiences of National Socialist rule.Despite himself only escaping deportation to Ravensbrück with his wife by a matter of weeks,16 the implications of the Nazi regime's industrial genocide weighed heavily on Jaspers' conscience.As several critics have pointed out, this is in part because Jaspers is not without sin when it comes to his murky navigation through the crises of the Weimar Republic and the Hitler regime.Anson Rabinbach, for example, emphasises that Jaspers' 1931 book Die geistige Situation der Zeit 'exemplified the melancholic pathos of antimodernity and nostalgia for "substance" and "authority" typical of the conservative revolution of the 1930s', though this admittedly does not culminate in an endorsement of what was to come. 17Jaspers also failed to criticise his friends, most notably Heidegger, who were siding with the newly installed Führer.Rather than clearly distancing himself from Heidegger's Rektoratsrede, Jaspers writes to his philosophical colleague in 1933 that: Mein Vertrauen zu Ihrem Philosophieren, das ich seit dem Frühjahr und unseren damaligen Gesprächen in neuer Stärke habe, wird nicht gestört durch Eigenschaften dieser Rede, die zeitgemäß sind, durch etwas darin, was mich ein wenig forciert anmutet und durch Sätze, die mir auch wohl einen hohlen Klang zu haben scheinen. 18like Heidegger, though, he came to regret this failure to speak out explicitly and by 1935 began to realise that German universities had been irreversibly nazified, 19 a change of heart which in the end decoupled the philosophical duo and culminated in Jaspers' deep sense of personal guilt at the atrocities his homeland committed.This sentiment is expressed in striking terms in a famous passage from Die Schuldfrage: Tausende haben in Deutschland im Widerstand gegen das Regime den Tod gesucht oder doch gefunden, die meisten anonym.Wir Überlebenden haben nicht den Tod gesucht.[…] Wir haben es verzogen, am Leben zu bleiben mit dem schwachen, wenn auch richtigen Grund, unser Tod hätte doch nichts helfen können.Daß wir leben, ist unsere Schuld. 20r Jaspers, the path to atonement must be found in taking responsibility, with every German citizen personally accepting their portion of the blame for the fallout from the Third Reich.As Mark Clark correctly suggests, Jaspers believes that 'Germany would never experience cultural and political regeneration' unless its citizens introspect into their own participation in its crimes. 21This conviction explains why he emphasises the importance of the Überpolitische, or 'suprapolitical', in guiding the direction of politics, refusing to characterise it as an 'ausdifferenzierte Sphäre' rolling along on a Machiavellian plane of its own. 22Jaspers was, of course, far from alone in finding the level of complicity among the German people dismaying.In an introduction to the third edition of her 1951 classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argues that, given the horror of the crimes committed, it is no surprise that academics and politicians failed to face up to their real implications.For her, 'the former [refused recognise them] by believing in the magic of propaganda and brainwashing, the latter by simply denying it, as for instance Adenauer did repeatedly'. 23This inability to take responsibility and confront the present was a troubling development: if society's intellectual and political elites failed to change, how could anyone else be expected to follow in their stead?Interestingly, Arendt also includes a quote from Jaspers at the beginning of her preface to the book which draws attention to the proper attitude we should have towards the present: 'Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen.Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein'. 24Germans can neither take shelter in the nostalgia of what their nation was nor the utopia of what it may be in some distant future.They must instead choose to become more aware of its present and its actual possibilities.Jaspers' inclusion is here not just indicative of his influence on Arendt's thought but also demonstrates more generally that she found his philosophy apt for addressing the political problems of the day, hardly the product of a 'wirklichkeitsferner Moralist'.

UNTANGLING THE KNOTS: FREEDOM, EXISTENTIAL AND POLITICAL
The entanglement between politics and existential concerns in Die Schuldfrage runs throughout Jaspers' post-war discussions of freedom, both in its political and its higher, metaphysical senses.The concept of existential freedom is by itself a difficult one to grasp and would require a deep dive into Jaspers' pre-war writings to fully elaborate.Though this makes a complete explanation of existential freedom impossible here, a brief survey of some of Jaspers' earlier philosophical works is nonetheless useful for situating his political ideas and their development over time.Jaspers' preoccupation with freedom emerges even in his first attempt at a full-length philosophical text.Writing in his 1919 tome Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Jaspers declares: Das Leben des Geistes ist Freiheit.Da das Leben nirgends ein konkretes Einzelwesen restlos durchwirkt, ist, empirisch angesehen, nirgends die Freiheit vollendet da.[…] So ist es mit allen Momenten des Lebens im eigentlichen Sinne: Da das Leben Bewegung ist und alles zugleich da und auch nicht da ist, ist das Wesen des geistigen Lebens, nie in Ruhe, nie fertig, sondern der Weg zu sein, seine Qualitäten zu verwirklichen.[…] Darum ist […] der Mensch nie frei, weil er immerfort frei werden muß, und er ist zugleich frei, sofern er lebendig ist. 25 Freedom is not an essence we possess but is a process we embody, a restlessness and striving which seeks to push us ever forward towards self-actualisation.The stress Jaspers places on movement is typical of his thought: he prefers to see his work not as a philosophy, a frozen and eternally valid set of proclamations, but as philosophising, an open-ended and continual search for truth.The apparent lack of definable boundaries this conception of freedom at first suggests might threaten to render it a formless mess if not for Jaspers introduction of existential Grenzsituationen.Explaining this idea in his 1932 magnum opus Philosophie, Jaspers notes that alongside and in tension with the unconditional aspects of our nature, we are also conditioned beings in and of the world of Dasein: Niemals kann ich als Dasein aus dem In-Situationen-sein heraus; mein Handeln selbst, durch das ich Situationen wandle und herbeizuführen suche, tritt mir in seinen Folgen als eine von mir mitbedingte Situation entgegen, die nun gegeben ist.Situation wird zur Grenzsituation, wenn sie das Subjekt durch radikale Erschütterung seines Daseins zur Existenz erweckt.Solche Situationen können wir nicht überschauen; hinter ihnen sehen wir nichts anderes mehr; wir können sie nur klären. 26spers recognises that, however limitless and free our spirits may be, we are also forced by the constraints of our existence in space and time to confront grim realities such as death, suffering, and guiltboundary situations.His thought does not fall into an intractable dualism, however, since Dasein and a higher sense of Existenz are in fact intertwined: boundary situations, inevitable products of the finite side of our nature, force us back onto ourselves and thus provoke a form of self-reflection which is able to contemplate our worldly existence from a plane above it.Even when, for example, we are faced with the inescapable fact of our own death, Jaspers does not believe that the possibility of freedom is extinguished since, though we may not change this fact of life, we may still change our attitude towards it and incorporate it into a life-affirming philosophical outlook.
Turning to Jaspers' post-war writings, it is clear that these earlier ideas are taken up into his political thought and developed further for more pragmatic purposes, though this does not mean that a concern for existential freedom entirely disappears.The idea of free choice, of individuals transforming potential into reality according to their own internal drives and unique situations, is central to Jaspers' conception of existential freedom after the Second World War, something which separates him from Kant, one of the major influences on his political thought, who insists that autonomy is bound up with universal moral law.This subjective aspect to freedom comes out in Jaspers' 1947 work Europa der Gegenwart where he states: Freiheit ist Überwindung der Willkür.[…] Der Anspruch der Freiheit ist daher, nicht aus Willkür, nicht aus blindem Gehorsam, nicht aus äußerem Zwang zu handeln, sondern aus eigener Vergewisserung, aus Einsicht. 27eedom does not mean following an arbitrary will, whether this be an inner instinctual one or one imposed from the outside by societal conventions or political pressures.Instead, it entails sovereign individuals acting rationally and authentically, thus placing Jaspers in line with what Isaiah Berlin describes as a 'negative' form of liberty, one where the 'wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom' becomes the ruling maxim. 28his emphasis on authenticity should not, however, be mistaken for a slide into atomistic individualism where any resistance from the external world is regarded as a restriction upon our freedom.Jaspers also stresses, for example, the importance of communication and an experience of the other to existential freedom.He argues in his 1949 essay 'Über Bedingungen und Möglichkeit eines neuen Humanismus', the title of which is likely an allusion to Heidegger's famous letter Über den Humanismus published as a response to Sartre in 1947, that: Wir sind nicht frei durch uns selbst, sondern im Grunde der Freiheit durch das, worin wir uns geschenkt werden.Das wird uns erfahrbar, wenn wir uns ausbleiben, und nicht schon frei sein können allein dadurch, daß wir es wollen.Auf der Höhe der Freiheit ist das Bewußtsein des Sichgeschenktwerdens in unserer Freiheit, aus der wir leben, die wir aber nicht selbst erzwingen können. 29aradoxically, the way in which we become conscious of our freedom is by taking it to its limits and experiencing our final dependency upon something greater than ourselvesan individual will to freedom is in itself insufficient.This gesturing towards the transcendent clearly demonstrates Jaspers' more metaphysical approach to freedom, especially when we compare him to some of his fellow liberty-minded contemporaries working in fields such as economics and sociology.Among these is Friedrich August von Hayek who posits that freedom has a material origin in his 1944 work The Road to Serfdom: The gradual transformation of a rigidly organised hierarchic system into one where men could at least attempt to shape their own life, where man gained the opportunity of knowing and choosing between different forms of life, is closely associated with the growth of commerce. 30ough the two men had a friendly correspondence and Jaspers cited Hayek approvingly in his 1949 book Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, 31 they appear to approach freedom from opposite directions.For Jaspers, with his belief in the surprapolitical and the metaphysical, freedom in its highest sense cannot be the result of material developments as it is for Hayek because this would render it a purely historical concept, stripping it of its close connection to transcendence.This is not to say, however, that Jaspers denies the importance of material conditions in fostering freedom.In fact, he gives them a prominent position throughout his discussions of political freedom, the ways in which existential freedom is manifested by us concretely through our Dasein, or worldly being.We must be careful not to equate Dasein with material conditions though since, despite the fact that they can be included within it, texts such as Jaspers' 1947 book Von der Wahrheit make it clear that Dasein is in fact something beyond mere biology or matter: 'Dasein ist das Umgreifende, als das ich lebendiges Wesen mit Anfang und Ende bin, als solches der Wirklichkeitsraum, in dem alles ist, was ich bin und was für mich ist'. 32or Jaspers, freedom is not merely the capacity to be an authentic self: it also entails a political form in the ability to enact this self in concrete manifestations.Jaspers insists on the enacted nature of political freedom as opposed to the more diffuse nature of a higher, existential freedom in his text Europa der Gegenwart: Wo die Freiheit in einer Abstraktion zum Ziel gemacht wird, da wird die Phrase auf dem Wege zu irgendeiner neuen Gewaltsamkeit.Wo in Freiheit redliche Selbstbezwingung aller, die miteinander handeln, stattfindet, da geschehen konkrete Schritte zur Verwirklichung der Freiheit der Zustände. 33litical freedom consists in acts under the guise of freedom of speech, thought and religion.If it is wrongly transformed into an abstract ideal, thus becoming a dogmatic end in itself rather than a means towards a suprapolitical, existential 30 Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 2001), pp.14-15. 31Batthyány, Existentielle Freiheit und politische Freiheit, p. 57. 32Karl Jaspers, Von der Wahrheit (Munich: Piper, 1947), p. 53. 33Jaspers, Europa, p. 23.freedom, it risks morphing into an ideological justification for compulsion and violence.Real steps towards a free order, by contrast, are made when individuals negotiate with each other in free exchange, learning its limits without the need to impose a hard edge.A similar emphasis on this practical side to freedom can be found in Arendt's essay 'What is Freedom?' from her 1961 collection Between Past and Future where she claims: Hence, in spite of the great influence the concept of an inner, non-political freedom has exerted upon the tradition of thought, it seems safe to say that man would know nothing of inner freedom if he had not first experienced a condition of being free as a worldly tangible reality.We first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves. 34ke her former professor, Arendt presents freedom as a process, something that we do rather than an eternal essence we possess, and arguably also adopts his understanding of communication and encounters with others in the world of Dasein as the key means by which we come to understand what freedom is.Yet there is also an important difference between the two philosophers on display: Arendt clearly sees political freedom as primary and an existential sense of freedom secondary, something that the existentialist Jaspers with his interest in transcendence would be unlikely to accept, again drawing out the metaphysical as a quirk of his position even when compared to his closest friends and intellectual allies.
With the mention of both externality and negotiation, we already begin to notice a key feature of Jaspers' conception of political freedom, one which pairs with the openness of existential freedom: sociability.This emphasis comes as no surprise and is demonstrative of Kant's influence on Jaspers with its roots in his famous words on the origins of social order in the 1784 essay 'Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht'.For Kant, humans exhibit a form of 'ungesellige Geselligkeit', wanting to establish a common order to guarantee their safety, yet aiming to avoid as much social constriction as possible so that they may pursue their own oddities and ends. 35Jaspers makes a very similar point to this in the 1951 essay 'Freiheit und Autorität' where he claims: Jedoch gehören Freiheit und Autorität zusammen.Die eine wird wahrer, reiner, tiefer nur mit der anderen.Gegner werden sie erst, wenn Freiheit zur Willkür, wenn Autorität zur Gewalt wird.In dem Maße als sie Gegner werden, verlieren beide ihr Wesen.Der Einzelne ohne Autorität, in Willkür geraten, weiß nicht, was er soll.Die Autorität ohne Freiheit läßt Gewalt zum Terror werden. 36s for Kant sociability finds itself in conflict with unsociability, so political freedom for Jaspers finds itself in a push-and-pull with authority.Without a controlling authority, political freedom degenerates into a selfish imposition of our own arbitrary will onto others.Without a respect for liberty, authority degenerates into a tyrannical imposition of the collective will onto us.Only in a state of dialogue and openness can the correct balance be maintained.As critics such as Chris Thornhill who highlight the Kantian influence on Jaspers throughout the 1940s and 1950s have noted, this belief in sociability and dialogue forms the basis for Jaspers' support for democracy at all.Of all the forms of government, only democracy allows a 'sphere of free communication to develop', an antidote to political extremism and totalitarianism since it produces 'a life-context in which human thinking can detach itself from all totalizing doctrines'. 37hat such a life order can be sustained, and how we might go about doing so, is inherently uncertain as it involves a complex interaction between many moving parts.This reliance on spontaneous order thus brings out a more innovative element of Jaspers' discussions of political freedom: risk.In his 1953 essay 'Die Aufgabe der Philosophie in der Gegenwart', Jaspers identifies freedom itself as being in a state of risk.In modern technical societies, atomisation threatens to cut individuals off from truth: Denn in völliger Verlassenheit des Einzelnen kann das Zutrauen zu sich selber aufhören, kann der Zweifel beginnen an der offenbaren Wahrheit, wenn nur er allein sie sieht, ohne Sprache mit den Anderen bleibt. 38, in a state of freedom, we rely upon our own judgement too much or, in a state of totalitarianism, we are deliberately cut off from communication with others, we lack the means to test our beliefs and distinguish the facts of the real world from the fantasies of our imagination.For Hannah Arendt, this emphasis on communication is part of what makes Jaspers unique among Western philosophers, the first to protest against loneliness, the first to whom 'Einsamkeit "verderblich" erscheint'. 39Without the corrective mechanism of public discussion, each of us is liable to think of ourselves as the indisputable possessor of truth or alternatively lose ourselves in a pathless panic.Freedom of thought is only preserved if we constantly confront these tendencies 'in uns selbst und in der öffentlichen Begegnung', meaning for Jaspers that today there is 'mit jedem geistigen Akt die Verantwortung für die Freiheit des Menschen verbunden'. 40Political freedom thus brings with it a heavy moral responsibility for the things that we say and do, with each of our actions contributing either to a culture of truth or one of deceit.
The vital task that Jaspers' approach to political philosophy assigns to the individual therefore also brings risk in the form of unpredictability, a denial of the possibility of precise social planning.In the 1966 work Wohin treibt die Bundesrepublik?, the acceptance of this controlled chaos is one of the cornerstones of political freedom: 37 Chris Thornhill, Karl Jaspers: Politics and Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 182. 38Jaspers, Philosophie und Welt, p. 12. 39 Hannah Arendt, 'Karl Jaspers: Bürger der Welt' in Schilpp, Karl Jaspers, p. 536. 40Jaspers, Philosophie und Welt, p. 15.
Die menschlichen Dinge gestatten keine absolute Sicherheit.Freiheit kann sich nur durch Freiheit im Risiko behaupten.Wer absolute Sicherheit will, will die Unfreiheit und den politischen Tod. 41litical freedom becomes instilled with a kind of heroism.Rather than retreating into a comfortable illusion of absolute safety, it requires us to bravely face the everchanging realities of the world.As Golo Mann summarises, Jaspers believes that 'unlösbare Widersprüche werden immer entstehen; Unvorhersagbares immer die hoffnungsvollsten Berechnungen vereiteln'. 42Humanity cannot be calculated and its reactions cannot be predicted with any kind of fool-proof method, a fact which undermines the central planner's dreams of utopian efficiency.Another sign of Jaspers and Arendt's intellectual collaboration, we find a similar understanding of human behaviour in Arendt's essay 'What is freedom?' where she observes that, unlike forces of nature, 'human motives […] are still hidden from all onlookers, from inspection by our fellow men as well as from introspection', meaning that the political realm will always be unpredictable. 43or Jaspers, the only humane option left open to us is to shoulder this risk and to trust that each individual is the person best situated to judge how their own life should be managed.He takes the opportunity to frame this predicament as ultimately one of hope rather than desperation in his television lecture series Kleine Schule des philosophischen Denkens: In der Freiheit ist zwar das Verderben groß, das völlige Verderben möglich.Ohne Freiheit ist das Verderben gewiß.
Die politische Freiheit, dem eingeborenen Adel des Menschen gemäß, erlaubt Hoffnung.Der andere Weg ist von vornherein hoffnungslos.Wir verachten uns selbst, wenn wir den Mut der Vernunft aufgeben, in dem die Hoffnung gründet. 44pecially in his late thought, we see Jaspers renege on the elitist politics that Richard Wolin and other critics such as Helmut Fahrenbach push against as 'die Unterbewertung des für die Demokratie konstitutiven Prinzips der "Gleichheit"'. 45hough these critics might still point to Jaspers' anxiety around the potential pitfalls of mass political freedom as evidence of his lingering paternalism, Jaspers in fact expresses a profoundly democratic optimism regarding each person's natural capacity to exercise reason and thus improve their own life.This change, however, need not be viewed as necessarily in conflict with Jaspers' earlier worksthe seeds for it were planted long before.Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's characterisation of Jaspers' politics as 'thinking and sharing power', processes which 'belong to everyone',46 recalls, for example, the argument in Die Schuldfrage that politics must not be allowed to play out in an amoral vacuum, operating over ordinary people rather than between them.The trend towards a more inclusive idea of political freedom, then, can be viewed as a principle which is present in Jaspers' thought throughout the post-war period, and not as the result of a sudden or hypocritical shift at the end of his career.

EXOTERIC AND ELITIST: WHAT IS A POLITICAL EDUCATION?
Jaspers' concentration on the bond between freedom and risk and its entailing demands for communication and heroism underscores the fragility of human liberty, something which raises an urgent question: how are we to anchor freedom in our politics?The answer, or at least part of it, seems to lie in political education.On the surface, this turn to education is surprising given Jaspers' vocal criticism in his 1951 essay 'Freiheit und Autorität' of how politics, particularly under its totalitarian guise, has a tendency to instrumentalise learning and thus transform it into something rather sinister: Unter totalitären Regimen vollzieht sich dieser Verlust durch methodische Vernichtung der Überlieferung von Religion, Metaphysik, Philosophie.Während hier der gesamten Bevölkerung mit Lesen und Schreiben zugleich alle Lernbarkeiten vermittelt werden, wird sie doch nur zur Verwendung im modernen technischen Arbeitsprozeß brauchbar gemacht.Eine partikulare gesteigerte Bewußtseinserhellung wird durch die Schulen überliefert, während geschichtlich ein totaler Bewußtseinsverlust stattfindet. 47talitarian education, then, amounts to little more than a form of technical training, deliberately avoiding any cultivation of the student's creative capacities.As he already states in his 1946 work Die Idee der Universität, Jaspers believes in a Socratic form of education which is intended to produce a very different kind of person.Instead of instrumentalising their students, the good teacher 'versteckt sich in Paradoxien, macht sich unzugänglich' so that they do not become a false idol or a stand-in for free and independent thinking. 48Jaspers thus displays a more popular side to his thought: ordinary people must and should outgrow their schoolmasters, learning to become autonomous agents no longer in need of shepherding.Jaspers' worries about totalitarian education, though couched in more philosophical language, share common cause with other contemporary German critics of totalitarianism.Arthur Koestler, member of the KPD throughout the 1930s, for example, describes a similar instrumental process in his own conversion to communism, recounting in his 1950 book The God that Failed that his political education exploited a repetitive technique 'which, through its very tedium, produced a dull, hypnotic effect', drilling dogmatic truths in the place of critical enquiry. 49The similarity of Jaspers' and Koestler's observations again highlights the timeliness of Jaspers' work on freedom, helping to dispel some of the sense of naivety around it which might arise from its at times abstract existentialist or Kantian terminology.
If the introduction of politics into education has the potential to produce such a disaster, what, then, does a true political education look like?For Jaspers, there are two kinds of teacher that will dictate whether an education towards freedom and democracy is a success: Staatsmänner as educators of the people, and the people as educators of themselves.Batthyány correctly identifies that Jaspers' focus on these two elements springs from his belief in the sovereignty of individuals, something which means he constantly places 'die Person und nicht die Institution in den Mittelpunkt seiner politischen Überlegungen'. 50Neither the guiding vision and ambition of statesmen nor the reasoned conversations of ordinary people operate within a strict institutional structure, meaning that political education must take place through individuals.Provoking the outrage of literary scholar Ernst Robert Curtius who wrongly and mysteriously detected an attack on German heroes of the past, Jaspers suggests an individualist approach to cultural renewal in his 1949 speech Unsere Zukunft und Goethe: Sie wird nicht im Ganzen durch Maßnahmen und nicht durch Umerziehung zustande gebracht, kann überhaupt nicht gewollt und nicht geplant werden, sondern sie ist zunächst Sache des Einzelnen, jedes Einzelnen. 51e success of a nationwide Umerziehung to revive German culture and secure the future of a free German democracy depends on a Bildung-like mentality of each person taking it upon themselves to participate in the political process, working together to generate a democratic spirit governing the everyday interactions between citizens of all stripes.It is this ethos which connects the statesman, the individual and the people to a far greater extent than any normative institution. 52owever, as we shall see, Jaspers is also more than willing to assert that the contributions of a few will inevitably outweigh the efforts that the many make in this endeavour.
Jaspers' understanding of what a statesman is and how he should act is primarily derived from the thought of his hero Max Weber.In his 1919 lecture Politik als Beruf, Weber draws an essentially undemocratic outline of what a statesman is, stressing that such a man must 'ein Führer und nicht nur das, sondern auchin einem sehr schlichten Wortsinnein Held sein' if he is to guide the ship of state with the necessary 'Leidenschaft und Augenmaß'. 53In the eyes of Richard Wolin, Jaspers' politics continue to promote this kind of paternalist figure even after 1945 and exhibit a reliance 'on the authority of "notables" or "great men" to promote freedom and keep the degenerative risks of mass society at bay'. 54This concern is echoed by Hermann Lübbe who argues that Jaspers' conception of 'Massengesellschaft' is 'grob einseitig' because it fails to acknowledge that modern egalitarianism 'statt homogenisierend und nivellierend, vielmehr differenzierend und entproletarisierend wirkt'. 55To give both of these critics their due, Jaspers does continue to display a veneration of powerful statesmen after the War that is not in line with the democratic spirit of his late thought.A prime example of this is his lamentation at a global lack of leadership in a letter to Arendt from December 1956: Mir scheint jetzt fast das Gefährlichste, daß die Welt führerlos ist.Da waren Truman und Stalin doch noch Kerle, die wußten, was sie wollten, und bei denen es eine politische »Logik« gab! Eisenhower ist dagegen ein Beamter oder General, der eigentlich auf »Anweisungen« wartet, und die Russen eine mit sich selber streitende Gesellschaft […] 56 Jaspers' choice of the term 'Kerle' is particularly revealing as it emphasises personal toughness and autonomy as the primary characteristics of a good leader, something that is not out of place if we consider his conception of existential freedom with its negative formulation and stress on resisting external pressure.It would be a mistake to argue here, however, that Jaspers is attempting to praise the moral virtues of men such as Stalin who notoriously violate them.Rather, he is making a point from the school of Realpolitik: without men of decision and vision, whether these be virtuous or vicious characters, the Cold-War world drifts along aimlessly, an intolerable risk when the costs of confusion are so high.
Claims of elitism must also be tempered, though they admittedly cannot be eliminated, in light of Jaspers' description of how the true statesman comes into being in the 1965 Kleine Schule television series: Die Welt politischer Freiheit ist verloren ohne große Staatsmänner, die durch die Schulung freier Männer zuverlässig von Generation zu Generation neu erwachsen.Mit allem, was sie tun, kämpfen sie in den gegebenen Chancen der Freiheit für diese.Sie kennen die Gefahr.Das Wagnis lohnt sich ihnen, weil es um das höchste Daseinsgut der Menschen geht.Sie haben Mut, Urteilskraft und Geduld. 57ests on his 'Eigenverantwortung für das, was er tut, die er nicht ablehnen oder abwälzen kann und darf'. 58Both Weber and Jaspers consider an understanding of the fundamental principles at stake as what allows the statesman to act with seriousness and take risks which will, if they pay off, become a source of glory not only for himself but also for the rest of his society.Yet Jaspers' conception contains a democratic stipulation which Weber's lacks: the statesman does not originate from some higher plane; he is of the people.This is to say that his existence depends on a general climate of freedom which, for Jaspers, is the only reliable means by which great statesmen can themselves be trained.There is thus a tense reciprocal relationship between the statesman and the populace, with the fruits of the former only long-lasting if the latter comes to imbibe and preserve them.
Part of this tension can be explained if we turn to the other key influence on Jaspers' political thought and his discussions of freedom: Kant.Alongside the Weberian statesman, a Kantian-Enlightenment current also flows through Jaspers' ideas on political education which emphasises the need for each citizen to outgrow the tutelage of the great and the goodsapere aude, or so Kant might say.In his commentary to Zum ewigen Frieden, Jaspers suggests that Kant wishes us to discard the idea of a glorious leader we must obey: Der Verzicht auf den übermenschlichen Führer ist der unerbittliche Anspruch an jeden Menschen als Menschen.Der Weiseste soll sich an alle wenden und wissen, daß er selber einer ihrer Art, ein Mensch und nicht mehr, ist. 59bbing up against the paternalistic ideal of the statesmen, then, Jaspers also appeals to a Kantian sense of common humanity as a basis for freedom: we are all capable of independent reasoning, meaning, as Thornhill puts it, 'that no authority, either political or theoretical, can claim absolute validity for itself'. 60Jaspers' own philosophical language also has a means of understanding this shared nature.The idea of a form of 'existential communication' is extremely important to him: no person is able to know themselves without communicating with others.The same applies to the concept of truth as none of us are capable of expressing it in a timeless form, meaning that any authority weor the political and social institutions we createcultivate may always be challenged.In both cases, freedom is thus tied to a process of continuous self-renewal and -reliance, one which, for Jaspers, translates into a need for each of us to educate ourselves towards freedom in a political context.
This popular aspect of Jaspers' thought reaches its climax in the 1966 Bundesrepublik book, a response to numerous failures by the German political elite such as the 1962 Spiegel-Affäre.Jaspers hits out at political parties in particular: rather than fulfilling their function as 'Organe des Volkes' which carry out its will and follow it as a teacher, they have morphed into a new 'Obrigkeitsstaat' which lives disconnected from the desires of the populace. 61Jaspers does not end his criticism there, intensifying it with a much bolder attack on the structure of the Federal Republic itself: Unsere Staatsstruktur beruht auf […] dem Mißtrauen gegen das Volk.Das Mißtrauen, zu dem umgekehrt vorläufig noch das Volk gegenüber Parteien, Regierung und Politikern verpflichtet wäre, gibt sich nicht genügend und nicht wirksam kund.Wieder scheint der Untertanengeist zu siegen als Vertrauen, die Regierung werde es schon gut machen. 62e upper echelons mistrust the people, leading the people in turn to mistrust themselves and unquestioningly accept the authority of those who rule over them.This appeal to popular sovereignty conflicts with the celebration of the statesman in televised lectures published only one year earlier.For Ralf Kadereit, this contrast is the result of a contradiction in Jaspers' thought which cannot be resolved, with Jaspers emphasising too little involvement of the people on the one hand and stressing that they must go through 'das Purgatorium' before they become politically mature and thus properly free on the other. 63Some of this paradox can be cleared up by observing Jaspers' language.He carefully singles out 'Politiker' and their collective groups in the form of party and government for his scorn, leaving space for a statesman that rules with the people's trust rather than simply dominating them.As Kadereit himself points out, these two types of leader are distinct for Jaspers as the politician's dependence on a party structure leaves him unable to achieve the all-important authenticity of a true statesman. 64espite this potential nuance, there is still a sense that Jaspers is being inconsistent.His statement that the 'Untertanengeist' may win out among the German people reflects a fear that something like National Socialism could return, an anxiety which seems out of place for 1960s West Germany.This was, in any case, the view of the SPD's Erhard Eppler who entitled his review of the Bundesrepublik book 'Wohin treibt Karl Jaspers?', proceeding to dismiss Jaspers as a hypocritical Cold-War warrior who, 'im "chemisch reinen" Raum seines Basler Studierzimmers', had no sense of Germany's current political realities. 65What Jaspers' anxieties do, however, reflect is his disillusionment with post-war Germany and his belief that a national Erziehung to freedom had failed.This sentiment becomes apparent when we consider Jaspers' view of the relationship of Germans with the constitution of the FRG: Der gegenwärtige unheilträchtige Zustand wird gefördert dadurch, daß man die Grundrechte nicht immer ernst nimmt.Das Grundgesetz ist im Volke so gut wie nicht bekannt.Es fehlt das Bewußtsein, die Verletzung des Grundgesetzes sei das größte politische Verbrechen, weil es unser staatspolitisches Dasein in Frage stellt.Casting his judgement from a plane above the masses and in thus tension with the critique of authority we have just seen, Jaspers appears here as a rather disappointed intellectual father.For him, it seems that a democratic ethos, one where the citizens feel intimately connected to their own sense of freedom, has not changed the hearts of the German people in any real sense.Even after decades of reconstruction, they remain unconscious, preferring to ignore abuses of their rights rather than take responsibility for change.Through his focus on the importance of the constitution and its values to the life of the nation, however, it is also important to note that Jaspers' prefigures the Verfassungspatriotismus developed by both his Heidelberg colleague Dolf Sternberger and by his critic Jürgen Habermas in the 1980s. 67hough Jaspers' paternalist streak means that his reworking of the sense of the nation is less radical than later, more left-wing thinkers, it is clear that some of his thought fed into their transformation of national identity, highlighting some of Jaspers' long-term legacy on Germany's national discourse.It should also be noted that Jaspers' feeling of despair at the state of Germany's constitutional order in the 1960s was not a new one as he had already begun to become disappointed in the Adenauer government as early as 1952. 68His feeling was not an isolated case either as other German mainstream liberals of his day also voiced similar concerns.FDP politician Ralf Dahrendorf, for example, argues in a 1963 journal article that many Germans still crave absolute authority and observes that 'the multi-party system seems to be popular to the extent to which it does not function as such, but leads to all-party coalitions and unanimous decisions'. 69All this helps to explain why, alongside a national education which he acknowledged as fragile, Jaspers also insisted upon a new international order as a safeguard for freedom.

DRAWING THE CURTAINS: WORLD ORDER OR WORLD EMPIRE?
Jaspers' dissatisfaction with the nation state in general, and the West German one as a guarantor of freedom in particular, is evident throughout many of his post-war writings.Writing to Arendt in 1947, he gives a damning summary of his frustrations: Das »Deutsche«es bleibt in der Tat nur die Sprache, […] aber das ist sehr viel, und eine große Sache wäre es, wenn in kommenden Jahrhunderten auf der Welt noch irgendwo deutsch gesprochen und geschrieben würde.Gewiß ist das nicht mehr.Und abhängig ist dies davon, ob das Prinzip der Freiheit schließlich zum Siege kommt oder ob statt einer Weltordnung ein Weltimperium durch Diktatur entsteht.Wie gleichgültig sind doch heute die »Nationen« geworden, und doch steht ihr Geschrei im Vordergrund der öffentlich sichtbaren Politik. 7067 Thornhill, Karl Jaspers, p. 203. 68 Jaspers thus sees the international level as the one which will determine the future of human freedom.One of two futures awaits us: a world federation founded upon negotiation and cooperation, or a world empire achieved through brutalising conquest.The puny nation state as the key political unit is a thing of the past, helping to explain why elsewhere Jaspers attempts to define Germany as a cultural rather than a political entity, even suggesting to Arendt that he would never accept a notion of Germany which did not include Erasmus, Spinoza, Rembrandt or Burkhardt. 71his is not intended by him as an chauvinist appropriation of Dutch or Swiss culture but is rather a way of pointing towards a looser, more cosmopolitan sense of 'German', one based on a shared linguistic and philosophical heritage that could be seen as another prefiguration of Verfassungspatriotismus rather than specific territorial claims.This formulation of the two possible alternatives for the future of the globe appears to be heavily influenced by Kant's Zum ewigen Frieden.Kant identifies two strikingly similar forms of global governance under the opposition between a Völkerbund and a Völkerstaat: Völker, als Staaten, können wie einzelne Menschen beurteilt werden, die sich in ihrem Naturzustande […] schon durch ihr Nebeneinandersein lädieren, und deren jeder, um seiner Sicherheit willen, von dem andern fordern kann und soll, mit ihm in eine, der bürgerlichen ähnliche, Verfassung zu treten, wo jedem sein Recht gesichert werden kann.Die wäre ein Völkerbund, der aber gleichwohl kein Völkerstaat sein müßte. 72panding on this global vision, Kant goes on to suggest that the federation of free peoples 'geht auf keinen Erwerb irgend einer Macht des Staats, sondern lediglich auf Erhaltung und Sicherung der Freiheit eines Staats'. 73The aim can only be to guarantee the sovereignty of each member state, not to promote a new sovereign standing in judgement over existing states as this could only come through the use of overwhelming force and thus crush the freedom Kant seeks to protect.For world peace to prevail under this law-governed, republican system of freedom, all nations must participate in it.Jaspers makes this point himself by claiming in Europa der Gegenwart that where there remains a sovereign 'die nicht die der Ordnung der Menschheit im ganzen ist, da bleibt auch die Quelle der Unfreiheit'. 74his desire to stamp out all potential unfreedom does highlight a positive or neo-Roman element to Jaspers' conception of political freedom, where even an unactualized threat to our freedom is perceived as a state of dependency, 75 something which thus implies that Jaspers' version of federation in fact seeks a closer degree of union than that of Kant.
Throughout his post-war works, Jaspers is consistently preoccupied with the fear of the totalitarian route to world unity winning out over human freedom.In the Atombombe book, it is the blatant use of force rather than the search for consent which distinguishes this world empire from the preferred world order of free states: Der Totalitarismus dagegen will erzwingen.Er sucht die Welteinheit des Friedens als Eroberung durch sich selber.[…] Nicht ein Völkerbund in Freiheit, sondern totale Herrschaft in Unterjochung durch einen Terrorapprat ist das Ziel. 76e age of technical control enables a terrifying centralisation of power which may be harnessed to destroy all notion of distinction and difference among the world's peoples, homogenising them in the name of peace.Paradoxically, a climate of distrust permeates this system, which means that, while everyone is in reality the same, they believe themselves to be irreconcilably different and alone.Commenting on Jaspers' notion of a world empire, Arendt argues that its most tyrannical aspect is its abolition of politics.For her, politics takes 'Pluralität, Unterschiedenheit und gegenseitige Begrenzung' as given, meaning that a levelling world empire leaves no freedom for individuals to negotiate with each other and reach a humane compromise. 77aspers was by no means the only thinker to worry about the implications of a unified world state under totalitarian rule might have for political freedom's continued existence, with Dahrendorf writing in 1963 that the desire for peace cannot come to mean that we attempt to abolish all forms of conflict: Wherever there is social life, there is conflict.[…] Techniques of suppressing conflict are older than the word 'totalitarian' […] Not infrequently, such techniques are embellished by ideologies of conflict resolution, according to which there can be disinterested authorities and organizational solutions eliminating the causes of conflict. 78 a free society where people are able to express their own opinions and pursue their own ends, conflict in some form is inevitable and potentially even beneficial.Kept within non-violent bounds, social conflict becomes an arena for different ideas to compete with each other and stress test their claims to truth.For Dahrendorf, it is totalitarian to wish to abolish all forms of social conflict because by pursuing this absolute peace we also eliminate the conditions of our political freedom.Interestingly, this emphasis on the necessity of conflict could also be used to criticise Jaspers' notion of a world federation: by taking a high-minded philosophical view which regards nation states as little more than squabbling children whose disputes are of no real importance, Jaspers is in danger of overlooking both the benefits and the dangers of the different forms of competition which emerge between them.
That Jaspers and indeed Kant give some thought to this problem and attempt to avoid it is obvious from Jaspers' commentary on Zum ewigen Frieden.As Sarin highlights, world peace for Jaspers cannot come from a place of fear or a paranoid 76 Jaspers, Die Atombombe, p. 149. 77Arendt, 'Karl Jaspers: Bürger der Welt' in Schilpp, Karl Jaspers, p.532. 78Dahrendorf, 'Conflict and Liberty', p. 207.
desire to avoid all forms of disagreement if it is to produce a free form of governance: it relies on the 'veneration of human dignity' and thus demands that we undergo a 'moral transformation'. 79Explaining Kant's attitude towards peace, Jaspers states just this point in his own terms: Der Friedenszustand ist kein Naturzustand.Er kann nicht in einem bloßen Nebeneinander (Koexistenz) bestehen.Er muß gestiftet werden (durch Kooperation).Das bloße Nebeneinander führt notwendig zu neuem Ausbruch der Gewalt.Die Stiftung des Friedens aber ist nur möglich durch Stiftung eines rechtlichen Zustands. 80ace does not come of itself.Rather, we must consciously strive towards it, constructing a system of universal law which controls but does not eliminate conflict.The recognition of conflict as an inherent part of human nature is evident from Kant's argument that we are all driven by an unsocial sociability, a motivation which forces us into a constant negotiation with those close to us as well as with society at large.Jaspers is keen to stress that Kant does not want 'den Frieden um jeden Preis': 81 peace must be attained from a position of strength through sovereign individuals freely haggling with each other, not from one of weakness where we agree to even the most disadvantageous terms, even sacrificing autonomy itself, in order to avoid conflict.
In fact, tension and conflict are the characteristic features of both Jaspers' understanding of freedom and of his philosophy in general: a spirit of constant selfimprovement and embracing critique emerges even in his pre-war writings with his claim in the 1937 lecture series Existenzphilosophie that, though we are led by ideals, these operate more like 'Seezeichen'. 82Lofty goals guide us along on our journey yet, like buoys, never offer us a chance for respite, only ever signalling towards where we could travel on a vast plane of philosophical open water.Alongside this tension in Jaspers' mode of philosophising, there is also a tension between the two ways we might consider him an intellectual father of the Federal Republic.At times, he is paternalist in the sense of appearing to be a stern and distant figure, dealing with ideas of freedom at a high level of abstraction and advocating for a class of elite statesmen to actively shape the Germans into a democratic people, placing him within the framework of a longer tradition of German national liberalism.In an extreme form, this paternalism paradoxically undermines the freedom it sets out to defend: it claims to know the people's freedom better than they themselves and thus coddles them rather than allowing them to choose their own destiny.Yet Jaspers is also an intellectual father in a more Socratic sense: as his discussions of political education and world federation demonstrate, he also wishes to see the world's peoples outgrow these tutors and become truly self-governing.This is not merely pontification on Jaspers' part.His friendship with Arendt, his willingness to learn from someone much younger than himself who had even been his 79 Sarin, The Global Vision, p. 213. 80 former pupil, and his constant attempts to engage with the public through television and radio show that he took this Socratic ideal seriously.This kind of openness to criticism and change is one of his key measures of freedom in the televised 1965 Kleine Schule lectures: Öffentlichkeit ist der Raum der Politik eines freien Volkes.Das Maß der Öffentlichkeit ist Kriterium seiner Freiheit.Entwerfen wir zunächst den idealen Zustand: Die politische Freiheit verlangt, daß öffentlich geschehe, was das Schicksal aller bestimmt. 83blicness, the willingness to lay your cards on the table openly and honestly, lies at the heart of Jaspers' conception of freedom.Totalitarian regimes occur behind closed doors, with life-changing decisions imposed upon the people, denying them both their political and their existential freedom.For Jaspers, it is only in an inclusive and international system of openness, one where we trust our fellows and learn to accept their criticisms, that freedom may flourish in its alliance with democracy and reason.Philosophical belief is the belief in this human potential: 'In ihr atmet seine Freiheit'. 84 66 62 Ibid., p. 167. 63Ralf Kadereit, Karl Jaspers und die Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Politische Gedanken eines Philosophen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1999), p. 167. 64Ibid., p. 136. 65Erhard Eppler, 'Wohin treibt Karl Jaspers?', Die Zeit, 22 July 1966 <https://www.zeit.de/1966/30/wohin-treibt-karl-jaspers/komplettansicht> [accessed 10 August 23].