Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth eds., "The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers" (Anthem Press, 2025)

Jul 1, 2025

Hans Joas is the Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at Humboldt University of Berlin, while Matthias Bormuth is a Professor for Comparative Intellectual History. They delve into Karl Jaspers' lasting influence on existential philosophy and psychiatry. The conversation explores his critical stance against National Socialism, relations with thinkers like Weber and Arendt, and the significance of the Axial Age debate. Their insights resonate with contemporary issues in both philosophy and the social sciences, underlining Jaspers' role as a bridge between diverse intellectual traditions.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Jaspers' Existential Historicism

Karl Jaspers developed a unique philosophy blending historicism and existentialism.
He synthesized historical thinking with an emphasis on human existence and decision-making.

INSIGHT

Jaspers’ View of Max Weber

Jaspers saw Max Weber as a philosopher focused on freedom and decision.
He considered Weber a Kantian thinker in sociology, influencing both philosophy and social science.

INSIGHT

Jaspers’ Intellectual Opening During Nazi Era

Under Nazi rule, Jaspers expanded his intellectual horizons beyond Eurocentric views.
He developed his Axial Age thesis during this time, opening to Asian traditions for moral universalism.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers (Anthem Press, 2025) edited by Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth is a collection of articles by an international group of leading experts has its special focus on the relevance of Karl Jaspers’s philosophy for the social sciences. It also includes classical evaluations of Jaspers’s thinking by renowned authors Talcott Parsons and Jürgen Habermas. Several chapters are devoted to the relationship between Jaspers and his teacher (Max Weber), his famous student (Hannah Arendt) and crucial figures in his intellectual world (Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel). Others deal with his relevance for disciplines from psychiatry to the study of religion and the historico-sociological research about the Axial Age, a term coined by Jaspers. In his introduction, editor Hans Joas tries to systematise Jaspers’s relevance for the contemporary social sciences and to explain why Parsons had called him a ‘social scientist’s philosopher’.

The contributions to this volume deal, on one hand, with thematic areas for which Jaspers’s work has been crucial: the Axial Age debate, a non-theological and non-reductive theory of religion; the understanding of psychoanalysis and psychiatry; and the possibilities of a diagnosis of one’s own age. On the other hand, they put Jaspers in contrast with Max Weber, Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel and Hannah Arendt. The volume also contains important chapters by Talcott Parsons, who called Jaspers ‘a social scientist’s philosopher’, and by Jürgen Habermas, who contrasts his own views on the role of communicative ethics in an age of religious pluralism with those of Jaspers.

The book promises to become an indispensable source in the re-evaluation of Jaspers’s thinking in the years to come.
Hans Joas is the Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Matthias Bormuth is Professor for Comparative Intellectual History at the University of Oldenburg and is also the Director of the Karl Jaspers Haus.
Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network