EXISTENZ PHILOSOPHY
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thought, which have at the same time the character of proposals that
men can be brought to work with-namely, to philosophize with.
Existenz is for Jaspers no form of Being, but a form of human
freedom and indeed the form in which "Man as possibility of his
spontaneity turns against his mere Being-a-result." Man's Being as
such and as given is not Existenz, but "Man is in his human reality
possible Existenz." Thus the word "Existenz" expresses the meaning
that only in so far as Man moves in the freedom that rests upon
his
own spontaneity and is "directed in communication to the freedom
of others," is there Reality for him.
Thus the question concerning the That of reality, which cannot
be resolved into thought, acquires a new meaning without losing its
character as real. The That of Being as the given-whether as the
reality of the world, as the incalculability of one's fellow men, or the
fact that I have not created myself-becomes the backdrop against
which man's freedom emerges, becomes at the same time the stuff
which kindles it. That I cannot resolve the real to the object of
thought becomes the triumph of possible freedom. In this context the
question concerning the meaning of Being can be so suspended that
the answer to it runs: "Being is such that this human reality is pos–
sible."
We become aware of Being by a process of thought which pro–
ceeds from "the illusory world of the thinkable" to the limits of Reality,
which is no longer to be grasped as pure object of thought or pure
possibility. This bringing oneself in thought to the limits of the think–
able Jaspers calls
transcending;
and his "playful metaphysics" is an
ordered enumeration of such movements of thought which transcend,
overstep themselves. The decisive thing for these movements is that
Man as "master of his thoughts" is more than anyone of these move–
ments of thought, so that philosophising itself does not become a
highest existential mode of Man's Being, but rather a preparation
for the reality both of myself and the world. "Brought into suspense
by passing beyond all knowledge of the world which would
fix
Being,
philosophizing sounds the appeal to my freedom and creates the
space for an unconditioned deed that would invoke transcendence."
This "deed" arising out of extreme situations appears in the world
through communication with others, who as my fellows and through
the appeal to our common reason guaranteed the universal; through
activity it carries out the freedom of Man in the world and becomes
thereby "a seed, though perishing, of the creation of a world."
In J aspers, thinking has the function of leading Man to determi-
