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as possible objects of cognition; hence all intellectual systems purporting
to explain human nature and destiny are necessarily fallacious, and
man's immediate experience of his own freedom has a validity that can–
not be undermined by scientific argument. Jaspers goes on to declare
that the awareness of freedom is necessarily associated with the sense
of a spiritual reality transcending the material world of space and time,
and also with the recognition of a need for communication with other
beings and of the unity of the human race. This assertion, which marks
the point at which he parts company with his more uncompromising
fellow existentialists, appears to be based on immediate intuition rather
than on any logical necessity, but this does not mean that it is invalid.
Jaspers is thereby enabled to move toward conservative conclusions.
Arguing that the triple recognition of freedom, transcendence and the
unity of mankind was the foundation of the major religions and phil–
osophical systems of the past, he interprets existentialism as primarily a
reassertion of truths known to earlier European thinkers from Plato down
to Kant but temporarily forgotten in the age of technology. The ethic
which he deduces from these doctrines is, on the whole, traditional, with
a markedly Lutheran flavor. Although he does not regard the dogmas
of Christianity or any other religion as more than a necessarily inade–
quate system of symbols, he believes in moral imperatives derived from
the sense of transcendence, and urges individuals to participate in estab–
lished institutions rather than repudiating or rebelling against their
society.
This book is an application of the existentialist view of man to
world history. Jaspers insists that each historic situation is unique and
the future is unpredictable; social changes cannot be explained in terms
either of cyclic processes or of movement toward any predestined end.
Humanity moves forward by a series of jumps resulting from man's
capacity for free action. But the central theme of history has been man's
discovery of transcendence and the consequent growth both of individual
freedom and of the unity of mankind. The first two major jumps were
the advent of man as a new biological species and the beginning of
civilization, 3!bout which we know almost nothing. The third was the
promulgation of philosophies and higher religions in what Jaspers calls
the Axial Period, running roughly from 800 to 200 B.C. In three separ–
ate are3!S of the world, the Mediterranean, India and China, men began
at about the same time to repudiate tribal religion and assert the
autonomy of the individual and his direct relationship with the univer–
sal. In each area intellectual progress was stimulated by similar condi–
tions, especially by the division into many small states; and in each of
them the Axial Period was followed by attempts to establish political
