Becoming European: the Europe of Karl Jaspers

Abstract

The present paper expounds Karl Jaspers’ thought about Europe, its past, its peculiarity and its destiny. The drastic changes of the modern society (Die Geistige Situation der Zeit, 1931) and the collapse of the Second World War (Rencontres Internationales de Geneve, 1946) offer the philosopher the chance to think over the causes of the dramatic crisis of the European spirit and, at the same time, to pinpoint the reasons of a possibile restart. The European thought is put in connection with the ideas of history, possibility and humanity, so that its core can be translated in an endless process of becoming-a-man. Considered that the rebuilding of Europe has to grow on the basis of a new conscience of the Europen identity, Jaspers reassesses also the role of politics and philosophy in order to sketch a political and cultural project putting in the middle the idea of the human-being-to-do.