Psychology of Worldviews

Introduction

Jaspers wrote the book in Heidelberg as he moved from psychiatry to philosophy; it appeared in 1919 and helped him obtain a chair of philosophy there in the early 1920s. It does not propose a worldview of its own but describes the attitudes and world-pictures in which people live, drawing on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Max Weber. At its centre are the “limit situations” – struggle, death, chance and guilt – in which every protective shell of meaning breaks down and a person must respond. Heidegger wrote a long review that remained unpublished until 1973. The book is often cited as the first work of German existential philosophy.

Connections

Builds on

• The Concept of Anxiety1844 · Søren Kierkegaard

Taken up in

• Philosophy1932 · Karl Jaspers

More works by Karl Jaspers

• 1932Philosophy
• 1949The Origin and Goal of History