QuoteProject
The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.
Karl Jaspers
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Jaspers reflects on how society organizes individuals functionally while lacking deeper spiritual connections.

In this quote, Karl Jaspers emphasizes the contrast between the external structure of society, which organizes individuals into a functional community, and the inward, spiritual disconnection experienced by these individuals. He critiques the modern organizational systems for prioritizing efficiency and technical functioning over genuine human connections and the rich historical and spiritual dimensions of human existence.

Themes

CommunityConnectionOrganizationSpiritualityHumanity

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on community dynamics in sociology, this quote can illustrate the difference between structural and emotional connections among individuals.

More from Karl Jaspers

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.
Karl JaspersRead
We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.
Karl JaspersRead
The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.
Karl JaspersRead
If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.
Karl JaspersRead
Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought
Karl JaspersRead
Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
Karl JaspersRead

Similar quotes

Karma, when properly understood, is just the mechanics through which consciousness manifests.
Deepak ChopraRead
Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.
Eudora WeltyRead
Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
Adam SmithRead
Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.
Julio CortazarRead
In matters of religion, it is very easy to deceive a man and very hard to undeceive him.
Pierre BayleRead
I find this in all these places I've been travelling - from India to China, to Japan and Europe and to Brazil - there is a frustration with the terms of public discourse, with a kind of absence of discussion of questions of justice and ethics and of values.
Michael SandelRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.