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 JaspersRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of studying great philosophers and their works to understand essential philosophical ideas.
Karl Jaspers highlights that the significant thinkers and their contributions are benchmarks that guide us in discerning the core aspects of philosophy. He suggests that engaging with the history of philosophy is not just an academic exercise, but a means to deepen our understanding of these foundational ideas, ultimately enriching our own intellectual pursuits and perspectives.
In practice
During a lecture on philosophy, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of canonical texts.
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.
We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.
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.
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.
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
Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
Pain and happiness are simply conditions of the ego. Forget the ego.
Thus we build on the ice, thus we write on the waves of the sea; the waves roaring pass away, the ice melts, and away goes our palace, like our thoughts.
Justice is the loveliest and health is the best. but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.
Man always is perfect, or he never could become so; but he had to realise it.
Always go with the river of life. Never try to go against the current, and never try to go faster than the river. Just move in absolute relaxation, so that each moment you are at home, at ease, at peace with existence.
The journey to wholeness requires that you look honestly, openly, and with courage into yourself, into the dynamics that lie behind what you feel, what you perceive, what you value, and how you act. It is a journey through your defenses and beyond, so that you can experience consciously the nature of your personality, face what it has produced in your life, and choose to change that. Words lead to deeds. They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.
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