A RETURN TO JASPERS VIA HABERMAS: FROM THE CLARIFICATION OF EXISTENCE TO TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POST-SECULAR ERA

Abstract

Following the Habermas’ understanding of the post-secular, this article aims to demonstrate the relevance of Jaspers’ metaphysical vision, based on a thought open to transcendence and even to religion, by referring to the thought of the ‘axial epoch’ as a source of meaning for existence. During the period of post-metaphysical thought, Jaspers developed a philosophy that is closer to what Habermas today calls post-secular than to classical metaphysics. In Jaspers’ thought, existence achieves its most radical freedom when it approaches the figures of transcendence. By crowning the human journey in which the recognition of existence is the first step, this is the ultimate dimension of Karl Jaspers’ metaphysics. Beyond the objective knowledge of the world, Jaspers’ philosophy proposes the clarification of existence. In this dimension, extreme situations reveal the appeal of existence. And it is through figures, the language proper to transcendence, that new meanings of existence are achieved.