How can the individual preserve his identity within a crowd? How can he/she counter the threats and the temptations of the mass phenomenon? In the following, these questions are answered, correctly based on two contrasting and complementary situations and approaches: on the one hand, the beginnings of the Soviet Union in the 1920s as manifested in…

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have accused Arendt of anti-Black racism. Some of these criticisms can be traced to certain passages in her essay "On Violence" about black radicals making what she believed to be unreasonable curriculum demands, namely the establishment of Black Studies programs. The purpose of this paper is…

This paper provides an introduction to the enduring friendship between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers. It shows how their intellectual development as public educators was sustained by their ongoing dialogue which flourished not in spite of but because of their huge differences of circumstance and personality. This friendship between two renowned…

In the midst of a crisis like the climate crisis and calls for "all hands on deck", what do academics, as a microcosm of humanity, see? In Hannah Arendt's terms, an "abyss of freedom" to act or a paralysing "abyss of nothingness"? Some from the academy themselves, including Tamboukou, Apple and Bourdieu, make…

Jean-Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" that there are two kinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger. Sartre's "spiritual master" Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, but he had serious problems with Sartre's…

Karl Jaspers argued that academics must be prepared to accept, perhaps even to welcome, the fact that most students "will learn next to nothing" from a university education. In this paper I shall argue that, while Jaspers' model is unpersuasive as an ideal and inaccurate as a description, there is an uncomfortable truth lurking behind his…

Utilizes German archival records to illuminate crucial post-war events at Heidelberg University. The university became the focal point of attempts to define the theoretical and practical meaning of "geistige Umerziehung" (spiritual reeducation). Discusses the conflict between U.S. authorities and such esteemed German scholars as Karl…

This essay revisits Karl Jaspers' classic, "The Idea of the University." Jaspers was reinstated as president of Heidelberg University in 1945, and he presided over its rebuilding. His book, "The Idea of the University," written in 1946, was published in English 13 years later. It interprets an ideal of the university and…

This essay addresses the education of intelligence or the word in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), and the instruction of the spirit in the art of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), so as to clarify human existence in its wholeness or totality. Jaspers and Matisse reject the split between the word and the spirit, and instruct that the way to…

The purpose of this book is to bring back to public attention seven thinkers who wrote about what they believed to be vital in higher education. Each chapter examines a particularly "key text," in which that thinker considers the nature of higher education. The background for the occasion of the delivery of that text as a speech or…

This collection of essays targets universities, social science research institutes, teacher training colleges, and those who lecture and carry out research on the history of ideas and of education. It is the second volume in a series that presents, in English, French, and Spanish, a comprehensive view of great educators of every age and culture.…

The significance of the foundations of education approach to teaching is apparent in the ideas of John Henry Newman, Karl Jaspers, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Mortimer Adler. Newman maintained that there is a circle of knowledge and once this unity is ignored the result is distortion in the learners and in the knowledge. To retain the whole, the…

Article discusses the principles of freedom for those who learn and teach in the universities. (Author)

Practical implications are drawn from an examination of K. Jaspers' existential philosophy and his view of the university's proper function. (GW)

The origins of Jaspers' 1923 work, with its close relationship to his own intellectual development and contribution to post-World War II German universities, is described. Jaspers' main themes demonstrate his uniqueness as an existentialist in justifying a specific social institution. (MSE)