Ciphers and Existence – Karl Jaspers between West and East –

Abstract

The paper tries to grasp and acquire Karl Jaspers’s philosophical-mental horizons mainly with the terminological and methodological instruments of the musical – primarily symphonic – thematisation. Namely those typically jaspersian tensions and impulses, which in their connections to the Encompassing and to Existence are apparently far from them – turning back (and forth) to the oriental and western meta- physics of Sound and Light. While the “philosophical problems” elevated into themes, now start to interweave into spectacle (spectaculum) and – along this – they open up as ciphers. Concomitantly they do not send us – western thinkers – beyond the World, but contrarily, they attach us to the communicative responsibility towards the world, to ourselves respectively to others.