Abstract

This paper aims to understand the meaning and role that Jaspers attributes to worldviews. By analysing the nature of the Weltanschauungen, the paper shows how Jaspers alludes to a fundamental stratum of the Weltanschauung that goes beyond every objective construction, every shell and every doctrine, and which is identified with the process of the existential experience. The antinomicity of the lived process and the ambiguity that characterises the worldviews becomes clearer where Jaspers introduces the notion of limit situation. By analysing the relationship between the Weltanschauungen and the philosophical faith, the paper shows that the Weltanschauungen are not only images of the world, but also the way in which existenz in its total infinity relates to the world. In conclusion the paper seeks to show how, in comparison to scientific knowledge and its cognitive powers, philosophy can, for Jaspers, be safeguarded as worldviews and as theory and history of worldviews.