An Approach To Jaspers' View Of Freedom

Karl. Jaspers is a famous existential philosopher. He cared for human existence in modern society, criticized the two world wars, reflected human thought and culture, and then put forward the existential view of freedom. His view of freedom inherited and transcended that in the western traditional culture. He was an innovator of Kant's thought in modern edition. When he explained Kant's view of freedom with the relation of existence-transcendence, he actually altered Kant's thought and put the philosophy forward far beyond Kant. And he also transcended Kierkegaard's view of freedom based on irrationality because his view of freedom was a kind of modern theory of freedom in the existential sense. The dissertation consists of three parts. In the first part, I give a general analysis of basic ideas of freedom and the types of freedom. Then I put forward the basic problems it reflects and the fundamental tasks it has to solve: what does the ontology of freedom bases on? What extent is freedom comprehended to? How is freedom achieved in reality? Where is the spirit of times and historical value freedom embodies? The second is about the cultural atmosphere of Jaspers'view of freedom that includes the history of western view of freedom---it discusses the way the ancient western thinkers sought freedom and the thought of individual freedom and investigates the view of freedom in modern western society---and the people's spiritual situation in Jaspers'times. In the third part, I elaborate Jaspers'view of freedom. His philosophical belief had close relations with his view of freedom. He expounded his view of freedom in his existential philosophy.