The great philosophers: Jesus

 Socrates, Budda, Confucius, Jesus ... 

The great philosophers: Jesus

Writer: Karl Jaspers. Field: General philosophy. Composition: Essay of forty pages. Four parts.

Main theme: the philosophical greatness of Jesus Christ.

Secondary themes: Faith, suffering: Faith, suffering. Equivocation. The end of the world.

Historical context: After the disaster of the Second World War, Jaspers wondered about German guilt, but also about what could make man great. Noting that the teaching of philosophy was in decline (a phenomenon that is becoming more pronounced today), he proposed a history of philosophy based on the great philosophers. The first series of philosophers given as examples includes Jesus who, along with Socrates, Buddha and Confucius, belongs to the group of "those who gave the measure of the human". Making Jesus a philosopher may seem like a bit of a provocation to believers. But as we shall see, this position is well-founded both historically: Jesus is the centre of Christian beliefs, but is not the founder of Christianity, and conceptually.

Why is this essay of interest to us today?  

People have always been interested in the figure of Jesus Christ, either to denigrate it or to submit to it. The originality of Jaspers' approach is to include Jesus in the field of philosophy, which may seem irreverent. After all, philosophers are not gods and their words are not meant to be praised in the same way as divine words. But Jaspers assumes his position. The first problem posed by Jesus Christ is that of our relationship to the world. As Jaspers points out, Christ is the one who announces the end of the world. He is situated in an apocalyptic perspective. This point is central for Jaspers and for a part of German-language philosophy. Since Immanuel Kant, the world has been both a synthesis of totality and the source of transcendental illusion. The question of the world is central to Wittgenstein's Tractacus and to the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, Fink and Patocka. It is also of considerable importance to Jaspers. In Jesus Christ, Jaspers finds a 'philosopher' who announces the end of the world. But the end of the world is not simply an object of fear. It is also a source of joy. For after the end of the world, it is ultimately the reign of God that is coming. The world is not to be denigrated, but the whole meaning of existence cannot be built on it. For Jaspers, this relationship with the world is central to Jesus:

Nothing that is of the world can have any weight. "This world is only a bridge. Cross it, but don't build your house on it" (Henneke, Apocrypha). It is true that the world is God's work and as such should not be condemned.

The figure of Jesus is marked by ambiguity. He is a philosopher without method, and he is not afraid to enter into contradiction. This is because "we are not dealing with methodical thinking, but with a symbolic message". For Jesus, everything visible is a symbol of an invisible form. He is marked by ambiguity: a figure who is both gentle and violent, he is loving while retaining the possibility of attacking those who do not follow him. As Jaspers puts it

In Jesus there is combat, hardness, the inexorable alternative, - and infinite gentleness, non-resistance, mercy for all that is lost. He is the challenge to fight and the silent indulgence.

We can ask ourselves about the two aspects of this figure. The challenge to fight is the sign of an absolute commitment to the world: to fight is to want to impose one's law and take over the world, and to renounce is to flee that same world. Finally, the figure of Jesus culminates in the absolute suffering of the cross, which can only be understood in terms of the Jewish people: "You have to know the essential character of the Jewish people to understand the essential character of Jesus. But Jesus did not suffer passively". Just over ten years after the end of the Second World War, Jaspers reminds us of Christianity's links with the Jewish people. But Christianity is not limited to the person of Jesus.

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