friends, in her ninty-sixth year. But she knew and shared the suf-
fering and the memories of her Jewish people. In this way she
brought into Karl Jaspers's house and into the realms of his think-
ing the consciousness of what he called "the profundity of the
Jewish soul": the will to live and act in an unredeemed world, and
to bring to bear on it an unrelenting sense of truth, a severe sense
of justice, faith without illusion, and in despair the guiding beacon
of hope.

My wife, Edith, has been the collaborator in the interpretation
of Jaspers since the time when we were his students in Basel. Her
contribution to this book has been essential in all its aspects. It is
proper that I also thank my children, Carl and Karin, for helping
with the tedious labor of proofreading.

Materially, I was aided by the University of Massachusetts,
which gave me sabbatical leave and some research grants, and by
the American Council of Learned Societies, which, under a grant
from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, subsidized the publica-
tion of the book. I express my gratitude to them.

Parts of this book have been published in the Bucknell Review,
Massachusetts Review, Harvard Theological Review, and the Acts
of the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth International Congresses of
Philosophy.

Freiburg and Basel

May 1974

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