course, his philosophy of man. He finds the essence of man in his
singular potential for deciding and participating in his own des-
tiny; hence man's essential being transcends the generally deter-
minable dimensions of being human. These dimensions, to be sure,
follow their own laws. And they are indispensable forms of the
realization and appearance of man's essential being. But by virtue
of this function their self-value is highly limited and ancillary to
the concern over freedom. The highlights of this aspect of Jas-
pers's work are his explorations of the fundamental certainty of
being which gives rise to the concern over truth; the historicity of
man's active realization of truth; unrelenting communication be-
tween men as the primary means of a reasoned realization of
truth; and the role of situations, particularly of "limit situations,"
as goads to freedom and selfhood.

Besides affecting his philosophy of man, Jaspers's concern over
freedom leaves its mark also on his treatment of modes of reality
which transcend man, i.e., the world and God, or, as he prefers,
"transcendence." Thus transcendence is the ground of the free
man insofar as, being free, he is independent of the world, and,
being finite, cannot be the source of his own being. The world, in
turn, as the arena of the realization of freedom, is invested with
value. However, the world as object of scientific knowledge is
admitted to exist beyond man's value interests save that the reali-
zation of truth for its own sake is itself of value. The insufficiency
of the determinate immanence of the world points to the possibil-
ity of freedom beyond the world; and the urge toward the realiza-
tion of these possibilities, meeting the recalcitrance of the course
of the world, requires its knowledgeable mastery in order to suc-
ceed. Thus, according to Jaspers, the success of a way of thinking
which is particularly attuned to the realization of freedom in the
world must, by bracketing this concern of freedom, be more than
a philosophy of freedom. Failing that it would be a mere "existen-
tialism," i.e., an attempt to absolutize man's freedom. For Jaspers
such an absolutization is unrealistic and neither is required for nor
promotes the realization of freedom. An approach to Jaspers that
emphasizes his concern over freedom is liable to fail in disassociat-
ing this philosopher of existence from existentialism.

Two related pairs of concepts carry a considerable burden of
Jaspers's philosophical edifice, namely, Being-in-itself and in its
appearance, and subject and object. He holds that Being is grasped
in its appearance and, as it appears to human thought, is split into
object and subject. Being-in-itself, comprising object and subject,
eludes human grasp. These two distinctions show some important
features of Jaspers's thought--first, his view that for man reality is

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