Boundary situations
Karl Jaspers was a psychiatrist before he was a philosopher. His General Psychopathology came out in 1913, and only later did he move to philosophy. One idea runs through both careers. He called it the Grenzsituation.
In English the word has several names. Most writing on Jaspers says "boundary situation" or "limit situation". Ralph Manheim, who translated Way to Wisdom in 1951, chose "ultimate situation". It is the same concept. This page follows the short version Jaspers gives in that book, in chapter II, "Sources of Philosophy".
Two kinds of situation
The chapter asks where philosophy comes from. Jaspers names three sources that the tradition already knew. Plato and Aristotle began with wonder. Descartes began with doubt. The Stoic Epictetus began with a sense of his own weakness. The third source leads Jaspers to his own term.
We are always in situations, he writes. Situations change. Opportunities arise and, if missed, do not return. Most situations can be worked on. A person can plan, act, and change them.
Some situations are different. Their outward form changes, and their force can be hidden for a while. Underneath they stay the same. Jaspers lists them in one sentence. I must die. I must suffer. I must struggle. I am subject to chance. I cannot avoid becoming guilty.
These he calls the fundamental situations of existence. They cannot be evaded, and they cannot be changed.
What the translator added
Manheim put a footnote under the list. It explains that his "ultimate situation" stands for Grenzsituation, a concept central to Jaspers and to existentialism. The note ends with a plain distinction. Ultimate situations cannot be changed or surmounted. They can only be acknowledged.
That is the line between the two kinds. A concrete situation is something to solve. A boundary situation is something to see.
The word Grenze means border. A border is where one territory ends. The situations on the list are where planning ends. Beyond them there is nothing left to arrange.
Closing the eyes
Jaspers does not describe people as living at the border all the time. In everyday life, he writes, we often evade these situations. We close our eyes and live as if they did not exist. We forget that we must die, forget our guilt, forget that we depend on chance.
For Jaspers this forgetting is how ordinary life runs. People deal with concrete situations and turn them to their advantage. Practical interest keeps them busy with what can be done.
The difference shows only when a boundary situation comes into view. Then there are two possible responses, and Jaspers states them together.
"But to ultimate situations we react either by obfuscation or, if we really apprehend them, by despair and rebirth: we become ourselves by a change in our consciousness of being."
— Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy, tr. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), chapter II, "Sources of Philosophy", p. 20
The first response is to blur the situation again. The second is to take it in. Jaspers puts despair first, and the sentence does not say how long it lasts.
Security and its limit
The next pages move from the single person to the world around. People seek security, Jaspers writes. They master nature with science and technology. They form communities to limit the struggle of all against all.
Each of these works up to a point. Hard labour, old age, sickness and death remain. No state, no church, no society offers absolute security. Jaspers calls such security a delusion of quiet times, in which the ultimate situations were veiled.
He also names what does hold. Home and country, parents, siblings and friends, husbands and wives. A tradition of language, faith, thinkers and poets. These can be trusted, and still they give no guarantee.
Failure as the question
From here Jaspers reframes the whole matter. The boundary situations confront a person with failure. Death, chance, guilt and the uncertainty of the world cannot be outplanned. The question is what one does in the face of that.
He finds the Stoic answer too thin. Withdrawing into the mind, he argues, leaves the mind empty. What matters for him is the attitude toward failure. It can stay hidden until it simply arrives at the end. Or a person can see it as the constant limit of existence. He sets out a second choice too. One can reach for fantastic solutions and consolations, or face the limit honestly.
The way a person approaches failure, Jaspers writes, decides what that person becomes. Which way to take, the chapter does not say.
One more source
The chapter ends with a fourth source, suited to his own time. Wonder, doubt and the experience of limits all need communication between people. Jaspers describes it as a loving contest, where each side hands the other its weapons. That thread is long enough for a page of its own.
Jaspers is not the only one who lists what cannot be removed from a life. Paul Tillich does it in a different key, in *The Courage to Be*.
What in my life am I treating as a problem to solve, when it can only be acknowledged?
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This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.