Keynote Address: Dr . Bernd Weidmann (Heidelberg)

The title of this work, published in 1966, sounds surprisingly relevant today, though its content is less so. Jaspers took the outcome of the two Bundestag debates on the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes in March 1965—which he found disappointing—as an opportunity to examine West German politics since 1949 for its commitment to a radical new beginning. His verdict was damning. In light of the existing party oligarchy and the planned emergency legislation, he viewed the Federal Republic as an increasingly authoritarian state on the path to dictatorship.

Is the book, due to this political misjudgment, now of only historical interest? The lecture introduces the text’s subject matter, reconstructs its genesis, and concludes with a suggestion as to where its relevance might still lie today.

Lecture: 5:00 p.m. 

Prof. Dr. Joachim Ringleben (Göttingen): "Karl Jaspers' Interpretation and Critique of Hegel"

Location: Lecture Hall of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Hegel’s philosophy of the Absolute Spirit is regarded as the true counterpart to existential philosophy—including with regard to the project of a self-contained, supposedly definitive encyclopedia of philosophical knowledge. Indeed, key aspects of existential philosophy can be traced back to the critique of Hegel found in the late Schelling and in Kierkegaard. But that is only part of the story. Jaspers had already engaged constructively with Hegel in *The Psychology of Worldviews*, and Hegel remained one of his most important antipodes throughout his life. Although the relevance of the topic “Jaspers and Hegel” is obvious, Jaspers’s work on Hegel still represents a gap in research.

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