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Abstract

Jaspers and Popper have nothing in common beyond the legacy of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Popper dismisses Jaspers ‘existentialism’ as nihilistic and historicist; Jaspers never cites Popper. Jaspers describes Kant as ‘the philosopher for me’; Popper is an unorthodox Kantian whose critical rationalism put the finishing touch to Kant. For Kant, knowledge is not a simple copy of reality, but begins with reason’s questioning. Jaspers and Popper too insist that theory has priority over observation. For Jaspers, ‘there is already theory in every fact’; for Popper, ‘every statement has the character of a theory’. Science begins with metaphysical Ideas which become scientific when tested in experience. They differ in Popper’s rejection of induction in favour of falsification, while Jaspers tacitly accepts induction.

Keywords

Jaspers Kant legacy Popper psychopathology theory and existentialism

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References

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Karl Jaspers and Karl Popper: the shared legacy

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