Volume 21, No. 1, Spring 2026

FORTHCOMING

Democracy and Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism, World Philosophy, and the Axial Theory of History: Transcritique and Copernican Revolution Between Jaspers and Karatani
Pierre Keller | University of California, Riverside

I develop Karl Jaspers' conception of cosmopolitanism, of world philosophy, and his axial theory of history in relation to Immanuel Kant's cosmopolitan conception of world history. I relate Jaspers' Kantian conception of the idea of human history to Kojin Karatani's more recent conception of world-history. Karatani's conception has its starting-point in his Kantian conception of transcritique which also provides the basis for his conception of literary and economic-political criticism. Karatani develops a form of Kantian-Hegelian Marxism based on a rethinking of fundamental social and economic relations. He anticipates the disappearance of the structure of Capital-Nation-State that has dominated modernity. While this would be a return to a sophisticated form of the equality, isonomia and philosophy that emerged in the Greek city state of Miletus in Asia Minor (and not in Sparta or Athens), it would also be the transformation of the systematic structure of the Kantian kingdom of ends into a truly republican world-order.

Keywords: Nation-State-Capital; imagination; apperception; world-history; technology; isonomia.

In the Shadow of Modern Colonialism: Totalitarianism or Democracy? Karl Jaspers' View on the Future of Modernity and the Authoritarian Turn in Contemporary Global Politics
Hans Schelkshorn | University of Vienna, Austria

As one of the few philosophers of his time, Jaspers responded to Europe’s geopolitical decline with his work Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History, 1949). According to Jaspers, Europe must integrate itself into a polycentric global society. In global society, different cultures coexist, each drawing on philosophical traditions dating back millennia, as Jaspers emphasizes with his widely noticed theory of the Axial Age. For the future, Jaspers foresaw an apocalyptic struggle between a world empire and a world order based on human rights and international law. In his search for strategies to implement a liberal world order, the later Jaspers seriously explored the issue of European colonialism. Since the idea of political freedom is a distinctly European concept, a peaceful future for humanity depends on whether Western states—despite the legacy of colonialism—can convince the peoples of other regions of the world of the political ideals of the European Enlightenment. Considering the current global rise of authoritarian movements and regimes, Jaspers' geopolitical vision of a communicative global society has taken on unexpected relevance.

Keywords: Axial Age theory; authoritarianism; human rights; international law; postcolonialism.

Between Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger: Reiner Schürmann’s Undecidable Remarks on the Political
David Payne | Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

This essay focuses on Reiner Schürmann's undecidable remarks on the political, which can be traced in his work from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. While Schürmann's later work (leading to and including Broken Hegemonies) touches on similar issues, and generates its own hesitations and vacillations, it is principally during the earlier period that the specific problem surrounding the political is extensively thematized by him. The essay will show in what way Schürmann's work from this period vacillates between, on the one hand, privileging political life as a permanent guarantor for public visibility and human action and, on the other, a mode of being and acting that has no sufficient reason to exist at all, and could as easily disappear. These two contrasting judgments will be thought in light of what can be understood as the fate and finitude of the political. In order to situate a critical exploration of Schürmann’s remarks on the historical-ontological status of political life, the essay will begin by considering a correspondence that took place between Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger. While Jaspers, it will be shown, understands the political to be a permanent sphere of human activity, Heidegger radically historicizes its importance, concluding with the disquieting gesture that politics may have played itself out. Crucially, for the purposes of an investigation into Schürmann, who tasked himself with drawing out the implications of Heidegger’s rethematization of the question of being for thinking and acting, these distinct positions on the nature of the political are never resolved in his writings, but show up as signs of a deep hesitation regarding the fate of the political at the end of metaphysics.

Keywords: History of being; the political; finitude; ontology; anarchy; thinking and acting.

Karl Jaspers: Gandhi, the Asian Values Debate, Reformation, and Modernity
Gerrit A. J. Steunebrink | Radboud University, Netherlands

In this essay, I explore Jaspers’ surprising interpretation of Mahatma Gandhi, who perceived him not as an Indian but as an English phenomenon against the background of his theory of modernity being a Western phenomenon. This means it is the Western elaboration of the ideas pertaining to an Axial Age. Hence, it was not the result of the mystical Indian and Chinese elaboration of these ideas. Yet Gandhi's philosophy is the result of an Indian reform movement, namely the neo-Vedantic movement, which must be interpreted as an elaboration of the ideas emerging in the Axial Age. A comparison with the debate about Asian values proves fruitful, for in that debate, the possibility of modern Confucianism is grounded in Jaspers’ idea of the Axial Age. Modern Confucianism and Hinduism are reform movements. For oriental cultures, reforms are not, as Jaspers fears, a change of identity, but rather their reformulation. From within this perspective, I discuss Jaspers’ theory of intercultural communication and the universalization of modernity.

Keywords: Roy, Ram Mohun; Viveka̅nanda; Śaṅkara, Ādi; Axial Age; Confucianism; Europe; Christianity.

Jaspers and Murty on the Transcendence of Metaphysical Reality: An Indo-German Perspective
Krishna Pathak | Hindu College, University of Delhi, India

In the introduction of his academically acclaimed work Revelation and Reason in Advaita Vedānta (1959), the eminent modern Indian philosopher K. Satchidananda Murty mentions his acquaintance with Karl Jaspers, a noted Heidelberger Kantian philosopher who, according to Murty, told him in 1954 that "there was no metaphysics superior to that of Śankara." This philosophical acknowledgement by Jaspers made in the presence of Murty, speaks volumes about the nature and depth of Indian metaphysics, which is elaborated so eruditely in most of Murty's philosophical works that it leaves a clear mark on Indo-German intellectual relations. This essay stems from my reading of Jaspers, who has pithy knowledge of Indian philosophy, and of Murty whose contribution to Indian philosophical literature is historic. I intend to present an illustrative account of the modern Indo-German understanding of the transcendental nature of the metaphysical reality as envisaged and conceptualized in the philosophies of Jaspers and Murty. In the first pert, I share two preliminary observations on the Indo-German philosophical connection and briefly sketch why German philosophers such as Jaspers find Indian philosophy, particularly Śankara’s non-dualistic and monistic metaphysics, so fascinating and superior to the metaphysics of other traditions. The second part outlines Jaspers’ and Murty's understanding of Transcendental Reality as well as their philosophical stances and intellectual parallels. This section focuses on excerpts from Murty's writings and his conceptual affinity with Jaspers. In the third part, I aim to reflect on Murty’s intellectual vigor and his philosophical methodology as an inspirational takeaway for present and future researchers who are interested in Indian philosophical studies.

Keywords: Murty, K. Satchidananda; Metaphysics; Reality; Jaspers, Karl; German Idealism; Indian Monism; Śankara.

Book Review: Anton Hügli, Karl Jaspers on Truth and Dialogue: A Rethinking of his Philosophy of Universal Communication, Lexington Books 2025, hardback, 238 pages
Carlin Romano | University of Pennsylvania

Anton Hügli argues that Karl Jaspers' intense focus on global understanding expresses his passionate commitment to communication. He credits Jaspers with recognizing that obstacles to communication arise from both our nature as humans and the ineffability of some concepts. Unfortunately, Hügli's abstract writing style obstructs rather than abets the effort to understand communication.

Keywords: ineffable; indirect; counterexamples; perplexity; language; loneliness.