Abstract

This paper focuses on the genesis of Karl Jaspers’ concept of existential philosophy by discussing the intention of Jaspers’ Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and the impact of Martin Heidegger’s review „Anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers’ Psychologie der Weltanschauungen“ on Jaspers’ later works. By analyzing personal statements, letters and the consequences of Heidegger’s critique for Jaspers’ subsequent philosophical publications, particularly Die geistige Situation der Zeit and the three-volumed Philosophie, I want so show in which respect Heidegger’s review made the Psychologie der Weltanschauungen retrospectively appear as historically „the earliest work of the later so-called modern existential philosophy“, as Jaspers put it in 1957.