PRESENTATION-COPY FOR SCHILPP

JASPERS, KARL.

Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen. Politisches Bewusstsein in Unserer Zeit.

München, Piper & Co, (1958). Lex 8vo. Original blue full cloth binding with original dust-jacket in red and black with white and grey lettering. Dust-jacket with nicks and tears to extremities. A few underlinings to the first leaves. With the bookplate of the famous American educator Paul Arthur Schilpp. 506, (6, -advertisements).

Inscribed by the author to front free end-paper: "Herrn College Schilpp/ in alter Dankbarkeit/ Karl Jaspers". And with the inscription "Basel, den 7. August 1958" underneath.

First edition, presentation-copy, of Jasper's main work in political philosophy, "The Atom Bomb and the Future of Man", in which Jaspers outlines his humanist doctrine. It is in this work that we find most explicitly expressed his ideas on the importance of the social and collective conditions of human integrity. The work became greatly influential.

The German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Theodor Jaspers (1883-1969) was one of the main exponents of existentialism in Germany and he had an enormous impact on theology, psychiatry and philosophy of his time. Later on, his works in political philosophy came to exersize an even greater influence upon 20th century thought.

"Karl Jaspers (1883 - 1969) began his academic career working as a psychiatrist and, after a period of transition, he converted to philosophy in the early 1920s. Throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century he exercised considerable influence on a number of areas of philosophical inquiry: especially on epistemology, the philosophy of religion, and political theory. His philosophy has its foundation in a subjective-experiential transformation of Kantian philosophy, which reconstructs Kantian transcendentalism as a doctrine of particular experience and spontaneous freedom, and emphasizes the constitutive importance of lived existence for authentic knowledge. Jaspers obtained his widest influence, not through his philosophy, but through his writings on governmental conditions in Germany, and after the collapse of National Socialist regime he emerged as a powerful spokesperson for moral-democratic education and reorientation in the Federal Republic of Germany." (SEP).

Paul Arthur Schilpp (1897 - 1993) was famous an American educator. He was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States prior to World War I. Schilpp taught at Northwestern University, University of the Pacific and spent the last years of his professional career teaching undergraduate philosophy courses at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He was considered a serious and driven teacher of moral decision and thought, often controversial. He was known for his passionate teaching methods and highly energetic delivery.

For many years he was the editor of the Library of Living Philosophers. As editor he was able to convince people like Albert Einstein to contribute to the library.

Order-nr.: 49006