Are Jaspers’ Metaphysical Assertions Meaningless?

Jaspers’ existential philosophy has been criticised as non-rational due to his emphasis on philosophical faith and subjective truth. Indeed, Jaspers’ complicated metaphysical views have often been a target for accusations of irrationality. His metaphysical assertions, particularly those regarding Existenz and Transcendence, are considered to be groundless speculations based on subjective unverifiable experiences. This kind of criticism comes mostly from logical positivists, who claim that metaphysical statements are essentially unverifiable and that if a statement cannot be verified then it has no meaning. There are, of course, various perspectives within the analytic tradition. For logical positivists, there are only two kinds of meaningful statements: empirical statements, verifiable by observation, and analytic state- ments, where truth and falsity can be ascertained by reflecting on the meanings of the relevant words.

Some philosophers might take the view that Jaspers’ existential approach to philosophy is at odds with the philosopher’s duty to employ reason, logical argument and critical analysis in his philo- sophical investigations. This view represents the sort of critique that might be mounted by philosophers within the logical-positivist or analytic Anglo-American tradition. A. J. Ayer, for example, states that metaphysical statements, which may include existential assertions, are meaningless or nonsensical.16 _{According to him, a statement is}

‘held to be literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable’.17_{Ayer puts forward the principle of verifica-}

tion as a criterion of meaningfulness. Hence, metaphysical statements are meaningless because it is not possible, even in principle, to verify them. According to Ayer’s criterion, a non-analytic statement can be meaningful only if one knows what observation would confirm or

refute it. In other words, a statement is factually significant if one knows what observation should be made in order to confirm the truth of that statement.

How does Ayer’s criterion relate to Jaspers’ assertions? Ayer’s cri- terion is applicable to statements that express a genuine proposition about a matter of fact. Jaspers’ assertions regarding Existenz and Transcendence, however, express a matter of faith. For Jaspers,

Existenz and Transcendence are non-objectifiable, and the truth of

statements about them cannot be confirmed or refuted. Matters of faith are subjective and cannot be verified or falsified. Hence, accord- ing to Ayer’s criterion, most of Jaspers’ assertions regarding Existenz and Transcendence cannot be verified, and would be considered meaningless. For Ayer, metaphysical statements which offer a descrip- tion of a transcendent entity cannot possess any literal significance. Although Ayer is highly critical of all metaphysical assertions, he does not direct his criticism at Jaspers personally (there is no evidence that he read Jaspers’ works) and his critical comments are directed mostly at philosophers in the non-analytic tradition, but his comments can easily apply to Jaspers’ existential assertions. Ayer puts much empha- sis on sense-experience in the world and dismisses any other type of experience. He seems particularly hostile to the notion of there being two aspects of reality – the empirical world and the transcendent realm. According to Ayer, then, the Kantian and Jaspersian distinc- tion between how things appear in the world and how things really are should be dismissed because assertions about the transcendent realm are not simply false, they are nonsensical.

Is Ayer justified in his assumptions? His version of the verification principle, as presented in Language, Truth and Logic, deals with the meaning of a proposition, rather than telling us about how things are in the world. In Ayer’s view, one has to know what kind of observa- tion is involved in order to confirm the truth of a statement to con- sider it factually significant. In its strict form, then, the verifiability principle succeeds in eliminating the propositions of metaphysics as meaningless, even if they appear meaningful. If we follow Ayer and dismiss metaphysical and existential propositions as meaningless or nonsensical, would we then not risk eliminating what many people might deem to be valuable insights regarding human existence and experiences? Moreover, it seems that Ayer’s version of the verification principle relies on too narrow an idea of what can count as verifica- tion. If one finds that some assertions regarding human existence are not compatible with Ayer’s method of verification, should one reject

such claims? If one follows this line of thought, then his version of the verifiability principle itself might be considered meaningless according to its own criterion, for the verifiability principle itself is unverifiable.

To put this issue in a contemporary perspective, let us look at the notion of anti-realism which gained ground during the twentieth century.18 _{Anti-realism, as opposed to realism, proposes that we}

cannot attain knowledge of the unobservable part of reality, and what is epistemologically inaccessible is also semantically inaccessi- ble. The distinction between realism and anti-realism is understood here in terms of two opposed theories of meaning. According to real- ists, the meanings of statements are to be understood in terms of truth-conditions. They say that there are two truth values – true or false – and every statement possesses one of them (the principle of

bivalence). The anti-realist rejects the principle of bivalence and

argues that a statement cannot be said to be true or false if the evidence for or against it is unavailable in principle. He argues that it is inappropriate to talk about unobservable entities and processes because they are neither true nor false. For the anti-realist the meaning of a statement should be understood in terms of assertability-conditions, that is, the circumstances in which we would be justified in asserting them. But anti-realists do not provide an argument for thinking that knowledge of unobservable reality is impossible.

The strict form of anti-realism that was popular in the first half of the twentieth century was motivated largely by the philosophy of language and logical positivism. Accordingly, it is not possible to make meaningful assertions about things that cannot in principle be observed.19 _{This form of anti-realism now seems outdated. Most}

philosophers today accept that claims about unobservable entities should be taken at face value. For example, if a theory states that elec- trons are negatively charged, it is true if electrons exist and are nega- tively charged, but false otherwise. Such claims are either true or false, argue the anti-realists, but we are incapable of determining which. This is similar to Kantian empirical realism, that is, the world is empirically real but transcendentally ideal. We experience things through the apparatus of the mind, not things as themselves. In other words, we acquire knowledge only of appearances.

It is clear that one cannot deduce metaphysical/existential state- ments from observation statements, and that metaphysical state- ments (e.g. about death or God) cannot be verified demonstrably.

Underlying the verification principle is the claim that metaphysical assertions and beliefs are neither true nor false, because their truth or falsity cannot be determined by verification criteria. But clearly this does not mean that one should abandon one’s investigation regarding one’s attitude, say, towards death or God. One can successfully inves- tigate what it means to adopt various assumptions about death or God and the consequences of doing so; even if the assumptions them- selves are not known to be true or false. Even if it is accepted that statements such as ‘I believe there is God’ are incapable of being ver- ified or refuted, such statements are clearly meaningful. In his discus- sion of belief in the existence of God, D. Z. Phillips suggests that ‘it is not the task of the philosopher to decide whether there is a God or not, but to ask what it means to affirm or deny the existence of God’.20_{Phillips argues that such metaphysical statements are mean-}

ingful to many, even though they are not based on empirical grounds and cannot be verified. He also acknowledges that man’s belief is ‘the expression of the terms in which he meets and makes sense of the con- tingencies of life’.21

Philosophy on the whole uses a priori reflection in metaphysical discourse. There is no objective body of knowledge in metaphysics as it is difficult to arrive at definitive and universally valid answers to metaphysical questions. Their truth or falsity cannot be established by observation or empirical methodology. By their very nature, meta- physical assertions will generate diverse speculations, philosophical arguments and counter-arguments. It is not necessarily true that in principle every metaphysical proposition can be explicable; nor can they be verified or falsified in each case. Our perception of reality is closely bound up with language and how it is used. Jaspers is aware of this when he makes assertions about Existenz and Transcendence. He tells us that such assertions about the transcendent aspect of the human being are different from the statements about the human experiences in the empirical realm. Indeed, one’s existential experi- ence of touching eternity and a sense of ‘deathlessness’ in the

Augenblick would be beyond the boundaries of the analytic mode of

cognition. The truth of non-empirical statements is grounded in one’s philosophical faith and thus these statements are not open to objec- tive verification. In his elucidation of Existenz, Jaspers presupposes the existence of a transcendent realm, and it is clear that he is committed to this view. His task as a philosopher is to ask and clarify what it means to the individual to affirm or deny awareness of one’s Existenz and the transcendent reality. Philosophical inquiry for

Jaspers is not a matter of verification of truth claims; rather, it is an interpretative process of understanding and elucidating human exis- tence. His notion of philosophical faith is closely tied to broader aspects of human experiences, particularly existential ones.

There is no denying that Jaspers’ existence philosophy neglects logical arguments, as he thinks that human existence cannot be explained in terms of logic and empirical sciences. This does not mean, however, that his claims are based on irrational grounds. Jaspers is not advocating an obscure, intuitive ‘hunch’ regarding human existence. On the contrary, his account is based on concrete human experiences. His notion of philosophising attempts to clarify itself through self-reflective thought processes. Jaspers is not a ratio- nalist in the traditional sense. He does not hold that reason alone is capable of providing certain a priori truths about the world and human experiences. Nor does he hold that truths can be verified by empirical experience alone. In his view, one’s worldview and beliefs constitute one’s philosophical faith, one’s subjective truth. Jaspers’ assertions regarding Existenz are based on the premises that man’s existence is contingent, and that it does not fit into a system con- structed by logical thought alone. Although he acknowledges that philosophical faith is not verifiable in any scientific sense, he main- tains that it can disclose and elucidate some fundamental aspects of human existence. Jaspers would argue against the positivist trad- ition and insist that reason, logic and empirical propositions alone cannot give a complete account of human existence. He would also reiterate that his primary concern is the elucidation of what it means to be a human being in the world. He would reject a narrow verificationist view of what counts as meaningful. Further, when one speaks of the meaning of a statement, the term ‘meaning’ needs to be clarified. What is ‘meaning’? What constitutes the meaning of a statement? The criterion of verifiability does not sufficiently elucidate what ‘meaning’ means. Nor does it follow from the prin- ciple of verification that the lack of verifiability implies there is no meaning.

So far, I have tried to point out that Jaspers’ metaphysical assertions need not be dismissed as meaningless or nonsensical on the grounds that they cannot be verified. However, this does not imply that Jaspers’ existential concepts are not problematic; far from it. They are at times ambiguous and therefore require meticulous care in clarification.