[W]e are oppressed by one nightmarish idea: if a dictatorship in Hitler’s style should ever rise in America, all hope would be lost for ages. We in Germany could be freed from the outside. Once a dictatorship has been established, no liberation from within is possible. Should the Anglo-Saxon world be dictatorially conquered from within, as we were, there would no longer be an outside, nor a liberation. The freedom fought for and won by Western man over hundreds, thousands of years would be a thing of the past. The primitivity of despotism would reign again, but with all means of technology. True, man cannot be forever enslaved; but this comfort would then be a very distant one, on a plane with Plato’s dictum that in the course of infinite time everything that is possible will here or there occur or recur as a reality. We see the feelings of moral superiority and we are frightened: he who feels absolutely safe from danger is already on the way to fall victim to it. The German fate could provide all others with experience. If only they would understand this experience! We are no inferior race. Everywhere people have similar qualities. Everywhere there are violent, criminal, vitally capable minorities apt to seize the reins if occasion offers, and to proceed with brutality. We may well worry over the victors’ self-certainty. For all decisive responsibility for the course of events will henceforth be theirs. It is up to them to prevent evil or conjure up new evil. Whatever guilt they might incur from now on would be as calamitous for us as for them. Now that the whole of mankind is at stake, their responsibility for their actions is intensified. Unless a break is made in the evil chain, the fate which overtook us will overtake the victors—and all of mankind with them. ... Now a new period of history has begun. From now on, responsibility for whatever happens rests with the victorious powers.

As Existenz I am, since I know that I have been given to myself by Transcendence. I am not by virtue of my decision alone. Even my freedom, my being-through-myself has been given me. I can be absent from myself and no will can then enable me to give myself to myself.

[F]aith proper is the existential act by which Transcendence becomes conscious in its actuality.

Faith is life out of the Comprehensive, it is guidance and fulfilment through the Comprehensive.

Faith that springs from the Comprehensive is free, because it is not fixed in any finite thing that has been made into an absolute. It has a character of indetermination (i.e. in reference to what can be stated—I do not know whether and what I believe) and also of the absolute (in practice, in the activity and repose that grow out of the decision).

To speak of [the Comprehensive] requires the basic philosophical operation, which is to ascertain the Comprehensive by transcending the object within the object thinking that remains forever inevitable, i.e., to break through the prison of our being that appears to us as split into subject and object, even though we can never really enter into the sphere outside it.

There is something in us that resists this basic operation and thus resists philosophical thought itself. We always strive for something tangible. Hence we erroneously take philosophical ideas for object knowledge. As a cat falls on its four paws, we fall upon the tangible object. We fight against the vertigo of philosophy, against the intimation that we should stand on our heads. We wish to remain 'sane', holding on to our objects and evading the rebirth of our nature in the act of transcending.

But nothing avails. We can retire to the supposed refuge of common sense, but if we try to force everything into its forms, we succumb to the superstition whose essential characteristic is that it freezes into an object, and thus makes tangible Being itself that transcends any dichotomy of subject and object.

Philosophical faith, with its keen eye for superstition, for faith that is pinned to an object, is consequently incapable of professing dogmatic creeds. The realm of the objective must remain in motion, must evaporate as it were, so that as the object vanishes, a fulfilled consciousness of Being is made clear by this very vanishing. Accordingly, philosophical faith is forever immersed in a dialectical process of fusion and negation.

Just as Being and Nothingness are inseparable, each containing the other, yet each violently repelling the other, so faith and unfaith are inseparable, yet passionately repel one another.

Philosophical faith is in tradition. To be sure, this faith exists only in the independent thinking of each individual, it does not offer the shelter of an objective institution, it is what remains when everything else collapses, and yet it is nothing if one tries to cling to it as a practical support in the world. But always man conquers it by coming to himself, and this he does through tradition. Hence philosophy is determined by its history, and the history of philosophy is rounded out by the philosophizing of each period. ...

Nowhere at any time has a philosophia perennis been achieved, and yet such a philosophy always exists in the idea of philosophical thought and in the general picture of the truth of philosophy considered as its history over three millennia which become a single present.

The question is indeed raised—particularly in view of the achievements of the religions: Does philosophy help man in distress? The question is asked by those who seek an objective, tangible support. But in philosophy there is no such support. The support offered by philosophy is reflection, a gathering of spiritual sustenance through the actualization of the Comprehensive, to win oneself by being given to oneself. Philosophical faith sees itself as exposed, without safeguard or shelter.

And yet the tradition of philosophy is something like a support. The reality of past philosophical thought, of the great philosophers, of the works of philosophy stands before our eyes. Despite our love for particular philosophers through their work, we can never see in a man any more than a man, we must everywhere perceive errors and limits and failures. Even the highest tradition is bound to time, gives neither security nor real fellowship; it cannot become a collection of sacred books, and it knows no work which is valid under all circumstances. Nowhere is the truth ready-made; it is an inexhaustible stream that flows from the history of philosophy as a whole from China to the West, yet flows only when the Primal Source is captured for new realizations in the present.

The word 'Philosophy' has become a symbol of our gratitude for the possibility of continued dialogue with this tradition. It has become our linguistic usage to speak of it as of a living person. Cicero and, most impressively of all, Boethius effected this personification.

Philosophical faith venerates traditional philosophy but does not maintain an attitude of obedience to it. It does not look on history as an authority, but as one continuous spiritual struggle.

How easily phIlosophy goes astray when it becomes creed, solidifies into dogmas, establishes school curricula, turns tradition into authority, makes heroes of founders of schools, and where it lets the play of dialectic lead it into irresponsibility. Philosophical faith requires coolness and also complete seriousness. Perhaps great ideas have been more often misunderstood than understood. Perhaps, for example, the history of Platonism (beginning with Speusippus) is a history of perversions and oblivions with but rare moments of rediscovery. Through philosophy men have, contrary to the spirit of philosophy, found the road to nihilism. And so philosophy is held to be dangerous. Not infrequently it is even held to be impossible. Only through philosophical faith, which always goes back to the Primal Source, is always capable of recognizing itself in the other, can the road be found through the tangle of aberrations in the history of philosophy to the truth that has dawned in it.

In philosophizing man breaks through his mere nature, but by virtue of his own inner being. What he thus apprehends as Being and as himself, that is his faith. In philosophizing, we travel the path to the Primal Source of the faith that is the prerogative of man as man.

Everything I know falls within the subject-object dichotomy, it is object for me, it is phenomenon, not a thing in itself. But in the subject-object dichotomy object and subject are bound together. There can be no object without a subject, but neither can there be a subject without an object. Hence what I experience as being resides always in the whole of the subject-object dichotomy, not only in one term. ... What I know is therefore always object consciousness and hence limited; but though finite, it is a possible springboard toward Transcendence.

What is authentic [Being]? The answer is sought and found not by listing the many types of the existent that occur, but by apprehending that which is in itself, or is authentic [Being].

Since our inquiry always takes place within the subject-object dichotomy, but since Being must transcend or comprehend subject and object, the question of Being also bears upon the questioner. The answer must show what Being is for us inseparably from what we ourselves are; for Being must make possible the inquiry into it through the nature of our own being, and it must be accessible to this inquiry. ...

If that which authentically is, is not an object, that is, not an object for a subject, then it is beyond cognition, which denotes object knowledge of something. But since everything that is an object for us reveals to us its phenomenality in contrast to its being-in-itself, phenomenal being points to authentic Being, which speaks and is perceptible through it.

If authentic Being is not experience as subject for a focal point of consciousness observing it, then it also evades all psychological knowledge. But since Being is present in everything that is experienced, the subjective mode of Dasein is a basic manifestation of Being: experience and understanding are indispensable for the ascertainment of Being.

If authentic Being is not the thought structure of the categories, not logos, it also evades logical knowledge. But since everything that is for us must enter into some mode of thought, knowledge of the categories is a necessary condition of philosophical clarity.

The authentic Being, that is neither object nor subject, but that is manifested in the whole of the subject-object dichotomy, and that must fill the categories in order to give them purpose and meaning, we have called the Comprehensive.

The question of authentic Being must therefore find its answer through elucidation of the modes of the Comprehensive—of world and Transcendence—of Dasein, consciousness, mind, Existenz. But in so far as all these modes are rooted in one, the ultimate answer is that authentic Being is Transcendence (or God), a proposition the true understanding of which embraces all philosophical faith and all elucidating philosophical thought, but the path to which leads through all the modes of the Comprehensive. ...

For one wishing to philosophize, it is of particular, indeed of crucial importance to ascertain the difference between the object cognition that is achieved in the sciences, and the transcending thought that characterizes philosophy. A philosophical discussion may be said to have reached its goal when the matter under discussion becomes objectless, in the double sense that for the positivist nothing remains to be done, because he no longer sees an object, and that for the philosopher the light is just beginning to dawn. The philosopher cannot to be sure apprehend authentic Being in the vanishing of the object, but he can be filled by it.

Our four questions result in intellectual operations which transcend the limits of the knowable and of the world as a whole, so that through these limits we become aware of the phenomenality of empirical existence and hence of the Comprehensive nature of Being, thus entering into the area of faith. This transcendent thinking is a thinking that through method acquires a scientific character and yet, because in it the determinate object is dissolved, differs from scientific cognition.

Faith is the consciousness of Existenz in reference to Transcendence.

These intellectual operations do not carry compelling evidence like empiric and rational insights into finite objects, but they have a compelling character for him who performs them, who in them transcending the finite, gains awareness of the Infinite through the finite. Since he moves in the area of the limit, he inevitably becomes aware of the limit as such; using categories, he methodically transcends these same categories; in nonknowledge he finds a new mode of objectless knowledge. https://t.me/KarlJaspersQuotes/691

The contents of philosophical faith can be stated in such propositions as the following:
God is.
There is an absolute imperative.
The world is an ephemeral stage between God and Existenz.

Transcendence beyond the world or before the world is called God. There is the profoundest difference whether I regard the universe as being in itself and nature as God, or whether I regard the universe as not grounded in itself and find the foundation of the world and myself in something outside the world.

We have the proofs for the existence of God. Since Kant, honest thinkers are agreed that such proofs are impossible if they aim to compel the intellect, as one can compel it to realize that the earth revolves around the sun and that the moon has a reverse side. But the arguments for the existence of God do not lose their validity as ideas because they have lost their power to prove. They amount to a confirmation of faith by intellectual operations. When they are original, the thinker struck by their evidence experiences them as the profoundest event of life. When they are reflected upon with understanding, they make possible a repetition of this experience. The idea as such effects a transformation in man, it opens our eyes, in a sense. More than that, it becomes a fundament of ourselves, by enhancing our awareness of being, it becomes the source of personal depth.

The arguments for the existence of God start from something that can be found and experienced in the world, to arrive at the conclusion: if this is, then God must exist. Thus the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos are brought to awareness as stepping stones to God.

Or one performs intellectual operations in which thinking is understood as awareness of Being, which then is deepened into an awareness of God: this is speculative philosophy proper.

Or the presence of God is ascertained existentially: the distinction between good and evil is viewed in its full import as a commandment of God. God speaks in the reality of love.

And in every case, the presence of gaps in the world structure, the failure of all attempts to conceive of the world as self-contained, the abortion of human planning, the futility of human designs and realizations, the impossibility of fulfilling man himself brings us to the edge of the abyss, where we experience nothingness or God.

But never do we gain a scientifically cogent proof. A proved God is no God. Accordingly: only he who starts from God, can seek him. A certainty of the existence of God, however rudimentary and intangible it may be, is a premise, not a result of philosophical activity. ...

The thought that God is, is directly followed by speculation as to what he is. This is impossible to discover, and yet speculation on it has unfolded rich, inspiring thoughts. The field, to be sure, is held by the negative theology that tells us what God is not—to wit, he is not something that stands in finite form before the eyes or the mind. But finite things serve as metaphor, symbol, analogy, enabling us to realize the presence of the Divine.

In general, the imperatives that are addressed to us are based upon practical aims or upon an unquestioned authority. Such imperatives are determined by the aim or by blind obedience.

An absolute imperative has its source within me, in that it sustains me. Neither finite aims nor authority can account for this absolute. That the Absolute exists as a foundation for action is not a matter of cognition, but an essential element of faith. Our finite thinking is always relative and thus can in some way justify everything. The apprehension of the Absolute has, in the historicity of our here and now, an infinite character; although it is elucidated in universal propositions, it cannot be adequately defined and derived through any universal.

The absolute imperative confronts me as the command of my authentic Self to my empirical existence, as the command as it were of what I am eternally in the face of the Transcendent, to the temporality of my present me. If my will is grounded in the Absolute, I apprehend it as that which I myself authentically am, and to which my empirical existence should correspond.

The Absolute itself does not become temporal. Wherever it is, it cuts straight across time. It erupts from the Transcendent into this world by way of our freedom.

The indeterminate character of all modes of known reality, the interpretive character of all cognition, the fact that we apprehend all being in the dichotomy of subject and object—these essential characteristics of the knowledge that is possible for us mean that all objects are mere phenomena, that no being that is the object of cognition is being in itself and the whole of being. The phenomenality of the empirical world is a basic insight of philosophical thought. This insight is not empirical; it can be attained only by an act of transcendence; on the other hand, it imposes itself on every intellect that is capable of transcendence. It does not add a new particular item of knowledge to previous knowledge, but effects a shift in the whole consciousness of being. Hence the sudden but permanent light that dawns upon one after a more or less prolonged study of Kant. The student of Kant who fails to experience this revelation has not understood his teachings, has bogged down in a doctrine of which he does not realize the ultimate implication.

The world as a whole does not become an object for us. Every object is in the world, none is the world.

[T]he Deus absconditus (the hidden God—lat.) recedes into the distance when I seek to fathom him, he is infinitely near in the absolute historicity of the unique situation—and the situation is always unique.

[O]ur being in time is an encounter of Existenz and Transcendence—of the eternal that we are, as beings that are both created and self-given—and of the eternal in itself. The world is the meeting point of that which is eternal and that which manifests itself in time.