Two finitudes: Heidegger and Karl Jaspers’ reception by the Weilian category of the finite

Abstract

Eric Weil, Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger are three German philosophers, one of whom is Jewish. Weil presents in the category of the finite a possibility among the philosophical discourses that comprise Heidegger and Jaspers. This paper proposes a partial understanding of Jaspers and Heidegger through the Weilian category of the finite and the resumption operated by this possibility of discourse – finitude – of the category of work, whose phenomenology is Nazism. For this purpose, the article was divided into three sections, followed by an introduction. The Introduction aims to present the relationship between the three thinkers given through two texts by Weil. We also list the reasons for choosing the works of Heidegger and Jaspers that will be discussed. The first section of the article contains a presentation of the Weilian concepts that are the basis for the following sections. In the second section, these concepts are compared with the Heideggerian thought. In the third section, we apply the same method to Jaspers' thinking, showing the limitations that Heidegger's thinking finds on the political plane. We conclude the paper with a small balance of the discussion.