Jaspers

Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Existentialism and the Philosophy of Existence,” from Hedegger’s Ways:

Jaspers was a psychiatrist and apparently an astonishing, wide-ranging reader. When I first came to Heidelberg as a follower of Jaspers, someone showed me the bench in the Koestersschen Bookstore where Jaspers sat for exactly three hours every Friday morning and had all of the new releases laid out before him. And without exception he ordered a large package of books to be delivered to his house every week. With the self-confidence of an important spirit and the posture of a schooled, critical observer, he was able to find nourishment in any of the diverse areas of scientific research that had some import for philosophy. He was able to mesh a conscience or, better, the conscientiousness of his own thought with the awareness of his own participation in the actual research. This gave him the insight that scientific research meets up with insurmountable boundaries when it encounters the individuality of existence and the obligatoriness of its decisions.