Karl Jaspers e Martin Heidegger. Storia di un’amicizia in tempi oscuri

Drawing a profile of the philosophical friendship between Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger means first of all recognizing that it is characterized by disapproval and consensus, by ruptures and reconciliations, in the horizon of politically dark times. Jaspers is immediately impressed by Heidegger’s new use of language, even if there is no shortage of reciprocal criticisms of existential determinations and their intrinsic ontological unity. The real turning point of their friendship occurs in 1933, when Heidegger assumes the rectorate of the University of Freiburg and joins the Nazi party and Jaspers is forced to resign from teaching, based on racial laws, for having married a Jewish woman. However, after World War II, there was no lack of reciprocal attempts at reconciliation. This essay, in reconstructing the story of this long friendship, examines published documentary sources, such as the correspondence between the two philosophers and hitherto unpublished or little-known sources of Jaspers’ work, such as the tenth chapter of Jaspers’ Philosophical Autobiography, never translated into Italian, and the set of notes, drafts of letters, annotations, present in Jaspers’ legacy, published by Hans Saner in 1978, but not published in Italian.