De la razón al juego: la teoría del conocimiento de la enfermedad en Karl Jaspers y su reconsideración desde la epistemología actual

Abstract

Starting with the idea of the Encompassing as a system of thinking, I have tried to describe a possible Jaspersian theory of the knowledge of illness. This theory is based on the following points: 1) The existence of two methods of knowledge of the sick person: the direct or objective (based on causality, non-contradiction, and the accuracy of language); and the indirect or unobjective (based on acausality, antinomy, and the polysemy of language). 2) The establishment of a non-syncretic articulation between the two through Reason (Vernunft). And 3) The consideration of the whole of the illness as a veiled reality, as a reality which is announced alternately in the two conected but not superimposed ways of knowing, although such a reality can never be enunciated in the form of a methodically fixed doctrine. The various points of this theory are reconsidered, in addition, from the point of view of certain concepts belonging to current epistemology, so as to evaluate the degree of presence of Jaspersian thought at the end of the 20th century.