Philosophizing in Community...

"Philosophy, the goal of true community among men who are themselves, has been wrought by lonely, distant individuals. In an extravagance of agonies and certainties, they sent us word but did not bid us follow. The experience they show us was singular and unrepeatable. They were sacrificial victims, so to speak, whose visions--translated into thought--convey to us what a less hazardous fate could not have brought to light. In our philosophizing we revere what they proved humanly possible. We want to catch their every word; they have made it impossible for us to take any knowable order for the only true one.

"But we ourselves philosophize in communication, not in isolation... In our world, linked fellowship seems like the true reality. Communication leads to our brightest moments and lends weight to our life. My philosophizing owes its every content to people who have come close to me. I consider it true in so far as it aids communication. Man cannot place himself above man; he can approach only those he meets on the same level. He cannot teach them what to do, but together they can find out what they want and what they are."

Karl Jaspers Philosophie I ( 1932, p. 2 [emphasis added])