Q0490

Karl Jaspers

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

To philosophize is to be on the way.
Thinker Karl Jaspers
School Philosophy of Existence
Source Introduction to Philosophy
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Introduction to Philosophy, within the tradition of Philosophy of Existence. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Karl Jaspers's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Karl Jaspers. (n.d.). To philosophize is to be on the way. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0490

MLA: Karl Jaspers. “To philosophize is to be on the way..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0490.

Chicago: Karl Jaspers. “To philosophize is to be on the way..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0490.

Same thinker

More from Karl Jaspers

  1. Man is always more than he knows of himself.

All quotations by Karl Jaspers

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme