A limit situation () is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have experiences that differ from those arising from ordinary situations.
The concept was developed by
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers (; ; 23 February 1883 – 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy. His 1913 work ''General Psychopathology'' influenced many ...
, who considered fright, guilt, finality and suffering as some of the key limit situations arising in everyday life.
Encounters
James G. Hart wrote that encounters with limit situations unsettle individuals, break them out of their
inauthentic identifications, remove them from the social bond, and force them to come alive and find new ways of communicating. They can be compared to the similarly generative experience of the sense of bewilderment in
Zen
Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...
.
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; 11 February 1900 – 13 March 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 on hermeneutics, '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode'').
Life
Family and early life
Gad ...
believed the limit situation to provide a revelatory encounter with the
other and that facing the
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner wikt:turmoil, turmoil and includes feelings of dread over Anticipation, anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response ...
arising from the foreknowledge of death can likewise be a growth opportunity arising from a limit situation.
Psychoanalytic frame
Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...
can be seen as a structured limit situation, the psychoanalytic framework in particular providing an experience of finality and limits that can empower growth.
Third world politics
In his book
Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher whose work revolutionized global thought on education. He is best known for ''Pedagogy of the Oppressed'', in which he reimagines teaching ...
adapted the existential notion of limit situations to the
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Southern Cone, NATO, Western European countries and oth ...
, seeing the constraints of underdevelopment as a limit situation on humanity, but also as a possible frontier point for increasing (in overcoming) one's human stature.
[J. Irwin, ''Paulo Freire's Philosophy of Education'' (2012) ]
See also
References
Bibliography
* Richardson A. & Bowden J. (1993) ''The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology'' London; Westminster John Knox Press
Existentialist concepts
Ontology
Karl Jaspers
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