A limit situation (german: Grenzsituation) is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have differing experiences 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. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspe ...
, who considered fright, guilt, finality and suffering as some of the key limit situations arising in everyday life.
Encounters
James G. Hart described 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 ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
.
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 ''magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics.
Life
Family ...
considered the limit situation to provide a revelatory encounter with the
other
Other often refers to:
* Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy
Other or The Other may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack
* ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...
; while facing the
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
arising from the foreknowledge of death can equally prove a growth opportunity arising from a limit situation.
Psychoanalytic frame
Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
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
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work '' Pedagogy of the Oppressed'' is generally considered one of the found ...
adapted the existential notion of limit situation 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, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
, 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
Existentialism
Ontology
20th-century philosophy
Continental philosophy
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