book: Existential Elucidation
Buch Open Access

Existential Elucidation

Jaspers, Boundary Situations, and Spiritual Care
  • Herausgegeben von: Rico Gutschmidt und Eckhard Frick
  • Gefördert durch: Technische Universität München
Sprache: Englisch
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 2026
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill
Studies in Spiritual Care
Dieses Buch ist Teil der Reihe

Über dieses Buch

Spiritual Care aims at supporting the spiritual needs of patients. From a secular view, Spiritual Care can be interpreted with the help of central notions of Karl Jaspers, such as “boundary situation” and “existential elucidation”.

Jaspers’ concept of the “boundary situation” refers to the fundamental boundaries of action and life, such as struggle, guilt, suffering and death. Human life always remains within these boundaries, but this is experienced in a special way in particular situations. According to Jaspers, such situations are experienced as boundary situations if this experience leads to “existential elucidation”, namely to an attitude that comprehends and acknowledges life’s fundamental boundaries.

Boundary situations can occur in the context of the health-care sector. Patients, for example, who have to endure severe physical or emotional suffering or are confronted with their own death due to a terminal illness can experience their situation as a boundary situation in the sense of Jaspers.

The contributions of this volume discuss the notion of boundary situation from philosophical, literary, and psychological perspectives and explore the question of how to support patients in boundary situations against this background.

Information zu Autoren / Herausgebern

Eckhard Frick and Rico Gutschmidt, Technische Universität München.

Informationen zur Veröffentlichung
Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch
eBook geplante Veröffentlichung:
14. Dezember 2025
eBook ISBN:
9783111715377
Gebunden geplante Veröffentlichung:
14. Dezember 2025
Gebunden ISBN:
9783119148467
Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch
Inhalt:
268
Abbildungen:
19
Tabellen:
5
Heruntergeladen am 10.11.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/isbn/9783111715377/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen