«… Che l’essere umano si ricordi di sé stesso». Karl Jaspers e la crisi

The paper moves from Karl Jaspers’ critique of nationalist ideology with the aim of explor-ing the origin and development of his Europeanist idea. Through a trajectory from his early reflections to The Spiritual Situation of the Age of 1931, Jaspers’ concern about the process of massification and homologation in the interwar years is outlined. Detaching himself from con-servative pessimism, the philosopher emphasises the importance of recovering Europe’s histori-cal roots as an antidote, warning against the risk of reducing the individual to a mere function. As psychopathologist of his time, Jaspers identifies memory and the critical recovery of tradition as the main tools for dealing with the crisis.