Equivocità del nulla in Karl Jaspers

This paper analyses the various meanings the word ‘nothing’ assumes in the work of Karl Jaspers: the nothing of nihilism, that is the absence of a horizon of meaning able to give substance to life and activity of man; the nothing of death, which arouses horror and resistance in the concrete individual; the objective nothing, which is unthinkable by man like the simple being; and the nothing of the authentic, transcendent being, which unfolds itself to man in borderline situations and offers him the freedom to exist in an authentic way and the opportunity to give his life a precise identity, direction, orientation.