Existential Elucidation: Jaspers, Boundary Situations, and Spiritual Care

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.