Paradoja y existencia. Paul ricœur, lector de Karl Jaspers

This study explores the decisive–though often implicit–influence of Karl Jaspers on Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy. Through the central concept of existence as paradox, Jaspers provides Ricoeur with a framework that permeates his work, even though he is not listed among his main sources. This paradox is not logical or rhetorical but existential: it reveals the tension between finitude and transcendence, between freedom and guilt. The influence appears especially in Ricoeur’s reading of Jean Nabert, one of his foundational authors. Jaspers acts as a conceptual mediator, offering the lens through which Ricoeur interprets themes such as guilt, historicity, otherness, and testimony. Through Nabert, Ricoeur reformulates existential tensions within a hermeneutic framework. The text traces three central threads: paradox as a structure of existence, the link between freedom and guilt, and the self-other relationship as communication and testimony. It concludes that Jaspers’s philosophy was not merely transitional but structurally foundational for Ricoeur’s thought. This opens the question of the legacy of existential philosophies beyond existentialism, in an era still confronting the paradox of being.