The bond between Jaspers and Plato is deep and fascinating. Indeed, it is impossible to survey and adjudicate the significance of transcending-thinking as a primary motif in Jaspers' thought without a consideration of Plato who, together with Augustine and Kant, Jaspers regards as the "greatest" of the "great philosophers."¹ In this chapter I will attempt to clarify this relationship by exploring three conceptual features of "transcending-thinking" directly influenced by Plato and Platonism generally. First we will focus on Platonic class="EmphasisTypeItalic ">dialectic in relation to Jaspers' possible Existenz; secondly, on Platonic chorismos and the Jaspersian boundary situation; and thirdly, on the eidetic One of Plato and Plotinus and Jaspers' Transcendence-Itself or the Encompassing.