Jaspers stated frequently that Max Weber influenced him more than any other person.¹ True as this may be biographically, the fact remains that formally and historically Jaspers' philosophy is virtually unthinkable apart from the influence of Immanuel Kant. "Kant," as Jaspers puts it, "is the nodal point of philosophy ... the absolutely indispensable philosopher. Without him we would have no basis for criticism." ² For Jaspers, then, Kant is not the psyche-shattering "Robespierre" about which Heinrich Heine mused, and least of all in relation to metaphysics. The critical philosophy of Kant represents rather for Jaspers an essential refinement of the transcending-thinking that is contiguous with the metaphysical spirit of Plato and Plotinus. What is decisive in Kant, however, is the logical purification of this spirit through showing how what is thought and thereby asserted is inextricably conditioned by the way one thinks.³ In a word, Jaspers believes that in Kant, for the first time in the history of Western philosophy, we are shown that critical philosophizing is necessarily existential; that the imprint of subjectivity upon what is thought is not just accidental but formally inevitable.