The Karl Jaspers Society of North America (KJSNA) is a philosophy organization founded on December 28, 1980 through the joint efforts of George B. Pepper (Iona College), Edith Ehrlich, and the late Leonard H. Ehrlich (University of Massachusetts Amherst) for promoting the study of the philosophy of Karl Jaspers. The prospect of forming this society emerged out of the research by these scholars while preparing a systematic reader of the basic philosophical writings of Karl Jaspers. Enthusiastic response to the reader prompted Pepper and Ehrlich to conclude that a formal organization of a learned society would be justified in order to provide a forum for those who found in Jaspers' writings a voice of great importance for many of the central questions in contemporary philosophy.
Since 1980 the Karl Jaspers Society of North America (KJSNA) has conducted its annual meetings with the American Philosophical Association (APA) and occasionally with the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). The proceedings of KJSNA meetings are published, since 2005, in the on-line journal Existenz, co-edited by Alan M. Olson (Boston University) and Helmut Wautischer (California State University at Sonoma). Research and writing presented at the annual meetings of KJSNA is automatically considered for publication, although Existenz also welcomes unsolicited related materials in philosophy, religion, politics, and the arts. The 30th Anniversary of KJSNA is celebrated in a collection of essays co-edited by Helmut Wautischer, Alan M. Olson, and Gregory J. Walters entitled, Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity,[1](Springer Verlag, 2011).
The Society (KJSNA) has played a leading role in the organization of international meetings of Jaspers societies at World Congress of Philosophy, in cooperation with the Karl Jaspers Stiftung of Basel, the Jaspers Society of Japan, the Österreichische Karl-Jaspers-Gesellschaft, and the Jaspers Society of Poland. The first international meeting was held during the Summer of 1983 in conjunction with the XVII World Congress of Philosophy in Montreal, Canada, commemorating the centenary of Jaspers' birth. Subsequent meetings have been held at the XVIII World Congress of Philosophy in Brighton, England (1988); the XIX World Congress of Philosophy in Moscow (1993); the XX World Congress of Philosophy in Boston (1998); the XXI World Congress of Philosophy in Istanbul (2003); and the XXII World Congress of Philosophy in Seoul, Korea (2008).
The proceedings of the meetings of the International Association of Karl Jaspers Societies listed above have been published under the following titles: Karl Jaspers Today: Philosophy at the Threshold of the Future (ISBN 0-8191-7014-3) Karl Jaspers: Philosopher Among Philosophers (ISBN 3-88479-848-0) Karl Jaspers: On the Way to World Philosophy (ISBN 3-8260-1564-9) Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy: Rooted in the Present, Paradigm for the Future (ISBN 3-8260-2601-2) Karl Jaspers: Historic Actuality in View of the Fundamental Problems of Mankind (ISBN 978-3-8360-3938-6)
The purpose of KJSNA is to promote study and research on the thought of Karl Jaspers and related philosophical issues in continental philosophy. Dedicated exclusively for educational and scientific purposes, the Karl Jaspers Society of North America has tax-exempt status under section 501(c) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1954 or the corresponding provisions of any future U.S. Internal Revenue Law.