ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that reflecting on plural existence is philosophically bound up with an inquiry into the constitution of reality. It also claims that for Hannah Arendt it first emerged in the form of this problem, which testifies to the philosophical profundity with which she approached the question of plurality. As one of the most powerful philosophical indications of the emergence of plurality, the question of reality worried Arendt from the very beginning. According to Arendt, the meaning of Being in the Heideggerian interpretation is, in fact, nothingness. For Jaspers, none of Heidegger's existential "conceptions" can be made absolute, in order to save the intrinsic unpredictability and freedom of a concrete actualization of existence. For Jaspers, the purpose of communal philosophizing is not to produce results, but to "illuminate existence". Existenz in Jaspers's terminology indicates–in contrast to Heidegger's Dasein–already an authentic form of self-being. In Jaspers's philosophy, communication constitutes the "existential center" and becomes identical with truth.
