Karl Jaspers and the Epistemological Confrontation with Reality: Boundary Situations, Collective Transcendence, and the Limits of Human Understanding in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract This article examines Karl Jaspers' epistemological framework through the lens of contemporary philosophical challenges, arguing that his concepts of boundary situations, transcendence, and methodological pluralism provide essential resources for addressing twenty-first century crises of knowledge and meaning whilst requiring critical reconstruction to encompass collective dimensions and cross-cultural perspectives. The investigation proceeds through systematic analysis of Jaspers' theoretical architecture, demonstrating how recent developments in collective phenomenology, postphenomenological technology studies, and cross-cultural methodology transform his originally individualistic framework into a sophisticated resource for contemporary interdisciplinary scholarship. Drawing upon Margaret Gilbert's joint commitment theory, Dan Zahavi's collective intentionality research, and Kwok-ying Lau's double epoché method, the study reveals how boundary situations manifest collectively whilst maintaining existential authenticity. Critical engagement with feminist, postcolonial, and Indigenous perspectives illuminates both the enduring significance and necessary limitations of Jaspers' framework, whilst Peter-Paul Verbeek's technological mediation theory and Yuk Hui's cosmotechnics provide resources for addressing artificial intelligence ethics and digital transformation. Clinical applications through phenomenological assessment tools demonstrate the continued vitality of Jaspersian approaches in contemporary psychiatric practice, whilst environmental applications reveal how climate crisis constitutes a species-level boundary situation demanding collective existential response. The article concludes that whilst Jaspers' epistemology requires critical reconstruction to address issues of power, social positioning, and ontological pluralism, his fundamental insight regarding the confrontation with limits as generative of authentic knowledge remains indispensable for navigating contemporary boundary situations, now understood as irreducibly collective phenomena requiring cross-cultural dialogue and technological wisdom. **Keywords:** Karl Jaspers, epistemology, boundary situations, collective transcendence, phenomenological psychiatry, methodological pluralism, existential philosophy, artificial intelligence ethics, environmental philosophy, cross-cultural dialogue, postphenomenology, cosmotechnics