It was Jaspers' articulation of "the boundary situation" which, in Hans Gadamer's view, redirected German philosophy in the 20th century more than any other single factor because it asked for a level of "existential commitment" which had at the time almost disappeared.¹ Jaspers' thought, of course, made little impression in the United States until after World War II when some of his writings began to appear in English for the first time. Even then existentialism never made the impression in the Anglo-American world that it did on the Continent. Indeed, during the postwar period when innumerable books, essays and articles were pouring off the press attempting to introduce the American audience to phenomenology and existentialism, it was commonplace to lump Jaspers, Heidegger, Buber, Tillich and Bultmann together with French philosophical and literary figures like Sartre, Camus, Marcel and others as though they were totally homogeneous one with the other. Today, of course, we realize that the differences between these so-called existentialists are frequently greater than with philosophers who are not so labeled.