Pietersen's categorisation of the paradigmatic individuals
I am not going to be able to read Jaspers' book soon, because I will not be able to get to any library soon for that purpose. However, Herman Pietersen's article in the previous entry is at least a place to start.
Pietersen starts by noting the major reason for Jaspers' choice of this particular group of four people:
A more mundane, and partial explanation is that the book originally forms part of one of Jaspers voluminous works on philosophy and philosophers, and that his interest in the four men had a more proper philosophical goal, namely, to examine the nature and impact of their thought and actions from a comparative perspective, as a venture into philosophical anthropology.
He then goes on to state that he has his own reason for singling out these four people:
That is, namely, that these individuals can also be shown to be major exemplars of distinct (meta-paradigmatic) types of understanding in human history.
In this respect, I am very intrigued by h