A limit situation (German: Grenzsituation) is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have experiences that differ from those arising from ordinary situations.[1]
The concept was developed by Karl Jaspers, who considered fright, guilt, finality and suffering as some of the key limit situations arising in everyday life.[2]
James G. Hart wrote that encounters with limit situations unsettle individuals, break them out of their inauthentic identifications, remove them from the social bond, and force them to come alive and find new ways of communicating.[3] They can be compared to the similarly generative experience of the sense of bewilderment in Zen.[4] Hans-Georg Gadamer believed the limit situation to provide a revelatory encounter with the other[5] and that facing the anxiety arising from the foreknowledge of death can likewise be a growth opportunity arising from a limit situation.[6]
Psychoanalysis can be seen as a structured limit situation,[7] the psychoanalytic framework in particular providing an experience of finality and limits that can empower growth.[8]
In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire adapted the existential notion of limit situations[9] to the Third World,[10] seeing the constraints of underdevelopment as a limit situation on humanity,[11] but also as a possible frontier point for increasing (in overcoming) one's human stature.[12]
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