The philosophical system of Karl Jaspers, which he called a ‘periechontology’, is complex and idiosyncratic. It involves the identification and analysis not of a world of objective definitions, as he believes ontology does, but of realms or modes of the Encompassing (or Comprehensive) which he defines as ultimate reality, the ‘origin’ or ‘source’ of the subject–object relationship. Very broadly speaking, his system divides reality into three such modes which are dealt with by each in turn of the three volumes of his magnum opus: ‘(mundane) existence’ in the subject–object dichotomy; ‘Existenz’ (or human freedom which is not limited to either pole of the dichotomy) and ‘Transcendence’ (or God), the Absolute beyond existence, consciousness and Existenz. The corresponding philosophical elucidations of these three modes of reality are respectively called ‘(philosophical) world orientation’, ‘existential elucidation’ and ‘metaphysics’. Jaspers is yet another existentialist (though, like most of them, he repudiated the application of the term to himself) who recognizes the logical and psychological need for some measure beyond the human to which human existence answers. He also recognizes the logical requirement that this measure, whether or not imagined in religious or quasi-religious terms, be considered ineffable. He makes a philosophically acceptable version of the claim that Transcendence or God is ineffable and rejects ontotheology by defining the word ‘God’ as ‘the name and sign which lacks all perceivable content’ and by repeatedly denying that, as Transcendence, God is an object.