Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)

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For other persons of the name see Walter Kaufmann.

Walter Arnold Kaufmann (July 1, 1921 - September 4, 1980 Princeton, New Jersey) was an American philosopher, translator from German into English, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, and philosophy and literature. He was especially renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Walter Kaufmann was born German in Germany. He emigrated to America in 1939 and attended Williams College, where he majored in philosophy and took many religion classes. During World War II, he fought in the European theater for 15 months. After the war, he completed a PhD in the philosophy of religion at Harvard in a mere two years; his dissertation was titled "Nietzsche's Theory of Values." He spent his entire career, 1947-80, teaching philosophy at Princeton, where his students included the Nietzsche scholars Richard Schacht, Alexander Nehamas, and Ivan Soll. In 1960, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Kauffman was brought up a Lutheran. At age 11, when he found he believed neither the Trinity nor that Jesus was God, he decided to become a Jew. The rise of Nazism neither influenced nor deterred his conversion. Kaufmann eventually discovered that his grandparents were all Jewish. In a 1959 Harper's Magazine article, he summarily rejected all religious values and practice, making it clear that he was an atheist — a "heretic" in his terminology. He believed that critical analysis and the acquisition of knowledge were liberating and empowering forces. He forcefully criticized the fashionable liberal Protestantism of the 20th century (e.g., Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth) as filled with contradictions and evasions, preferring to them the austerity of the book of Job and the Jewish existentialism of Martin Buber. Kauffman was also immune to the seductions of Heidegger. For more on what Kauffman believed and rejected, see his Critique of Religion and Philosophy.

Kauffman wrote a good deal on the central European existentialism of Kierkegaard and Karl Jaspers (the French existentialism of Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, and Camus interested him less), editing the anthology Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Kauffman did much to enhance the respectability of Nietzsche and Hegel studies in the English speaking world. He is especially renowned for his translations and exegesis of Nietzsche, whom he saw as gravely misunderstood, as a major existentialist figure, and as an unwitting precursor to Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Kauffman also warmed to Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity.

A curious aspect of Kauffman's persona was his clear witty English, quite unlike the writings of many of the theologians and continental philosophers that were his academic specialty, especially those who wrote in German.

[edit] Partial bibliography

[edit] Original works

  • Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
  • From Shakespeare to Existentialism
  • Critique of Religion and Philosophy
  • Tragedy and Philosophy
  • Hegel: A Reinterpretation
  • The Faith of a Heretic
  • Without Guilt and Justice
  • Cain and Other Poems
  • Existentialism, Religion, and Death: Thirteen Essays
  • The Future of the Humanities
  • Religions in Four Dimensions
  • Discovering the Mind, a trilogy consisting of
  • Man's Lot: A Trilogy, consisting of
    • Life at the Limits
    • Time is an Artist
    • What is Man?

[edit] Translations

As composed or published by Friedrich Nietzsche in chronological order:

[edit] Anthologies/edited works

  • The Portable Nietzsche. Viking.
  • Basic Writings of Nietzsche, designed to complement the preceding.
  • Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
  • Religion from Tolstoy to Camus, a companion to the preceding.
  • Philosophic Classics, in two volumes
  • Hegel's Political Philosophy

[edit] Articles, book chapters, and introductions

  • “Nietzsche's Admiration for Socrates,” Journal of the History of Ideas, v. 9, October 1948, pp. 472-491. Earlier version: “Nietzsche's Admiration for Socrates” (Bowdoin Prize, 1947; pseud. David Dennis)
  • “Goethe and the History of Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas, v. 10, October 1949, pp. 503-516.
  • “The Hegel Myth and Its Method,” Philosophical Review v.60, No. 4 (October 1951), pp. 459-486.
  • “Hegel's Early Antitheological Phase,” Philosophical Review v. 61, no. xxx (1952), pp. 595-599.
  • “Some Typical Misconceptions of Nietzsche's Critique of Christianity,” Philosophical Review v. 63, no. 1 (January 1954), pp. 3-18.
  • “Nietzsche and Rilke,” Kenyon Review, XVII (1955), pp. 1-23.
  • “Toynbee and Superhistory” Partisan Review, vol. 22, no. 4, Fall 1955, pp. 531-541. Reprinted in Ashley Montagu, editor,. Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews, 1956 Cloth, Boston: Extending Horizons Books, Porter Sargent Publishers. ISBN 0-87558-026-2.
  • “A Hundred Years after Kierkegaard,” Kenyon Review, XVIII, pp. 182-211.
  • “Jaspers’ Relation to Nietzsche,” in Paul Schilpps, ed., The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers (New York: Tudor, 1957), pp. 407-436.
  • “The Faith of a Heretic,” Harper's Magazine, February 1959, pp. 33-39. Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • “Existentialism and Death,” Chicago Review, XIII, 1959, pp. 73-93. Revised version reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • “” in The Meaning of Death, Herman Feifel, New York: The Blakiston Division / McGraw-Hill, 1959.
  • Preface to Europe and the Jews: The Pressure of Christendom on the People of Israel for 1900 Years, 2d ed, by Malcolm Hay. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.
  • “A Philosopher's View,” in Ethics and Business: Three Lectures. University Park, Pa., 1962, pp. 35-54. Originally presented at a seminar sponsored by the College of Business Administration of the Pennsylvania State University on March 19, 1962.
  • “Nietzsche Between Homer and Sartre: Five Treatments of the Orestes Story," Revue Internationale de Philosophie v. 18, 1964, pp. 50-73.
  • “Nietzsche in the Light of his Suppressed Manuscripts,” Journal of the History of Philosophy v. 2, October 1964, pp. 205-226.
  • “” in Philosophy and Educational Development, Ed. by G. Barnett. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966.
  • “,” in Art and philosophy, a symposium. Hook, Sidney, ed. New York University Press, New York. 1966
  • “Buber's Religious Signficance,” from The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. P. A. Schilpp and Maurice Friedman (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967) Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • “The Reception of Existentialism in the United States,” Midway, vol. 9 (1) (Summer 1968), pp. 97-126. Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • Foreword to Frau Lou: Nietzsche's Wayward Disciple, by Rudolph Binion. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969.
  • Introductory essay, Alienation Richard Schacht, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1970
  • “The Future of Jewish Identity,” The Jerusalem Post Magazine August 1, 1969, pp. 607. Reprinted in Congressional Bi-Weekly, April 3, 1970; in Conservative Judaism, Summer 1970; in New Theology no. 9, 1972, pp. 41-58, and in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976.)
  • Foreword to An Introduction to Hegel's Metaphysics, by Ivan Soll. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
  • “The Origin of Justice,” Review of Metaphysics v. 23, December 1969, pp. 209-239.
  • “Beyond Black and White,” Midway, v. 10(3) (Winter 1970), pp. 49-79. Also Survey no. 73 (Autumn 1969), pp. 22-46. Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • "Hegel's Ideas about Tragedy" in New Studies in Hegel's Philosophy, ed. Warren E. Steinkraus (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1971), pp. 201-220.
  • “The Death of God and the Revaluation,” in Robert Solomon, ed., Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Anchor Press, 1973), pp. 9-28.
  • “The Discovery of the Will to Power,” in Robert Solomon, ed., Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Anchor Press, 1973), pp. 226-242.
  • Foreword in Truth and Value in Nietzsche: A Study of His Metaethics and Epistemology by John T. Wilcox. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974
  • “Nietzsche and Existentialism,” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Foreign Literatures, v. 28(1) (Spring 1974), pp. 7-16. Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • “Hegel's Conception of Phenomenology” in Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, Edo Pivcevič, ed., pp. 211-230 (1975).
  • “Unknown Feuerbach Autobiography,” Times Literary Supplement 1976 (3887): 1123-1124.
  • “A Preface to Kierkegaard,” in Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age and Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, trans. Alexander Dru, Harper Torchbooks, pp. 9-29. Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • “On Death and Lying,” Reprinted in Existentialism, Religion, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1976).
  • “Letter on Nietzsche,” Times Literary Supplement 1978 (3960): 203.
  • “Buber's Failures and Triumph,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie v. 32, 1978, pp. 441-459.
  • “Buber: Of His Failures and Triumph,” Encounter 52(5): 31-38 1979.
  • Reply to letter, Encounter 55(4): 95 1980.
  • “Art, Tradition, and Truth,” Partisan Review, XVII, pp. 9-28.

[edit] Sound recordings

  • "Existentialism"
  • "Kierkegaard and the Crisis in Religion"
  • "Nietzsche and the Crisis in Philosophy"
  • "Oedipus Rex"
  • "The Power of the Single Will"
  • "Three Satanic Interludes"
  • "The Will to Power Reexamined"

[edit] References

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