Walter Kaufmann 1921 – 1980
Walter Kaufmann (1921 – 1980) was a German-American philosopher of the Contemporary era, associated with Analytic Philosophy and Continental Philosophy.
Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet and the principal English-language interpreter of Nietzsche in the second half of the twentieth century. Forced into exile from Nazi Germany in 1939 as a teenager of Jewish descent, he settled in the United States, served in army intelligence during the Second World War, and after the war took a long professorship at Princeton. His Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist of 1950 demolished the Nazi reading of Nietzsche and remains a foundational study, while his translations of Nietzsche, Hegel, Goethe, Buber, and others made central works of German thought available to a wide English readership.
Walter Arnold Kaufmann was born at Freiburg im Breisgau in July 1921 into a family that had been Lutheran for generations; he discovered his Jewish ancestry and converted to Judaism at the age of eleven. He emigrated to the United States in 1939, took his bachelor's at Williams College in 1941, served in U.S. Army intelligence in Europe during the war, and completed his doctorate at Harvard in 1947 with a dissertation on Nietzsche's theory of values. From 1947 he taught at Princeton, where he was Stuart Professor of Philosophy until his sudden death in 1980.
His books include Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950), the anthology Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1956), From Shakespeare to Existentialism (1959), The Faith of a Heretic (1961), Hegel: A Reinterpretation (1965), Tragedy and Philosophy (1968), Without Guilt and Justice (1973), and the late trilogy Existentialism, Religion, and Death (1976), Man's Lot, and Discovering the Mind (1980). He produced the standard English translations of Nietzsche's principal works and of Goethe's Faust.
Kaufmann's 1950 Nietzsche book single-handedly rescued Nietzsche from the Nazi reading of Alfred Bäumler and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, presenting him instead as a humanist heir of the Greeks and Goethe; he gave Hegel a comparable revisionist reading and was a fierce critic of religion and of professional 'analytic' philosophy. He died unexpectedly at Princeton in September 1980.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German-American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic Philosophy, Continental Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Walter Kaufmann:
“Nietzsche was no proto-Nazi; his thought is the most resolute opposition to mass conformism.”
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Attributed to Walter Kaufmann:
“Religion at its best is a way of asking questions, not of refusing them.”
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Attributed to Walter Kaufmann:
“Tragedy is the noblest answer to the absurd.”
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Attributed to Walter Kaufmann:
“Existentialism is the philosophy of authentic individuality.”
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Attributed to Walter Kaufmann:
“To translate is to read with double care.”
Walter Kaufmann by topic
Frequently asked about Walter Kaufmann
- When did Walter Kaufmann live?
- Walter Kaufmann was born in 1921 and died in 1980.
- Where was Walter Kaufmann from?
- Walter Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher of the Contemporary era.
- What philosophical movements is Walter Kaufmann associated with?
- Walter Kaufmann was associated with Analytic Philosophy and Continental Philosophy.
- What was Walter Kaufmann known for?
- Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet and the principal English-language interpreter of Nietzsche in the second half of the twentieth century.
- How many quotes are attributed to Walter Kaufmann?
- There are 15 attributed quotations from Walter Kaufmann in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.