Walter Kaufmann
Walter Kaufmann
Walter Arnold Kaufmannwas a German-American philosopher, translator, 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, as well as philosophy and literature. He served for over 30 years as a professor at Princeton University...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth1 July 1921
CountryGermany
Walter Kaufmann quotes about
according deserve eternal german-philosopher god infinite men mercy saves
According to Augustine and many of his successors, all men deserve eternal torture, but God in his infinite mercy saves a very few.
philosophy heart school
The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life-that is the heart of existentialism.
suffering world doe
It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose.
views gone development
It was also Hegel who established the view that the different philosophic systems that we find in history are to be comprehended in terms of development and that they are generally one-sided because they owe their origins to a reaction against what has gone before.
critics extremes stature
No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.
being-yourself being-single judgment
Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.
philosophy mean perspective
Philosophy means liberation from the - routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish to fly.
fate punishment suffering
Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate; it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life.
profound surprise sophisticated
To an even moderately sophisticated and well-read person it should come as no surprise that any religion at all has its hidden as well as its obvious beauties and is capable of profound and impressive interpretations. What is deeply objectionable about most of these interpretations is that they allow the believer to say Yes while evading any No.
suffering special atheism
For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.
suffering add needs
Thirdly, even if we assume that the world is governed by purpose, we need only add that this purpose - or, if there are several, at least one of them - is not especially intent on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering or actually rejoices in it.
suffering problem knows
The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?