Walter Kaufmann
The mid-twentieth century saw Western and continental philosophy intersect in ways that demanded interpreters as much as originators — scholars capable of moving between traditions, languages, and forms. Walter Kaufmann was one such figure, a German-born thinker who brought those capacities to bear across several decades of work in the English-speaking world.
Born on July 1, 1921, in Freiburg im Breisgau, Kaufmann held citizenship in both Germany and the United States, a biographical fact that mirrored the intellectual border-crossing that defined his career. He studied at Williams College and Harvard University before establishing himself as a philosopher, university teacher, poet, translator, and writer. Working in English, he operated within the overlapping currents of Western and continental philosophy, occupying a position that few of his contemporaries shared — one that required equal fluency in philosophical argument and literary sensibility. His work as a translator placed him in a particularly demanding role, since translation at that level is not merely technical reproduction but an act of interpretation, requiring the translator to hold two intellectual worlds in mind simultaneously.
Kaufmann died on September 4, 1980, in Princeton, having spent his career moving between the roles of scholar, poet, and interpreter. The range of his contributions — philosophical writing, verse, and translation — was recognized during his lifetime, most notably by the German Leo Baeck Award, an honor that acknowledged his engagement with German intellectual and cultural heritage. That recognition, conferred across national and disciplinary lines, offers a concrete measure of how his peers understood the scope of what he had done.
Quotes by Walter Kaufmann
Walter Kaufmann's insights on:
The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepens his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.
In our time equality is confused with conformity – as Nietzsche sees it– and it is taken to involve the renunciation of personal initiative and the demand for a general leveling. Men are losing the ambition to be equally excellent, which involves as the surest means the desire to excel one another in continued competition, and they are becoming resigned to being equally mediocre.
The value of a human being, Nietzsche said, does not lie in his usefulness: for it would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful.
The difference between great philosophers who disagree is perhaps less considerable than that which separates them from their followers. Members of philosophic schools or coteries live on what others have seen, and the disciple usually applies his master’s insights with a confidence which, most of the time, the master lacked.
One can oppose the shallow optimism of so many Western thinkers and yet refuse to negate life.
All of us have so much more time than we use well. How many hours in a life are spent in a way of which one might be proud, looking back?
The self is essentially intangible and must be understood in terms of possibilities, dread, and decisions. When I behold my possibilities, I experience that dread which is “the dizziness of freedom,” and my choice is made in fear and trembling.
The point is not at all that you are found interesting or fascinating instead of being seen as a fellow I. The shock is rather that you are not found interesting or fascinating at all: you are not recognized as an object any more than a subject. You are accepted, if at all, as one to be spoken at and spoken of; but when you are spoken of, the lord of every story will be I.
When it is founded on decision, love is no longer an unreliably moving passion, but the fulfillment to which alone real Being reveals itself.