Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)
| Walter Arnold Kaufmann | |
|---|---|
Walter Kaufmann, undated
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| Born |
July 1, 1921 Freiburg, Germany |
| Died | September 4, 1980 (aged 59) Princeton, New Jersey |
| Alma mater |
Williams College Harvard University |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy |
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Main interests
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Existentialism, philosophy of religion, tragedy |
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Influenced
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Walter Arnold Kaufmann (July 1, 1921 – September 4, 1980) was 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.
He is renowned as a scholar and translator of Friedrich Nietzsche. He also wrote a 1965 book on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and published a translation of Goethe's Faust.
Kaufmann was raised a Lutheran. At age 11, finding that he believed neither in the Trinity nor in the divinity of Jesus, he converted to Judaism. Kaufmann subsequently discovered that his grandparents were all Jewish. Kaufmann left Germany and emigrated to America in 1939 and began studying at Williams College, where he majored in philosophy and took many religion classes. Although he had the opportunity to move immediately into his graduate studies in philosophy, and despite advice not to do so by his professors, he ultimately joined the war effort against the Nazis by serving in U.S. intelligence. During World War II, he fought on the European front 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" and eventually became a chapter in his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950).
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