Walter kaufmann translations

Walter Kaufmann on the “philosophic flight”

Critique of Religion and Philosophy, Chapter I, section 5.

Walter Kaufmann

From: Kaufmann, W. (). Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Princeton.

Walter kaufmann biography death He became an Australian soldier, wedding photographer, seaman and later an award-winning writer. He emigrated to the United States in , as conditions in Germany became ominous for those of Jewish descent Kaufmann's father — although not his mother — had converted to Protestantism, with the consequence that Kaufmann had been raised in that faith; but he converted to Judaism in , in an early display of the sensitivity to religious questions that became one of the central features of his intellectual life. That trilogy was followed by another, Discovering the Mind — , with which his life abruptly ended, and the third volume of which was published following his death. Kaufmann, Richard.

Princeton University Press

PHILOSOPHIC FLIGHT. Philosophy, like poetry, deals with ancient themes: poetry with experiences, philosophy with problems known for centuries. Both must add a new precision born of passion.

     The intensity of great philosophy and poetry is abnormal and subversive: it is the enemy of habit, custom, and all stereotypes.

The motto is always that what is well known is not known at all well.

     Great poetry often deals with hackneyed themes.

Walter kaufmann biography wikipedia Kautsky, Karl — In he was awarded his PhD by Harvard. He welcomed the opportunity to enter the fray of popular debate as a public intellectual who was more than willing to continue Nietzsche's effort to fight the good fight of disillusioned enlightenment that was neither religious, scientistic, nor historically optimistic. Discovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel.

Sophocles and Shakespeare chose well-known stories, Goethe wrote on love, Dostoevsky on murder. Yet what is new each time is not merely the language. The poet's passion cracks convention: the chains of custom drop; the world of our everyday experience is exposed as superficial appearance; the person we had seemed to be and our daily contacts and routines appear as shadows on a screen, without depth; while the poet's myth reveals reality.

     Newspaper reports, and even scenes we have seen with our own eyes, are like distorted images in muddy waters of that reality which we encounter in Oedipus Tyrannus, Lear or The Brothers Karamazov.

We live upon the surface; we are like ants engaged in frantic aimlessness - and that one talent which is death to hide, lodged with us useless till the artist comes, restoring vision, freeing us from living death.

     Philosophy, as Plato and Aristotle said, begins in wonder. This wonder means a dim awareness of the useless talent, some sense that ant-likeness is a betrayal.

But what are the alternatives?

Walter kaufmann biography Notes and references [ edit ]. Garden City, N. Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface. Retrieved

Bacon suggested: being bees or spiders. Some thinkers, like the ant, collect; some, like the spider, spin; some, like the bee, collect, transform by adding of their substance, and create.

     Vary the metaphor. Men are so many larvae, crawling, wriggling, eating - living in two dimensions. Many die while in this state.

Some are transformed and take flight before they settle down to live as ants. Few become butterflies and revel in their new-found talent, a delight to all.

     Philosophy means liberation from the two dimensions of routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish to fly.

Walter kaufmann nietzsche However, Kaufmann faulted much in Nietzsche, writing that "my disagreements with [Nietzsche] are legion. Kaus, Gina — Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche who had come to be all too closely associated with the Germany of the kaiser and of Adolf Hitler in the English-speaking world in the decades following the Second World War. The Classical World.

Philosophy subverts man's satisfaction with himself, exposes custom as a questionable dream, and offers not so much solutions as a different life.

     A great deal of philosophy, including truly subtle and ingenious works, was not intended as an edifice for men to live in, safe from sun and wind, but as a challenge: don't sleep on!

there are so many vantage points; they change in flight: what matters is to leave off crawling in the dust.

   A philosopher's insight may be a photograph taken in flight. Those who have never flown think they are wise when noting that two such pictures are not alike: they contradict each other; flying is no good; hail unto all that crawls!

The history of philosophy is a photo album with snapshots of the life of the spirit. Adherents of a philosophy mistake a few snapshots for the whole of life.