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Dr. Walter Kaufmann
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 auth...view moreWalter 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.
Born in 1921 in Freiburg, Germany, 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. He subsequently discovered that his grandparents were all Jewish. He 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 University in only two years. His dissertation was titled “Nietzsche’s Theory of Values” and eventually became a chapter in his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950).
Kaufmann spent his entire career thereafter, from 1947 to 1980, teaching philosophy at Princeton University, where his students included the Nietzsche scholars Frithjof Bergmann, Richard Schacht, Alexander Nehamas, and Ivan Soll.
Kaufmann became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America in 1960. He died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1980 at the age of 59.view less
Books by Dr. Walter Kaufmann
Religion from Tolstoy to Camus Monarchism in the Weimar Republic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings