Walter Kaufmann, Critique of Religion and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1982)("Philosophy, as Plato and Aristotle said, begins in wonder. This wonder means a dim awareness of the useless talent, some sense that antlikenss is betrayal. But what are the alternatives? . . . Philosophy means liberation form the two dimensions of routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish toughly. 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 . . . 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." Id. at 9-10.).
Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre, revised and expanded, with an introduction, prefaces, and new translations by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Plume, 1975).
Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic, with a foreword by Stanley Corngold (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("Heresy is a set of opinions 'at variance with established or generally received principles.' In this sense, heresy is the price of all originality and innovation. [] In law . . . heresy is 'an offense against Christianity consisting in a denial of some of its essential doctrines, publicly avowed, and obstinately maintained.' What keeps most men in 'Christian' countries from being heretics in this sense is that they do not publicly avow their disbelief: it is in better taste to be casual about lost beliefs, and a note of wistfulness generally ensures forgiveness. Obstinacy is rare. Millions do not even know that they deny essential Christian doctrines: they have never bothered to find out what the essential doctrines are. In extenuation they may plead that the evasiveness and the multiplicity of churches creates a difficulty; but to be deterred by this when one's eternal destiny is said to be at stake bespeaks a glaring lack of seriousness." Id. at 1-2. "Far from viewing philosophy or heresy with suspicion, I believe that the enemies of critical reason are, whether consciously or not, foes of humanity." "For centuries heretics have been persecuted by men of strong faiths who hated non-conformity and heresy and criticism while making obeisances to honesty--within limits. In our time, millions have been murdered in cold blood by the foes of non-conformity and heresy and criticism, who paid lip service to honesty--within limits." 'I have less excuse than many others for ignoring all this. If even I do not speak up, who will? And if not now, when?" Id. at 13.
Walter Kaufmann, From Shakespeare to Existentialism: Essays on Shakespeare and Goethe; Hegel and Kierkegaard; Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud; Jaspers, Heidegger, and Toynbee (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1980) (From "Shakespeare: Between Socrates and Existentialism": It may seem fitting that pumpkins should grow on huge trees, and acorns on the ground, but that is not the way the world is. Wheat grows where the ground has been torn open and plowed; edelweiss, in the cracks of the Alpine rocks, over the precipice; and great prophets and philosophers, poets and artists generally grow in unsettled societies, on the brink of some abyss." "The modern world is a waste land, but the world never has been--and surely never will be--a flower garden. What we make of that is largely up to us. [] The fragmentation and ugliness of the modern world are undeniable. What needs to be denied is that the world of Dante and Aquinas was less ugly, crude, and cruel. Greatness is possible, but exceptional, at all times/" Id. at 1, 23. From "Dialogue With a Critic": "Some things that now seem doubtful to you may well become certain in due course, while many more that had seemed certain should become problematic. Being right matters less than making people think for themselves. And there is no better way of doing that than being provocative." Id. at 25, 34. From "The Young Hegel andReligion": "Hegel always remained the heir of the Enlightenment, opposed to romanticisms and theology alike, insofar as he maintained until the end that there is one pursuit that is far superior even to art and religion: Philosophy." Id. at 129, 161. From "Jaspers' Relation to Nietzsche": "Those who suspect that existentialism may be right in some sense and that it is surely superior to analytic philosophy, hardly need encouragement to have a closer look. And those who are inclined to think that it would be a misfortune if existentialism made headway in the English-speaking world should realize that if they simply shut their eyes to it and concentrate more than ever on linguistic or logical analysis they will thereby help to insure the very development they hate to contemplate. For the potential audience for the existentialists consists of those who feel that, when they ask for bread, the most competent English-speaking philosophers offer them a stone. . . . Many Anglo-American philosophers suspect that the writings of the existentialists are not stones but nut--hollow nuts. There is only one way to find out: to crack the forbidding shell and see what, if anything, it hides." Id. at 283, 284.).
Walter Kaufmann, ed., Religion from Tolstoy to Camus, with a new introduction by Paul Gottfried (New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers, 1993) (From William Kingdom Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief": "To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." "If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoid the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind." Id. at 201, 206.).
Walter Kaufmann, Tragedy and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1979) ("We have been told that tragedy is dead, that it died of optimism, faith in reason, confidence in progress. Tragedy is not dead, but what estranges us from it is just the opposite: Despair." Id. at xx. "Thus some events are tragic not merely in the loose sense of undiscriminating speech but in the more judicious sense that they approximate Greek tragedy. The American involvement in Vietnam is tragic in the most exacting sense. The suffering it entails is immense and by no means merely incidental: the horror of it is magnified by the avowed intention of the American effort to spread death, destruction, and pain. In the two world wars the aim was for the most part to conquer or regain territory, though the bombing of cities in World War II introduced a new dimension. In the Vietnam war, the American daily communiques report, not incidentally but mainly, ow many human beings--called enemies, Communists, or Vietcong--have been killed, and the American Secretary of State announces as good news that 'they are hurting.' Although the daily reports of the numbers or people killed put one in mind of the Nazis' genocide, the rhetoric used to justify the American intervention is as noble, or rather self-righteous, as can be." 'We are bombing Vietnam at a rate at which Germany in world War II was never bombed. although Vietnam, unlike Nazi Germany, did not begin the bombing--to prove to the people of North Vietnam and to e world that aggression does not pay and that we are the guardians of humanity, peace, and security. We intervened on a small scale, sure that a great victory for international morality could be won at very small cost; we stepped up our presence, certain that a slight increase would ensure a quick conclusion; we began to bomb, assured that this would bring a speedy triumph; and the troops, the bombing, and the terror have been inverse vastly, always in the false conviction that just one more increase would produce the victory that would justify all of the suffering, death, and terror. If we stop, our guilt is palpable: all thistle for nothing. Hence we must incur more guilt, and more, and always more to cleanse ourselves of guilt." "Here is a parallel to Macbeth; only the American tragedy has more of the elements of the greatest tragedies: not only the themes of power and guilt, and the ever-deeper involvement in guilt, but also the terrifying irony implicit in the contrast between lofty moral purposes and staggering brutality, and hamartia in its purest form. Is it mere error of judgment or a moral fault? [] What began as an error of judgment has been escalated into a moral outrage, and every step was based on a miscalculation. If now nevertheless sees some right on the American side, too, and does not deny the brutal deeds of the Vietcong--of one remains mindful of the humanity of both sides--the similarity to a great tragedy is only deepened." Id. at 316-317.).
