Walter Kaufmann Quotes

Walter Arnold Kaufmann 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 more than 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, and Martin Buber's I and Thou. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. July 1921 – 4. September 1980   •   Other names Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)

Works

Walter Kaufmann: 7   quotes 1   like

Famous Walter Kaufmann Quotes

“Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly.”

Time is an Artist (1978) Epilogue : Old is Beautiful http://taimur.sarangi.info/text/kaufmann_time.htm
Context: Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly. In one way it is even more pernicious.
The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future. It keeps us from understanding our roots and the greatest works of our culture and other cultures. It also makes us dread what lies ahead of us and leads many to shirk reality.

“The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future.”

Time is an Artist (1978) Epilogue : Old is Beautiful http://taimur.sarangi.info/text/kaufmann_time.htm
Context: Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly. In one way it is even more pernicious.
The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future. It keeps us from understanding our roots and the greatest works of our culture and other cultures. It also makes us dread what lies ahead of us and leads many to shirk reality.

“He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.”

Source: Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1951), p. 151
Context: There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.

Similar authors

Ayn Rand photo
Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher
Martin Heidegger photo
Martin Heidegger 69
German philosopher
Paulo Freire photo
Paulo Freire 115
educator and philosopher
Emil M. Cioran photo
Emil M. Cioran 531
Romanian philosopher and essayist
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein 228
Austrian-British philosopher
Paul Valéry photo
Paul Valéry 89
French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Henri Bergson photo
Henri Bergson 18
French philosopher
George Santayana photo
George Santayana 109
20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with P…
Steven Weinberg photo
Steven Weinberg 46
American theoretical physicist
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
José Ortega Y Gasset 85
Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist