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It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above that life and suffering must come neatly labeled that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose.

Walter Kaufmann

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Walter Kaufmann
Age: 59 †
Born: 1921
Born: July 1
Died: 1980
Died: September 4
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Freiburg/Breisgau
Walter Arnold Kaufmann
David Dennis
Doe
Labeled
Come
Governed
Nothing
Follow
Must
Meaning
Life
Worth
World
Suffering
Purpose
Given
Neatly

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Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.
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The Greeks had considered hope the final evil in Pandora's box. They also gave us an image of perfect nobility: a human being lovingly doing her duty to another human being despite all threats, and going to her death with pride and courage, not deterred by any hope - Antigone.
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Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire…. ….The world winks at dishonesty. the world does not call it dishonesty
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The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering.
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When Hegel later became a man of influence' he insisted that the Jews should be granted equal rights because civic rights belong to man because he is a man and not on account of his ethnic origins or his religion.
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Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life.
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Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life.
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It was also Hegel who established the view that the different philosophic systems that we find in history are to be comprehended in terms of development and that they are generally one-sided because they owe their origins to a reaction against what has gone before.
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The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.
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Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
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Philosophy means liberation from the - routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish to fly.
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Writing is thinking in slow motion.
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Job's forthright indictment of the injustice of this world is surely right. The ways of the world are weird and much more unpredictable than either scientists or theologians generally make things look.
Walter Kaufmann
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The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life-that is the heart of existentialism.
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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.
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Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.
Walter Kaufmann
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Reason may not always tell us what to believe, but it can help us on what we shouldn't believe.
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The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepen his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.
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The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?
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To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic.
Walter Kaufmann