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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
Life
Worth
World
Suffering
Purpose
Given
Neatly
Doe
Labeled
Come
Governed
Nothing
Follow
Must
Meaning

More quotes by Walter Kaufmann

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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 first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.
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For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.
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The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?
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Writing is thinking in slow motion.
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Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
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The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.
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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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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.
Walter Kaufmann
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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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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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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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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
Walter Kaufmann
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Thirdly, even if we assume that the world is governed by purpose, we need only add that this purpose - or, if there are several, at least one of them - is not especially intent on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering or actually rejoices in it.
Walter Kaufmann
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No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.
Walter Kaufmann
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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.
Walter Kaufmann
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Those who believe in God because their experience of life and the facts of nature prove his existence must have led sheltered lives and closed their hearts to the voice of their brothers' blood.
Walter Kaufmann
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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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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
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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.
Walter Kaufmann