Walter Kaufmann: Skeptic, heretic, antichrist and a whole lot less

Walter Kaufmann: Philosopher, Humanist, Heretic by Stanley Corngold

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


FANTASTIC book. Five stars for it, while my rating of Kaufmann falls from a high 4 stars to a flat 3.


This is a greatly extended version of my book review, which was written so as to not be too long and not avoid spoilers. It was written to also be a book review first and foremost, whereas this will be a Kaufmann review as much as a book review.

As someone who owns and has re-read “Without Guilt and Justice,” “Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre” and “Critique of Religion and Philosophy,” and has read Kaufmann’s translation and explication of Nietzsche in “The Portable Nietzsche,” and also has read “Faith of a Heretic” and “From Shakespeare to Existentialsm,” I was definitely looking forward to this bio when I heard about it.

Corngold didn’t disappoint. But he did lead me to see how I’ve overrated Kaufmann in the past, especially because I had not read, or heard of, one book and one trilogy after “Without Guilt and Justice.”

“Religions in Four Dimensions” puts Kaufmann’s special pleading for Judaism as a special religion on full display, and it’s pretty bad. He simply rejected what was already in place on modern biblical criticism at that time, going beyond earlier claims that the traditional documentary hypothesis was antisemitic. More below, as the bio goes chronologically and this was a late book of his.

“Discovering the Mind” shows the poverty of his not looking at British philosophy, and I’m talking about empiricism, then utilitarianism, not modern analytical philosophy. Basically, it is the culmination of his lifelong stance of an uncritical, HUGELY uncritical, love for Freud.

I’m agreeing still with Kaufmann as a demythologizer of Nietzsche, namely stripping away the anti-Semitic and Nazi-related past his sister put on him. The post-Epilogue chapter of “Contra Nietzsche” (interesting to have a chapter after the Epilogue) reinforces this.

I don’t totally agree with Kaufmann that Nietzsche’s biggest focus on will to power was mastery of one’s self, though that could come from the Greek antiquity.

Disagree even more with Kaufmann on Nietzsche and sublimation. I think Nietzsche did promote some version of that, but Kaufmann is a big Freudian and he is seemingly specifically referencing that. But, per that trilogy, I didn’t realize Kaufmann was THAT big of a Freudian. Corngold, by looking at his whole opus, lays this out  QUITE clearly, though. It’s why he accepts Nietzsche’s claim to be the first philosopher to be a psychologist. (And, this is wrong; that would be Hume. Hume, of course, was not a depth psychologist. Thank doorknobs for that.)

Disagree even more that there’s an overall large unity to Nietzsche.

Now, on Existentialism from …

I think critics are at least partially right to call out Kaufmann for not including religious existentialists other than Kierkegaard. I know he savages Bultmann especially in his next book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy. More on book in a minute. He still could have included somebody besides Kierkegaard, or else left him out.

And why put Dostoyevsky before him? If he believes Nietzsche was the root of 20th century existentialism, why not start with HIM?

Now, to Critique. I think Kaufmann does a disservice to British philosophy. Not so much to the 20th century version, although Russell the pacifist being arrested in WWI shows that even in modernity, it was not so ivory-towered as K claims. I think his disliking its anti-mysticism led to all other dislikes he had. But it’s simply wrong in other ways, one in particular.

I’ve said many, many times that Hume was, in my estimation, the world’s first modern psychologist. And for K., who calls N. a psychologist in the title of his book about him, to ignore Hume, and to claim that this man who was know first, in his own day, as a historian, second as a befriender of Smith and his economics-oriented moral philosophy, and third, more than Descartes, as a reviver of Greek Skepticism, to claim that he’s really not worth study as a philosopher or in general? K. impoverished himself.

That said, Kaufmann also misreads Judaism here. I had noted this in my copy of Critique, which I’ve not read for more than half a decade. It’s simply wrong, and Qumran’s library, with many apocalyptic books in Hebrew, was proof. Tho he didn’t preach hellfire, Ezra DID preach exclusiveness. Daniel 12 talks about “everlasting contempt.” Qumran has scrolls that talk about everlasting damnation. And, on “dogma”? No, it doesn’t have nearly that of Christianity, but a Buddhist or Hindu might well call the Shema “dogma.” Or the Orthodox idea of 613 mitzvoth, and how to fulfill them.

Kaufmann also tries to look at Judaism while ignoring the Mishna and Talmud. And this is despite studying under renowned rabbi Leo Baeck.

Couldn’t we call him a modern Karaite? Well, Karaism’s attempt to reject Mishna and Talmud and get back to “authentic Judaism” seems to me, per Husserl, a failure to fully “bracket” the “later testaments” of Judaism. It’s a lesser-degree parallel of Campbellite type Christians of the “primitive Christianity” movement to get back to allegedly “Jesus Christianity” while ignoring the 1,900 years (at that time) of Christian doctrine filters they were using to define “primitive Christianity.”

More on dogma and exclusiveness. Even if we grant Kaufmann is partially correct, much of the Torah itself is priestly pronouncements. That’s where those 613 mitzvoth are. And, while the Lutheran idea (held in some ways by many other Xns) of distinguishing between moral, ceremonial and civil commands doesn’t fully wash (and certainly not in terms of Xn exemptions, contra Paul), nonetheless, many commands are about ritual purity that is specific to that religion.

More on dogma. Spinoza was, to use a normally Xn term, excommunicated.

And, Kaufmann knew much of this. And, by the time of his untimely death, had opportunity to know enough of the early study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and how it too undercut his Xn-Judaism bifurcations.

Kaufmann also hadn’t read Jewish or Christian NT criticism closely if he thought Jessu claiming to be the Messiah (if he did) was blasphemous. He also, despite studying with Baeck, had not made h imself familiar with Tannaitic Jewish history, namely, Akiva proclaiming bar Kokhba to be the Messiah.

Kaufmann also thought the documentary hypothesis on formation of the Torah was antisemitic. To reference above, Spinoza was one of the first people to question Mosaic authorship, even if he didn’t formulate a replacement theory. (I personally believe in a modified documentary hypothesis, moved back a century or two and reliant on issues of development and fragments, without going full Copenhagen.)

And, this speaks to a conceit that Kaufmann seems to have had about himself, that he was widely read in every area where he made major commentary. He wasn’t.

The author was good for provoking these thoughts in me. But, I’m going way beyond him in my critique of Kaufmann.

Page 306, Kaufman is quoted as claiming the Greek gods as presented in the Iliad were only poetic fictions. They may have been viewed as such at the time of Plato, per his comments elsewhere, but in its original oral formation, and presumably its earlier written forms, no, I think it’s more likely the gods were viewed as real.

The chapter on what is my favorite Kaufmann book, “Without Guilt and Justice,” is very good. Corngold notes the dual Latin etymology of “decido” behind Kaufmann’s “Decidophobia” (though it’s not clear Kaufmann was invoking that). It can either mean “to decide,” or to “fall away/off/down.” In other words, to stumble or to err. And this failure, whether it causes personal physical consequences, or social ones like embarrassment or loss of face, is a real human worry.

That said, Corngold also has me questioning Kaufmann even here. Since Kaufmann rejects the poles of both moral rationalism and moral irrationalism, could we not, per friend Massimo Pigliucci saying, “I’m a moral naturalist, as I think morality is a human invention (thus not “real”), but constrained by human nature, desires, and limitations (thus partially factual),” find a middle ground on distributive justice, which I think, contra Kaufmann, has advanced. And, on retributive justice, to cite the Nivi’im and Plato as “advances” for developing a natural law? No.

Corngold, by quoting Kaufmann, reminds me of other failings here. No. 2 of his six reasons to retain punishment despite retributive justice being a fail, “to inculcate a moral sense,” strikes me as self-referentially defeating. I think many people intuit something like what K. has said on both retributive and distributive justice; ergo, the punishments of the criminal system can inculcate no moral sense, but only more questioning of the idea of retributive justice.

No. 8 is also self-referentially defeating. If we punish a person to offer a psychological benefit to their victim, isn’t this a concession that distributive justice is not illusory after all?

If we agree with Kaufmann that trying to apply distributive justice as a moral calculus is a refuge of the decidophobe, I’m in agreement. But if, from that, we extrapolate to rejecting attempts to produce better versions of them, and instead, on the retributive side, still try to justify punishment on dubious grounds, I’m gone.

I’m even more gone on his rejection of guilt in light of what he says above. If there is no guilt, then punishment cannot inculcate a moral sense. And one can retain the idea of guilt while still rejecting the idea of desert.

What’s really missing is Kaufmann seeming to be ill-informed by non-Freudian humanistic psychology that was available to him at his time, let alone what is available today.

Corngold does note that others criticize him and also for the hypocrisy of pointing out how the Hebrew prophets gave the world … a call for JUSTICE.

Corngold does note that Kaufmann is very readable in this book and comes off li ke the best attributes of a journalist.

That leads to the next chapter, about a book of Kaufmann’s I had not heard about, about world religions, the “Religion in Four Dimensions.” It too sounds problematic. The issue of religion may still be the most important issue of human discussion. Or it may not. It certainly was in the past. That doesn’t mean it will be so forever, contra a quasi-essentialist stance like Kaufmann’s.

He again gets his Judaism wrong. It was influenced by Zoroastrianism more than he’ll admit, especially on heaven and hell and ethical dualism. Daniel talks about this, and the intertestamental books thatTannaitic rabbis rejected after the Second Revolt. Kaufmann doesn’t get into this at all. Corngold rightly notes that he ignores the unjust and unseemly parts of the Tanakh, like Yahweh’s call for genocide against the Amorites. He also ignores that much of the call for social justice was only with Israel. As for ancient Hebrew having the same word for servant and slave? Please, Walter. It’s not the only ancient language to be like that. As for his seeing indications that Israel intended to end slavery? No. He also, Corngold shows, repeats the old myth that Judaism was not an evangelistic religion, though he has to allow for the Khazars. He ignores the conversion by the sword of the Hasmoneans. And, conversions by medieval Spanish rabbis in three-way disputes with Christians and Muslims. He ignores that the growth of Rhineland Judaism pre-First Crusade was in part due to conversions. He ignores Chrysostom warning Christians in Constantinople to stop going to synagoges, which implies that rabbis were welcoming them.

He also ignores that the intertestamental books, the apocalyptic ones like I and II Enoch, etc., were shown, by being at Qumran, to be more popular in Judaism at the turn of the eras than Kaufmann will admit. Ditto, of course, on at least some people there being celibate, it seems. But yet, Kaufmann can attack

Basically, to use a word, Kaufmann is tendentious. To use another word or two, about a philosopher and philosophy he disliked? He’s trying to employ the “bracketing” of Husserl’s phenomenology or something similar, with the claims that non-rabbinic Judaism vs the emerging proto-rabbinic Judaism isn’t “normative.” Of course not; the rabbis, especially when we get to the Amoritic era, “bracket out” Messianism as much as possible. (Kaufmann also overlooks that Akiba proclaimed bar Kokhba to be the Messiah.)

In his next chapter, Corngold shows Kaufmann stumbling again, this time in his final book, “Discovering the Mind,” actually a triology of books, each devoted to philosophers. The stumble is based in working off an ejaculation by Nietzsche: “Who among philosophers was a psychologist at all before me?”

The answer is: “David Hume.” And Kaufmann’s previous semi-neglect of Hume becomes total here by not having him as any of his nine philosophers of mind in the three volumes.

The trio is worsened only by Kaufmann’s love, via Nietzsche, for depth psychology in general and Freud in particular. Indeed, Freud, in Kaufmann’s eyes, it seems can even more do no wrong than Nietzsche. His pseudoscientific propositions and his lack of scientific rigor in testing his ideas all get swept under the rug.

To summarize? Kaufmann was out of his league from the start on biblical criticism comments. He was out of bounds, though not out of his league, on his ideas on psychology. Ditto on some philosophical thoughts.

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