Walter Kaufmann: Kierkegaard and the Crisis in Religion

source: Eidos84     2011年1月7日
"Kierkegaard and the Crisis in Religion", the first part of Walter Kaufmann's famous 1960 lecture series on existentialism. Kaufmann begins by explaining that existentialists share as many differences as other schools of philosophy. First coined to refer to the theories of Jaspers and Heidegger, existentialism became primarily associated with the work of Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Nietzsche, all radical individualists who found previous philosophical systems lacking. Kaufmann explains their writings as an answer to the modern crises in religion, philosophy and morality.

Walter Kaufmann: Nietzsche and the Crisis in Philosophy

source: Eidos84    2011年1月7日
"Nietzsche and the Crisis in Philosophy", the second part of Walter Kaufmann's 1960 lecture series. Kaufmann first discusses the general crisis in modern philosophy, before focusing on the important contributions of Friedrich Nietzsche. Kaufmann pictures Nietzsche as a revolutionary heretic and the embodiment of the Socratic spirit. He traces in Nietzsche's works the craving for intellectual integrity, his break with Richard Wagner over the composer's anti-Semitic and anti-French sentiments, and ultimately, his madness, ascribed to having "burned himself out."