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socraticgadfly's review against another edition
5.0
FANTASTIC book. Five stars for it, while my rating of Kaufmann falls from a high 4 stars to a flat 3.
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. 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.
I took more than 2,000 words of Word document notes. This review will be a BRIEF (I think) abridgement of that, with a full discussion on my philosophy and aesthetics blog.
I’m agreeing still with Kaufmann as a demythologizer of N., 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 disagree with some of Kaufmann’s take on N. and sublimiation. But, per that trilogy, I didn’t realize K was THAT big of a Freudian. Corngold, by looking at his whole opus, lays this out QUITE clearly, though. It’s why he accept’s N’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.)
Now, on Existentialism from …
I think critics are at least partially right to call out K for not including religious existentialists other than Kierkegaard. I know he savages Bultmann especially in his next book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy.
Now, to Critique. I think K. 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.” Q
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.
(MUCH more at my blog, coming up.)
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 hypoethesis on formation of the Torah was anti-Semitic. To reference above, IIRC, Spinoza was one of the first people to question Mosaic authorship, even if he didn’t formulate a replacement theory.
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 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 K 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.
No. 8 is also self-referentially defeating.
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. (More at my blog, including previous references to why I think Rawls was wrong, for different reasons than Kaufmann does.)
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.
Basically, to use a word, Kaufmann is tendentious. (MUCH more at my blog.)
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.
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. 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.
I took more than 2,000 words of Word document notes. This review will be a BRIEF (I think) abridgement of that, with a full discussion on my philosophy and aesthetics blog.
I’m agreeing still with Kaufmann as a demythologizer of N., 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 disagree with some of Kaufmann’s take on N. and sublimiation. But, per that trilogy, I didn’t realize K was THAT big of a Freudian. Corngold, by looking at his whole opus, lays this out QUITE clearly, though. It’s why he accept’s N’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.)
Now, on Existentialism from …
I think critics are at least partially right to call out K for not including religious existentialists other than Kierkegaard. I know he savages Bultmann especially in his next book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy.
Now, to Critique. I think K. 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.” Q
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.
(MUCH more at my blog, coming up.)
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 hypoethesis on formation of the Torah was anti-Semitic. To reference above, IIRC, Spinoza was one of the first people to question Mosaic authorship, even if he didn’t formulate a replacement theory.
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 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 K 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.
No. 8 is also self-referentially defeating.
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. (More at my blog, including previous references to why I think Rawls was wrong, for different reasons than Kaufmann does.)
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.
Basically, to use a word, Kaufmann is tendentious. (MUCH more at my blog.)
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.
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