In his seminal 1846 tract The Present Age, Soren Kierkegaard ("the father of existentialism"--New York Times) analyzes the philosophical implications of a society dominated by mass media--a society eerily similar to our own. A stunningly prescient essay on the rising influence of advertising, market[...]
The first complete account of the ideas and writings of a major figure in twentieth-century intellectual lifeWalter Kaufmann (1921-1980) was a charismatic philosopher, critic, translator, and poet who fled Nazi Germany at the age of eighteen, emigrating alone to the United States. He was astonishing[...]
The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world's leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, "Few writers in any age were so full of ideas", an[...]
Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God -- to which a large part of the book is devoted -- and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslate[...]
The great philosopher's major work on ethics, along with ECCE HOMO, Nietzche's remarkable review of his life and works. Translated by Walter Kaufmann.[...]
Explores such themes as philosophy versus poetry, post-World War II German thought, art, tradition, and truth in a collection of essays.[...]
This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitat[...]