The Faith of a Heretic PDF
Preview The Faith of a Heretic
The Faith of a Heretic The Faith of a Heretic Walter Kaufmann With a neW foreWord by Stanley Corngold PrinCeton univerSity PreSS PrinCeton and oxford Copyright © 2015 by the Walter Kaufmann Copyright Trust Foreword copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Original cloth edition published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961 Anchor Books Edition, 1963 First Princeton University Press paperback edition, with a new foreword by Stanley Corngold, 2015 Library of Congress Control Number 2014951277 Paperback ISBN 978- 0- 691- 16548- 6 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Janson Text Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 To My Uncles Walter Seligsohn who volunteered in 1914 and was shot off his horse on the Russian front in 1915 Julius Seligsohn and franz Kaufmann both Oberleutnant, Iron Cross, First Class, 1914– 18, one a devout Jew, one a devout convert to Christianity, one killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942, one shot by the Secret Police in 1944, both for gallantly helping others in obedience to conscience, defiant Jeremiah: They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. Kant: All the interest of my reason (speculative as well as practi- cal ) comes together in the following three questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope? —Critique of Pure Reason Whitman: Piety and conformity to them that like, Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like . . . I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet, Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense? —By Blue Ontario’s Shore Nietzsche: Is it really so difficult simply to accept . . . what is considered truth in the circle of one’s relatives and of many good men, and what, moreover, really comforts and elevates man? Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experi- encing the insecurity of independence and the frequent wavering of one’s feelings and even one’s conscience, proceeding often without any consolation. . . . Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a dev- otee of truth, then inquire. —Letter, 1865 Tolstoy: I do not believe my faith to be the one indubitable truth for all time, but I see no other that is plainer, clearer, or answers bet- ter to all the demands of my reason and my heart; should I find such a one I shall at once accept it. . . . But I can no more return to that from which with such suffering I have escaped, than a flying bird can re- enter the egg shell from which it has emerged. “He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving him- self (his own peace) better than all,” said Coleridge. —Reply to Edict of Excommunication Wittgenstein: What is the use of studying philosophy if . . . (See § 10) Sartre: If a writer has chosen to be silent . . . (See § 16) ContentS Foreword Stanley Corngold xi Preface xxvii I Prologue 1 II The Quest for Honesty 14 III Philosophy and Revolution 39 IV Commitment 66 V Against Theology 90 VI Suffering and the Bible 137 VII The Old Testament 170 VIII Jesus vis- à- vis Paul, Luther, and Schweitzer 207 IX Organized Religion 250 X Morality 280 XI Freud and the Tragic Virtues 332 XII Death 355 XIII Trilogue on Heaven, Love, and Peace 380 XIV Epilogue 399 Bibliographical Index 411 Acknowledgments 419
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