Download Walter Kaufmann’s Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Modern Thought (1960)

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years (1947–1980) teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Niet­zsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker – some­thing there was­n’t always room to do in Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles.

With­out sim­pli­fy­ing things too much, Kauf­mann saw Niet­zsche as some­thing of an ear­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, which brings us to these vin­tage lec­tures record­ed in 1960 (right around the time that Kauf­mann, a Ger­man-born con­vert to Judaism, also became a nat­u­ral­ized Amer­i­can cit­i­zen). The three lec­tures offer a short primer on exis­ten­tial­ism and the mod­ern crises philoso­phers grap­pled with. Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion begins the series, fol­lowed by Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy and Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty.

Kauf­man­n’s talks are now list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will also find cours­es pre­sent­ed by more con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers, includ­ing John Sear­le, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online