Life at the Limits

by Walter Kaufmann

Book Overview

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070333157
• ISBN13: 9780070333154
• Release Date: October 1978
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

I already had two parts of this big book

The poetry at the end of the text on the death of Walter Kaufmann's mother was one of the main reasons I bought this book. I was not perfect in claiming in reviews that I wrote years ago that Walter Kaufmann's best reader was his mother, a ridiculous idea that I must have based on poem XVII on page 142 of WHAT IS MAN? (the final third of MAN'S LOT): "I was not beautiful my sister was." You were unknown to you but only age and death wrung verse from me. "No one I love to read like you." Of you I write what should not be remembered. Another selection from the poems in the Epilogue: Death and Survival by Walter Kaufmann: XX Stop grieving stubborn heart wake up. XXV Boxes of letters and old photographs. Less than three hours' sleep. I sorted and forgot the nightmare and all sleep I was with you the way you were not were but are in words and pictures and in me. Oh, time was cruel but not you. You saved us misery by being as you were. XXVIII Your death was like an earthquake that set free the hidden fires of my soul. Three hours' sleep is more now than I need The rest is writing. The big questions I had were about words, and some of them became pretty obvious. XXXII Once in your ninety years you used a lipstick and you lied. You told me you would do it. I could not picture it but you did pass for ten years younger. In London you had worked for seven years all through the Blitz but who would hire you at sixty in New York? And then you worked twice seven years as long as Jacob served for his two wives with boys they gently called disturbed. You learned new words that nobody is taught in school and you grew younger. My lawyer father found no work but when he died you feared retirement would be a living death. An hour's visit at your school exhausted me. You took it fourteen years and thrived on being loved. XXXIII ... Your little brother asked why all times were exciting and only ours empty. The Russians shot him off his horse in World War I. ... Who could imagine Louis or your father in your school hearing those boys or even just your stories? Your mother there seems like an evil joke. You had their elegance and pride but more than that more than they knew you did them proud. ~ ~ ~ (p. 145).

Art and Philosophy Perfectly Meshed

Walter Kaufmann's significance as an artist and philosopher has yet to be thoughtfully assessed either by academicians or by the educated public. MAN'S LOT is perhaps Kaufmann's masterpiece, a series of artistic photographs which perfectly amplify and explicate the philosophy and poetry which accompany them.I never grow tired of these images themselves. They are both personal and universal, illuminating the human condition in its many forms and variations on planet Earth. The first section focuses on the poor in Calcutta; the second on the effects of time on humans and the planet; and the third compares humans from a variety of cultural and historical settings, revealing our basic constancy within a framework of constant change.We once respected thoughtful people who shared their wisdom with humanity through their art and writing. It is, for me, a sad commentary on our times that Kaufmann's work has been so thoroughly ignored. He sought to be accessible to the educated masses. It is grossly ironic that his works of genius are ignored by specialist and layperson alike.And it is not that Kaufmann is NOT accessible. MAN'S LOT is written in clear and forceful prose. Its arguments are easily grasped, and its messages are potentially as transformative as are those of Plato's REPUBLIC.For anyone who loves art, the act of thinking, and the pursuit of wisdom itself, there could be no better gift than a copy of this long out-of-print masterpiece. It should be cherished by the many rather than utterly ignored by the same.Along with Kaufmann's RELIGION IN FOUR DIMENSIONS, there exist no better record of a life--Kaufmann's--devoted to understanding life and participating in its mysteries.

What limits?

This book, Life at the Limits, a philosophical picture book by someone who appreciates how much our visual images determine which views might help maintain our society as a superpower, assumes modernity as it builds to a confrontation with all that has been taught, but this book almost fails to approach the comic willingness of those who have yielded to the temptation to be constantly entertaining, as that need is understood by those who have overcome the limits usually placed on philosophy, which in attempting to bolster the superpower's views, must be reluctant to admit that it was written in and about the kingdom of the cruel. There is no index in this book, which is taken as a sure sign to highly suspect readers, such as myself, that security would be breached if people were able to locate the identities assumed by the philosopher in this effort. It is also unlikely that anything suggested by this book will be considered in alphabetical order. There is a list of 24 words beginning with the letter d on page 66, but even those words aren't in alphabetical order, but, comically enough, a lot of them are described as dismal. Already, there should be something funny, and what comes to my mind as being one of my favorite comic bits on the same topic is a cockroach interviewing a mummy, the episode "archy interviews a pharaoh" at page 33 of "archy and mehitabel" by don marquis. The first important d word there is in the sentence, "in my tender prime I was too dignified to have anything as vulgar as ambition." (marquis, p. 33). Death is one of the d words in the Kaufmann list, and at times he seems to approach the view of the pharaoh who thought, "if I had my life to live over again I would give dignity the regal razz and hire myself out to work in a brewery." (marquis, p. 35). As archy says, "my sympathies are with your royal dryness," (p. 36) who had to admit, "I am as dry as the heart of a sand storm at high noon in hell." (p. 36). archy is not to be outdone, once religion has been brought into the discussion, and refers to the mummy as "divine drouth" and "my reverend juiceless ness" as well as "the royal desiccation" (p. 37) but the d words really pile up when a great cough of despair turned the unfortunate residuum "to dust and debris right in my face/it being the only time/I ever actually saw anybody/put the cough/into sarcophagus." (pp. 37-9). I can't be sure that this deformity of d word topics is what Kaufmann had in mind when he mentioned someone being "struck by more than one item from list A. . . . There is work here even for those who like to use computers." (p. 67). Depth was a word in the B list, in which comedy might be included in the derangement, drugs, debauchery, and, especially in the kingdom of the cruel, with "degradation of others." (p. 66). There is reason to believe that psychotic multiplicity might be a factor in achieving depth in such an effort; as Kaufmann says, "by attaining sufficient depth one appro

Preparation for an old future.

It is difficult for me to get past the first picture of the old temple in Cambodia, taken by Walter Kaufmann in 1963, at the beginning of this book. The day has its hours and minutes, but Cambodia has its years. It has been 31 years since I was in Cambodia, and the artistic possibilities of that much time don't apply in abstract ways, like taking that many years away from being funny. Most of the pictures in this book try to find something to praise in old things, including mummies, and the "old is beautiful" theme seemed perfectly appropriate for a philosophy which was so wrapped up in living. I didn't think this book was as deep as some that I have read. I can't imagine what would ever make a book like this popular, but that hasn't usually been my concern. If I tried to produce a philosophy of time that could encompass the confusion which the really famous philosophers of the 20th century produced on that subject, I would only be misleading the readers of this review about the nature of this book. This is just a study in time appreciation, like an ecologist might like trees and animals. Barely literate scholars might assume they are studying philosophy when they read this book, but I'm not going to say anything that would make it seem at a lower level than what it is. This is a picture book by someone who appreciated poetry and philosophy, had great taste in literature, but was trying to communicate with people who had no sense of greatness. Or maybe I'm missing something because I didn't notice anything heroic.