Walter Kaufmann was born in Freiburg, Germany, on July 1, 1921. He emigrated to the United States in 1939, as conditions in Germany became ominous for those of Jewish descent (Kaufmann's father—although not his mother—had converted to Protestantism, with the consequence that Kaufmann had been raised in that faith; but he converted to Judaism in 1933, in an early display of the sensitivity to religious questions that became one of the central features of his intellectual life). He attended Williams College, from which he graduated in 1941, and then went to Harvard, from which he received an MA degree in Philosophy in 1942. After military service in Europe during the Second World War (in capacities that took advantage of his equal facility in German and in English), he returned to Harvard, receiving his PhD in 1947. He joined the Philosophy Department at Princeton University in the fall...