The Faith of a Heretic

I purchased Walter Kaufmann's The Faith of a Heretic sometime around 1980 and for the next couple of decades dipped into it regularly, as one does with wisdom literature. Then I put the book away and did not look at it again until about a year or so ago when I consulted it to find a passage I had imperfectly recalled. In the last few weeks, I've picked it up again, determined to read it through carefully. Each page, each paragraph continues to speak to me with an honesty and vigor that must have molded my thinking on human religiosity far more than I ever credited in my twenties--for the arguments, the examples, the sources are all the arguments, examples, and sources that I appeal to even now in my writing and, especially, my classroom teaching.

Kaufmann's combination of intellectual honesty and moral commitment were exceptional during his lifetime and remain so to this day. If I have been unconsciously emulating him these many years, I doubt I could have picked a better model.