When I was applying to PhD programs as an undergraduate at Princeton, with an interest in German philosophy, especially Nietzsche, my very kind senior thesis advisor T.M. Scanlon told me that the late Walter Kaufmann’s favorite student was Frithjof Bergmann at Michigan. Raymond Geuss, from whom I was taking a course on “Marx, Nietzsche, Freud,” did not have a high opinion of Bergmann, however. I reported this different assessment to Scanlon, who remarked that his being Kaufmann’s favorite student and Geuss not having a high opinion of him were consistent. It took me awhile, but I eventually understood Scanlon’s point. Bergmann was a charismatic undergraduate lecturer, but by the time I had gotten to Michigan he had abandoned serious philosophical scholarship in favor of his project “New Work” (I ended up working mainly with Peter Railton on my dissertation [and received valuable help and support from scholars outside Michigan, notably Maudemarie Clark, Michael Forster, and Ken Gemes], although Bergmann was always very nice to me and supportive). Later in life, after Bergmann’s rather sudden retirement from Michigan, he wrote a book in German about “New Work” which attracted a lot of attention in Europe. Recently, I came across this article about “New Work” from The Point, which I must say captures what was always my sense of it, alas. (The article does not, however, give a very fair description of Bergmann’s book from the 1970s, On Being Free.) For a more sympathetic account, see here.