Jacob Klein

On Being Eva

Eva Brann seems to have a refreshing effect on all who meet her. This must have something to do with her openness to the world in all its manifestations, her spritely and generous spirit, her mischievous love of play, and her gift of friendship. Today, she still...

Rigor in Place of Rancor

In the last few years, accounts of the growing politicization of academic discourse have made their way from colleges and universities onto conversations on a public, and perhaps national, scale. What is the essence behind such rancor?... There are two ways of getting home; and one...

Jacob Klein: A Great Scholar, An Even Greater Man

Jacob Klein was, first and last, every inch a teacher, a teacher who stymied discipleship in the very effort to induce learning. He did, indeed, have some teachings to convey—a few, though those were powerful and of large consequence... Editor's Note: This essay was read as...

The Knowing Soul

The great vehicle of liberal learning is discussion, in which begetting, questioning, refuting, and again questioning take place... What I have to speak about, briefly and in a most elementary way, is what...

Jacob Klein: European Scholar and American Teacher

The subtitle of my talk might be “Liberal Education: Program and/or Pedagogy?” The reason is that I think of Jacob Klein’s life as being an embodiment of that slash, “and/or” and therefore an occasion for...

Image, Being, and Form in the Platonic Dialogues

Jacob Klein was in the last year of his nine-year tenure as dean of St. John’s College in 1957 when I came as a young tutor. He died in 1978, still teaching. In those twenty-one years during...

“Plato’s Theory of Ideas”

My subject, as proposed, is "Plato's Theory of Ideas." Whether that subject actually interests you, or you think that it ought to interest you, you will, I imagine, regard it as a respectable topic. And yet...

Immediacy: The Ways of Humanity

I want to steal four minutes of my talking time to speak of the role that the Santa Fe campus has played in my life. I remember vividly the atmosphere around its founding in the years before 1964,...