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> Home | TOC | Index 17 A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss The following giving of accounts took place at st. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, on 30 January 1970. Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss were introduced by Dean Robert A. Goldwin. Dean Goldwin: Mr. Klein and Mr. Strauss are going to present us tonight with two "accounts." The origin of this event is, I think, quite simple. Many of us have known them both, as our teachers, for many, many years. In a sense we can say that we know much about their teachings. But, in fact, most of us know very little of the genesis of their thought. And it occurred to us that it would be, very simply, enlightening , to hear from them their own accounts of the origin and development of their thoughts in those matters of greatest interest to us, their students. It is arranged that Mr. Klein will speak and then Mr. Strauss will speak. Then we will have questions, in our accustomed style. Jacob Klein: This meeting has two reasons, one is accidental, the other is important. The first is the fact (and any fact is some kind of accident) that Mr. Strauss and I happen to have known each other closely, and have been friends, for fifty years, and happen both to be now in Annapolis at St. John's College. The other reason, the important one, is that Mr. Strauss is not too well known in this community, and that we as a real community of learners should begin to understand better why he is now a member of this community. We thought it might be not too bad an idea, although a somewhat embarrassing one, to tell you what we have learned in our lives, what preoccupied us and what still preoccupies us. Dead Week might perhaps indeed provide the right opportunity , the kairos, to do that. I shall begin. 457 > Home | TOC | Index 458 Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis ofModernity Up to my twenty-fifth year I had one great difficulty. I was a student , and so was Mr. Strauss-we studied at the same university-and I studied all kinds of things, something called philosophy, and mathematics , and physics, and I did that quite superficially. But what preoccupied me mostly during those years was this: whatever thought I might have, and whatever interest I might have in anything, seemed to me to be located completely within me, so that I always felt that I could not really understand anything outside me, could not understand anything uttered or written by another person. I felt that I was in a kind of vicious circle out of which I could find no escape. I wrote a dissertation, which is not worth the paper on which lit was written, obtained my Ph.D. degree, and then after a short whiler returned to studies. Now, while Mr. Strauss and I were studying we had many, I should say, endless conversations about mcmy things. His primary interests were two questions: one, the question of God; and two, the question of politics. These questions were not mine. I studied, as I said, quite superficially, Hegel, mathematics, and physics. When I resumed my studying, a certain man happened to be at the university in the little town in which I was living. This man was Martin Heidegger. Many of you have heard his name, and some of you might have read some of his works in impossible English translations. I will not talk too much about Martin Heidegger, except that I would like to say that he is the very great thinker of our time, although his moral qualities do not match his intellectual ones. When I heard him lecture, I was struck by one thing: that he was the first man who made me understand something written by another man, namely, Aristotle. It broke my vicious circle. I felt that I could understand. Then I began studying seriously, for myself, seriously, not superficially. It became clear to me that one had to distinguish the classical mode of thinking from the modern mode of thinking. Our world and our understanding, as it is today, is based on a certain change that occurred about five hundred years ago, and this change pervades not only our thinking but the whole world around us. It made possible one of the greatest achievements of man, mathematical physics, and all the auxiliary disciplines connected with it. It made possible what...

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