25 lugl 1937 anni - Jacob Klein

Descrizione:

at St John's til 1978 (his death)
expat from Germany, student of Heidegger
Plato expert

He was a kind of "second founder" who brought shape and stability, making something that could be maintained with integrity

“That era [Klein's, which Brann shared] is really when St. John’s became what we are today,” he adds. “Barr and Buchanan, they had an interesting idea and they laid a good foundation, but Ms. Brann recounts [that] it was a lot different back then. The Jacob Klein era is when it sort of radicalized and became this seminar-based unhierarchical conversational pedagogy. That was a really important part of our history, and I found it imperative to document that while we still have firsthand accounts.” Jeremy Sheeler, https://www.sjc.edu/news/graduate-institute-alumni-release-documentary-feature-tutor-eva-brann

Jasha was quirky and whimsical, he would spit into the world, students would copy his habits and crazinesses. Students loved him. Eva: "He was unbudgingly human...always more human being than official" ("Higher Gossip"). He would stand in the hallways as students came out to see if they were engaged: happy, bored, etc. Not really a pontificator. Was this pedagogical or did he just not know? Unclear! Eva: "He heard what everyone said....he made it sound more interesting than it really was and that made people be more interesting than they otherwise would have been."

He despised his own dissertation ("not worth the paper it was written on") and articles a waste of time. But his own book, Eva loved. Seth Benardete had sent it to her to read. She translated it because she felt that she didn't understand it.

Klein loved the ignorance (as a great starting point) of the American students (Eva, "Higher Gossip"). He was a Russian Jew, warm, ebullient, sensual. "They [Jasha and Strauss] were both convinced that really engaged reading of ancients was absolutely necessary beginning to understanding modernity and our own lives and that these texts were much more subtle than the classicists knew." (Eva, "HG")

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