Saturday, August 8, 2026
Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss Giving of Accounts
Klein:
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 it was written, obtained my Ph.D. degree, and then after a short while, returned to studies.
Now, while Mr. Strauss and I were studying we had many, I should say, endless conversations about many 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.
... if there is philosophizing, it is a completely immoderate undertaking, that cannot find, ultimately, its goal, although one has to persist in it.
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/851c685d75958aa5f7dec341738382f9.pdf
