The Jefferson Lecture

This is always my favorite lecture of the year: everyone is dressed up (in pretty clothes, not just business clothes), it is held in a lovely lecture hall, the reception is in a fancy room, and the history of the lecture is remarkable (people like Lionel Trilling, Robert Penn Warren, Jaroslav Pelikan, Walker Percy, and Cleanth Brooks have given the Jefferson lecture).

Leon Kass was outstanding--he gave his intellectual biography, recounting the philosophy of his parents, the books that led him toward humanism, and the way in which he approached the questions of what it means to be human, what the good is for humans, and what the good is for culture. My only quibble with the lecture is the separation of these last two questions (I think that, for instance, Aristotle, on whom he was drawing quite a bit, wouldn't have separated these in quite this way--at one point Kass identified culture as the clothes that people wear). He spoke admirably about his own search in ways that had implications for everyone who thinks about these questions. He also emphasized the unity of pursuit of the good, the true and the beautiful.

The way that he described the soul, as stemming from, but not reducible to bodily process, was striking, giving his scientific training, as was his description of his move out of the sciences and into the humanities.

When he spoke about his wife it was touching--he described her as, among other things, his soul mate. He also spoke very highly of friendship as the context in which we explore these questions.