Jacob Klein (March 3, 1899 – July 16, 1978) was a

Russian-American Russian Americans are Americans of full or partial Russian ancestry. The term can apply to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to those that settled in the 19th-century Russian possessions in what is now Alaska. Russia ...

philosopher and interpreter of

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

, who worked extensively on the nature and historical origin of modern symbolic mathematics.

Biography

Klein was born in Libava,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. He studied at

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

and

Marburg Marburg (; ) is a college town, university town in the States of Germany, German federal state () of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf Districts of Germany, district (). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has ...

, where he received his Ph.D. in 1922. A student of

Nicolai Hartmann Paul Nicolai Hartmann (; 20 February 1882 – 9 October 1950) was a German philosopher. He is regarded as a key representative of critical realism and as one of the most important twentieth-century metaphysicians. Biography Hartmann was born a ...

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...

, and

Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...

, he later taught at St. John's College in

Annapolis, Maryland Annapolis ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of Maryland. It is the county seat of Anne Arundel County and its only incorporated city. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east ...

from 1938 until his death. He served as dean from 1949 to 1958. Klein was affectionately known as Jasha (pronounced "Yasha"). He was one of the world's preeminent interpreters of Plato and the Platonic tradition. As one of many Jewish scholars who were no longer safe in Europe, he fled the Nazis. He was a friend of fellow émigré and German-American philosopher

Leo Strauss Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students an ...

. Of Klein's first book ''Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra'', Strauss said:

The work is much more than a historical study. But even if we take it as a purely historical work, there is not, in my opinion, a contemporary work in the history of philosophy or science or in "the history of ideas" generally speaking which in intrinsic worth comes within hailing distance of it.

Russian born French philosopher

Alexandre Kojève Alexandre Kojève (born Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and international civil service, civil servant whose philosophical seminars had some influence on 20th-century Frenc ...

counted Klein as one of the two people (along with Strauss) from whom he could learn anything. The central thesis of his work ''Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra'' is that the modern concept of mathematics is based on the symbolic interpretation of the Greek concept of number ('' arithmos''). Klein died in 1978 in

Works

*''A Commentary on Plato's Meno'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1965) *''Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra'' (MIT Press, 1968), translated from German by Eva Brann, originally published in 1934–36. *''Plato's Trilogy: Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman'' (University of Chicago Press, 1977) *''Jacob Klein: Lectures and Essays'' ed. by Robert Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (St. John's College Press, 1985)

Notes

References

* 1899 births 1978 deaths People from Liepāja People from Grobiņa county Latvian Jews Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany Immigrants to the United States American people of Latvian-Jewish descent 20th-century American philosophers Jewish philosophers American historians of mathematics German male writers 20th-century German philosophers Philosophers of mathematics Commentators on Plato St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) faculty {{germany-philosopher-stub