Last night, the author of the incredibly wise book, The Hungry Soul, gave the annual Jefferson Lecture (John Updike gave it last year). Leon Kass is someone about whom more people should know.
Last night, the author of the incredibly wise book, The Hungry Soul, gave the annual Jefferson Lecture (John Updike gave it last year). Leon Kass is someone about whom more people should know.
Old Life 
People should know about Leon Kass so they can avoid him! I found his lecture very difficult to sit through. He used a lot of words to say very little. I saw a huge ego on stage saying, “I’m great. Study what I’ve studied and you can be great, too!” If his message was simply to say that studying the humanities is the best way to understand what it means to be human, there are 10,000 clearer ways to say it. Even so, that message is not worth the prestige or $10,000 honorarium that comes with the Jefferson Lecture.
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Wow, I wonder what Leroy Four is smoking. The Kass lecture — I was in the room — was electrifying, and his entire body of work is inspiring. I’m grateful to have learned a great deal from his books over the years.
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What is not electrifying is that anyone would think what they have to say deserves $10,000. On that score Kass is a walking ego that needs to be lanced. The entire honorarium culture is a scandal, regardless of what the speakers are doing with the obscene sums they are getting paid. Kass and the entire crowd in attendance needs to go to some manual labor. Ten grand for a speech–and I realize that is a small sum on the current scale–sheesh.
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JM, why would you leap to the conclusion that Kass is the egotist who demands 10k? Not very charitable, but I guess that goes with objecting to high honoraria. Did it occur to you that 10k is the sum that goes with the Jefferson Lecture?
Your tax dollars at work (assuming you’re a Yank).
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DGH is right, and JM is clueless.
The notion that Leon Kass is “is a walking ego that needs to be lanced” is so oafish and ignorant that it practically defies description. Kass is that astonishingly rare combination — a fiercely brilliant man who is also profoundly humble.
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Here’s a little man love for you.
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