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  4. Neal Klausner Interview

Neal Klausner Interview

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  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: My name is Neal W. Klausner, born in Neenah -­ N-E-E-N-A-H -- Wisconsin; a small but very wealthy town because it was the location of major paper mills.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: For example: Kimberly Clark the manufactures of Kleenex is there. And I worked in the paper mills for two years after graduation from high school.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: When was that?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: 1925 till 1927. But I knew I didn't want to spend my life making paper and its various products, and I knew I wanted to be in College. And so in 1927 I was enrolled at Lawrence College, now it is called Lawrence University.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Where was it?Neal: In Applenton Wisconsin, just about ten miles from my home town and I finished there in 1931...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: and thought I was interested in problems of theology and religion and I enrolled in a three year course at Colgate Rochester Divinity School for three years.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I soon found out there wasn 't where I wanted to go so I went to Yale, and took my Doctorate in Philosophy, which was exactly what I wanted to do.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Now this was during the Depression, 1934, and there were very few jobs available. Under one spring day while I was studying very hard for my oral examinations for the Doctorate,
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: a knock on the door of my room and the Dean entered and said that they had a job notice in Southern California at the University of Redlands of Southern California where they needed a professor of Philosophy and Psychology,
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: and he wanted to know if I was interested and they would back me on that job. Well (laughs) of course I was interested.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So I wrote to them and they wrote back; to cut it all short I got the job. Then I took my written preliminary examinations for the P.H.D. degree, passed them...
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: got married ten days later a then went to the University of Chicago for ten -- no twelve -- weeks. I thought I better brush up on some psychology (Laughs).Emiliano: Laughs ...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And then after that my wife and I drove out to California in a model A Ford and I stayed at the University of Redlands for eight years.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: It was a beautiful and wonderful place to live and for a beginning teacher a wonderful place to begin teaching. I would look out of the window of my offices on the third floor...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: and see the beautiful deserts and the valleys and the snow covered mountains in the distance and wonder just how long this would last.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Well, it lasted eight years, and then I got notice for a position at Grinnell, and I knew something of Grinnell, because I was born in Wisconsin I knew something about Iowa.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And so I accepted, and that was in 1944, just before the end of the War. And taught until 1975 when I retired. So I have been retired for eighteen years, it doesn 't seem possible but ... (laughs) .
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Did you like teaching at Grinnell?Neal: Oh, very much. I found the faculty bright and excellent. The students eager, although remember this was the time of the War, and I think there were three hundred girls and twenty one boys. If those terms are acceptable these days.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Laughs.Neal: Because most of them were away. The young men who were on campus those days were either injured or four F's, or something of that sort.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But it was really an exciting time to teach, because there was such a close friendship, we shared so many not only intellectual matters, but feelings and sentiments with students.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: There was always some time a report of a loss of life or an injury and we were always worried with what was going to happen in the future.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So it was not a happy time politically but we were isolated here, and we made our own happiness here; with the students and with the faculty. That's about the story of my life up to the time I graduated, I mean I retired.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: How was the campus once the war was over, when it started to have ...Neal: In many respects the campus was a shambles. There was so much repair that had to be made, physically I am talking about now.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And the town itself was more than shabby. There were so many houses that needed to be painted, that needed to be repaired.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But gradually as time went on all those problems were met -- some in satisfactory ways, some not. But the campus physically now in far different from what it was in 1944.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So many new buildings, and the grounds of the campus are much better kept now than they were then. So some very major changes have been made;
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: and of course many of them were made possible from considerable gifts to the College that made it financially stable, at least, and took a great deal of worry out some of the administration I think.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Although colleges always need money, but I think also I would say ... well the faculty has expanded a good deal, and of course the student body too.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: How many students were there then?Neal: Well, as I said about, I think I recall it somewhere in the ball park anyway, about 300 women students and 300 young men students.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Then there came I time, I think that was 1945 or '46, when the men came back from the army and we had a considerable rise in the population of the students. And that was an exciting time to teach.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Was that feeling of closeness and practically intimate relationship between faculty and students that you mentioned before the war was over still going on after they came back?Neal: Yes it was, specially when the soldiers came.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Soldiers were not interested in the nonsense of collegiate life. They were there to learn, they were serious students, and it was fun to teach serious students. I think we got rid of a lot of the freshmen hazing and that sort of silliness.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Was it going on the too? Neal|Yes it was, but it didn 't last.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I think that the residence of the soldiers contributed a good deal to bringing the campus to its' senses, with respect to relations among students and faculty. It was really a fine time to teach because all the students were eager and worked hard.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: What were you teaching then, I mean what philosophers?Neal: Well, at that time ...
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Well, I imagined you would teach something specific because of the War.Neal: Yes. No, I don't think, as I recall it, the problems of the war except incidentally and on occasion entered into my teaching.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: You see, I was the sole professor of philosophy and religion at the time, and I had an enormous load to carry. I was interested in teaching philosophy, not social problems or economic problems, although there were plenty of those (laughs) .
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I taught all the philosophy courses: ancient philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, modern philosophy up to Descartes, contemporary philosophy, and it was a considerable load.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I remember one year I had 77 students in Logic, now that was a real burden. I taught it in the Auditorium in the ARH.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Third floor? Neal|Well, no, this auditorium was on ah ... Well I can't remember because they 've done something to ARH to change the inside architecture. It was the theater part of ARH.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: It's the third floor now.Neal: It's the third floor now, right. I think they changed it a good deal, for the better I should say.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But it was fun teaching them, but it was not fun correcting their papers ... (laughs). It took an awful lot of my time. So I tried the students see how important philosophy could be in their intellectual as well as in their social lives.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: That was my aim, how well I succeeded I don't know. But it was fun teaching in those days. The poorest to teach of course, the saddest time, was in the late 1968's, the 1960's, when there was so much revolt all over on college campuses.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I remember walking across campus and students ... meeting students on the sidewalk, and they would lower their heads and not even say hello to you sometimes.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Somehow they transferred their difficulties their social and political issues onto all of them who were over thirty, which included most of the faculty.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Those were hard time, hard times to make the students see the importance of Aristotle, or the Pre-Socratics. But we got through it, and it is much better now, I think.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Why do you think there was this hostility perhaps ... ? Neal|I think hostility is not too strong a word.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Not too strong a word?Neal: No. In many instances. The opposition to the Vietnam War was tangible among the students.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And there were marches in Washington D.C., and the students would leave Grinnell on busses and go there to protest.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Did the academic level ...?Neal: Did it lower itself?Emiliano: Yes.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: It's very difficult to say. I don't want to generalize. I know that -- I hoped that mine didn't, that I could demand as much of the students as I had always demanded.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't know whether that 's the case for everybody in the faculty, but my guess would be that they wouldn 't lower their standards either.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But it was difficult. I could generalize and say something about the student body, but I don't think it would be helpful. Our problems were often with individual people...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: who would come in and wanted to be counseled, or simply wanted to talk their problems over. That was a good time to meet students.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Some of them, on the other hand, were so hostile to any kind of approach that suggested that the Vietnam War, that there was something good about the war.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I thought it was a moral disaster myself and I was not afraid to say so in class; contrary to Reagan 's statement that it was a noble effort.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: For me, and for people of my generation, they look back on the sixties and on campus now there is, I don't know when was the last time you went to campus yourself, a lot a people who try to go back to the sixties;
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: to wear tied-died T-shirts, to be hippies, and they look back upon that time as a sort of age of awakening of the U.S., and for what you have been telling me, and this is the first time I've heard the sort of different side to this aspect,
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: it doesn 't seem to have been really an age of awakening but more an age of closing and an unwillingnes s to accept other things or opposing views on the Vietnam War, even though it was a moral disaster, to listen to other sides of the issue. Would you say that's correct?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Well, I've been away from the campus for eighteen years, so I have not feeling at all now about what is happening in the student body at all.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't know what is going on except as I get it through some other faculty member or something of that sort. But with all the difficulties we have now; Bosnia ... what else do we have now?
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Somalia.Neal: Somalia, South Africa; with all these hot spots in the world it's... I can see why the students would be, if they are, restless.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Intellectually puzzled, and emotionally restless. At that time that I speak of, when I was teaching in the late sixties, there was a focus, and the focus was against the Vietnam War...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: that was where everybody found their satisfaction in protest; and it did, it seems to me, unite the students, but I don't think it united the students and the faculty.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: There were a great many faculty people, and I think I would include myself, who sympathized very much with the students. But we were also shocked by some of the techniques of protest that happened.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: What were they?Neal: Well, just a general incapacity to exhibit friendly relationships with those who taught them, and there were silly things.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: For example the occupation of a building by students who thought that they were accomplishing something. We have almost a musical comedy story about this.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Do you know the building almost directly across from ARH, on the corner of eighth and Broad? That building was the ROTC building, and the students protested against ROTC on the campus, so they occupied that building!
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And they were sitting on the porch and wandering around, and the police chief of Grinnell came and parked outside, saw that there was no violence, went inside, sat on the railing...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: talked to the students and asked them if they were hungry, and of course they said yes (laughs), they were always hungry. So he said "Alright" and he got into his car, went downtown and bought pizza.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: He brought it back and served the students pizza, which is one of the great stories of that period; almost musical comedy. I don't think they accomplished much by it;
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: we had some faculty members who were convinced that the political policies of the Nation at that time were right, and who would sit around the flag-post protecting the flag from students who might want to raise it at half-mast...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: or put up an United Nations flag, or something of that sort. But then of course there was that critical time when the college was closed about -- my memory now is a little weak on this--
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: but it was closed about a week before commencement. It looked like there was going to be some severe damage, the threat seemed to come from some areas of the student body.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So the President, and I guess with the approval of some other administrators and perhaps the Board of Trustees simply declared college closed and sent the students home.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: There were no final examinations, you gave the grade you thought you could give at that time to all the students. I was out of town, in St. Louis at a professional meeting and I only heard about it when I came back.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And to my surprise I had nothing more to do. I didn't have any final examinations to correct or to read, and we got through the period alright.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: The college opened the following year and we have not had any problems since that time. But it was an uncomfortable period for many, no question about it.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: How did -- you mentioned 1968 as a better year in all of this -- how did the death of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. affect the student body?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't think there was anything peculiar, or different, from the shock and dismayed reaction of students and faculty members here than any other place;
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Everybody felt the shadow and the shame of those terrible events. Martin Luther King had been here to speak.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Oh, really?Neal: Before the assassination, yes. And he spoke on Darby Gym for a packed house. Now, I'm not certain of my years, you'll have to check. There certainly was ... we all felt a shock and a shame that the Nation had lowered itself;
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: At least that somebody in the Nation had given us such a blackened event. The recovery was, I think, natural as time passed.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Now I think we expect some major historical devastating event almost every week; we are getting almost shock-proof, I am not so sure that that's a good thing, but there is just so much that you can take emotionally.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don 't think it made any difference -- again I am generalizing from my own experience -- I don't think it made any difference in the major effort of the faculty to see the students who came there to be taught were taught.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: They came there for learning, and we wanted to give them the best educational teaching we could give them. I think that was always done, in spite of what happened. But in the discussions that went on in the dormitories ... I don't know what went on there.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: How was the relationship between faculty and ... I hear from Ms. Hanna Griff that when she first came she made friends with several professors very fast, and they would go out together ...?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't think that there was any -- in my experience, again I have to speak from my perspective -- I never noticed any major traces of hostility and significant differences that would break up cordial relations among faculty.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: There may have been, but I didn't run into them. For the most part, the faculty at Grinnell -- and again from my perspective --
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: are glad to meet each other and to talk with each other, and that is a lot of that going on; that 's why I've been (one of the reasons) so happy to be at Grinnell.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't think anybody on the faculty, seeing another faculty member on the street, would cross the street in order to miss him or her, I don't think (laughs).
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't believe that happened many times. I have frankly found the faculty here enormously interesting and cordial and warm.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: A single faculty member who had serious difficulties physically or medically could always find help one way or another.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: One think I want to ask you. There is a lot of bad feelings sometimes among the students and the people of the town, and was that because of all the protest during the sixties?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Yes, I think that was the case. I think for the most part, if you were to write the history of the faculty relationship with the townspeople that you would find it a pleasant and happy relationship.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But there were intervals, such as the Vietnam war, when the relationship was very sensitive. I am trying to think of problems of race ...
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: [tape change]
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: But I don't believe there have been many incidents, there have been some racial difficulties between townspeople and some of the blacks on the campus.Emiliano: I think both student and faculty?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't know. We haven't had, I think enough black faculty members for me to know just what their relationship with the townspeople had been.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: How is your relationship with the townspeople?Neal: With what?Emiliano: How has-Neal: Oh, excellent, excellent. I'm crazy enough I guess to enjoy golf and tennis.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And so I meet a lot of townspeople on the tennis courts or on the golf course. I have enjoyed every one of them. Never any problems at all. In fact, if I had some difficulty, needed some help, they were ready to help.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So I've had no unhappy experiences, no unpleasant developments at all with townspeople. And I think that's true of most of the faculty.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I'm not certain, I cannot speak for those few, I think it's few, black students on the campus. I don't know what their story is. It would probably be different from mine.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: But I would only be guessing because I have no experience. The town makes, annually, a very decent contribution, financially to the college.Emiliano: Oh really?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Every year we have a town-gown drive for funds. And it is always astonished me, I think it has astonished the administration at times, and even the townspeople at times, at the very considerable size of the contributions.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: From the town. The town of course knows how economically dependent they are on the college and they do repay that by contributing to the college.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I think in fact, if there isn't a drive on right now, it's either over or almost over so we'll know the results in a few weeks.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Now, professor Ed Moore was telling me about this assignment, he told me about the fact that you're a wonderful golf player. [laughter] That you were very involved in the community, with things that were being done in the community. Now, he didn't specify. In what ways were you involved in the community?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't know how to answer that. I can't think that I have done anything in the community of any significance except to greet people with a hearty hello as I walked down the street.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I hadn't- oh I belonged to a club called the Fortnightly Club, which was composed of members of the community and the college and we would meet every 2 weeks to read papers.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: That I belonged to for many, many years.Emiliano: What papers?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Well, whatever you interest is. There were people from history, from litterature, from...well almost all of the departments at the college. And then the townspeople who belonged would acquire an interest in some field.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Either something of interest to the city or the county. For example, this building that you're right now was first explored by a paper written by the founder. This is called Mayflower home.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But Royal Montgomery was the founder, really, wrote the first paper about the possibility of this residence area.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And we heard that for the first time, many many years ago at the Fortnightly Club. That's as close as I can come. I don't believe I've done anything else that deserves notice except I do enjoy using the town library for my escape litterature [laughs]
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: What do you like- What other things do you, before we talked about [indistinguishable] what other things do you like to read? What other hobbies do you have?
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Oh well...Emiliano: Like cinema?Neal: Excuse me?Emiliano: Do you like cinema, music and...?Neal: Yes.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I'm not, I don't go to movies, very infrequently I go to movies. I don't know why, but it always seems to me by the time I got my reading done and my golf in and my tennis finished and the telivision news or some program on television that I'm interested in that I've had enough, I don't have any time for a movie.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: I could get them on tape now I understand, but I haven't started that. No, my major reading is in my field. And my escape litterature is espionage novels.Emiliano: Oh really?Neal: Yeah.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: I like-Emiliano: Which ones do like?Neal: I never remember the authors, but Tom Clancy, is he one?
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: The Hunt for the Red October, do you remember that?Emiliano: Oh I, they were made in a film.Neal: Yeah they were made into films. And I find that John Le Carre a little difficult to get through...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't mind those. I very seldom pay attemtion to the author I'm reading on. I can't even remember the name of the book. I just start it and if it's all right I finish it and if I don't I discard it.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Have you ever read Raymond Chandler or Dash O'Hamlin?Neal: Oh yes. But many years ago, my great love for reading is 19th century litterature. I read all of Dickens, all of Jane Austen...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Much of, let's see, George Elliot, a great deal of Trollop, Trollop I like very much. And so on. I bury myself in those works and really enjoy them. I don't think anybody writes novels that are as appealing or as engrossing as 19th century litterature.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: writers. And I like that. And then of course you have to keep up to some extent anyway with contemporary journals and so I either use the library or subsribe to the recent journals.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Do you use the Grinnell- Burling?Neal: Yes. Oh yes. oh yes. That's where I get my substance litterature [laughs] and most of the time I escape litterature from the Stewart library in Grinnell.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So I use both libraries, which is, and they're so near, that's one of the great things about living in Grinnell. Doesn't take you half an hour or more to get what you want from a library.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't know that there's anything else in the way of my reading that would be of interest to you.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Have you been reading Foucault?Neal: Oh Foucault? I don't understand him, if you do, please tell me what he's all about.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: These contemporary French philosophers have me in the state of continual obscurity. I don't grasp them at all. I have been- I spent a year in England to study with, primarily the analytic philosophers at Cambridge and that has influenced me a great deal.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don't think analytic philosophy is the end of philosophy at all. But it's certainly made a great difference to the way in which people, contemporary people approach philisophy.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And feel philosophy. That is the analysis of language and so on. And I can't read except with great puzzlement Foucault, Derede and [mumbled] yes, some of the others.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I've almost given up on them, hoping that there will be some secondary litterature that will extract me from the puzzles that continually perplex me.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I just can't say anything about them, except that I'm vastly ignorant in what they're trying to do. We seem, according to them, caught in a net of language and we're never going to get out of it.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And it puzzles me that they say that in language so [laughter] I don't know just where to go with them, maybe before I die somebody will be bright and accurate enough to say this is exactly what they're saying.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: This is what you can understand. But that hasn't happened yet. The terms, structuralism and post-structuralism and de-contructionalism I find dark and so inpenetrable...
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: That I usually give up on it.Emiliano: What area of philosophy are you fondest of?Neal: Well I began in my philosophical studies at a time when philosophers were mostly interested in epistomology.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: That's the theory of knowledge. And so I- it was the time of Ipensteing and Russell and others of that ilk and I wrote my own doctoral dissertation on an epistomologist.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But I was interested, my favourite philosopher, I suppose the philosopher that has influenced me most was William James, the american philosopher.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: William James and John Douey, probably the most influential in my own thinking. Whitehead at that time was an important figure in philosophy, today, except for certain areas he's almost never mentionned.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Which I think is a shame. But the theory of knowldge that epistomology has now wondered off or become absorbed by philosophy of science and perhaps philosophy of mind.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So that very few people talk about epistomology, how meanings look onto the world and so-on. I think that everyone is waiting in the sense, for more information about the brain.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: We know so little about the brain that epistomologists are a little skeptical about making claims cause we're not sure what's happening inside that skull, between the ears.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I still find myself in my readings coming back to the old habits of 40 something years ago, asking questions when I read philosophers, of asking epistomological questions, how is this known?
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: How is this truth established? What is the truth that you are trying to account for? And so on?Emiliano: Do you like Kant?Neal: Well, Kant of course, no one can be in philosophy without going through Kant.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: You have to go through Kant sometime or other and difficult as it is for not only undergraduates but for graduates and professional philosophers, there is a field of richness there and ideas that is always worth plowing.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Always. And while there are some areas of Kant that I cannot accept, I always find something new in him when I read him. But he's not somebody that you can shove aside I think.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Although that may disapoint for some students [laughs]
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Were people studying philosophy more than they are now? Because at the moment the amount of philosophy majors is not all that big.Neal: Yes. I don't know, see I've been away for 18 years.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: And I just don't know what is happening. I don't know except to say hello, goodbye, how are you? To the philosophy department faculty members.Emiliano: Especially since most of them are new, also.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Yes. [mumbling] Those that I have met and that I know I find very good. And I would, in fact, I would like to listen to their lectures too.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But, I don't have, in spite of being retired I just don't have the schedule that will permit it. I wish they would come to the facutly house sometime and read, or I mean or talk to us.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: My last connection, close connection, with the philosophy department died just about a year ago and that was a very sad event. But that was Jack Worley. You don't remember him?
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: I wasn't here before...Neal: Yes so everybody in the department now is new. One thing that really has improved is the geographical part. They all have beautiful new offices in Steiner Hall.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: I wish we'd had that.Emiliano: Where was your office?Neal: You go- you would enter the north door of Steiner Hall and turn immediatly to your right. And I had an office that was as large as this room, since then they have put in paritions and made it smaller.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But it was as large as this room, it was very comfortable. And I lived only 100 yards or so from my office, so that I could turn my back, if the fire alarm ever went off in the city, I could just turn my back and see, well it isn't my house that's burning anyway [laughter]
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But it was a comfortable office, but not particularly attractive. I had a big table in it where I had students sit around it for a seminar. I don't know what happened to that table, I'd like to know.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But it's a very nice- they've done a marvelous job in restructuring that building internally and it's outside too. Are you enjoying your philosophy classes?
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Yes, very much so.Neal: Good.Emiliano: I had my first philosophy class last semester with Miss [indistinguishable] [something about Klausner room?] and I thought it was rather funny that I was assigned to you for this assignment, that suddenly it clicked, Clausner, I've seen the name before.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: I went upstairs to check and it was. I thought it was funny. I thought perhaps, well, after sitting there for a whole semester. Of course that was intro to philosophy.Neal: Intro.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Oh yes. Did you use a textbook?Emiliano: We used several textbooks.Neal: Original material?Emiliano: Yes.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: We started, we read Antigone and then we read Plato, the apology and then moved on to St Thomas Aquinus and several selections like that and from there we went to Descartes, the Meditations then Hume, then Kant.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Then Marx and Rousseau.Neal: You got quite a bit in in that period of time.Emiliano: Uh-huh. I guess. How did you do it? Did you have a textbook?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Yes. For all the years I taught. I think I changed textbooks every year, so I don't remember what they were now, but I think if I were to go back to teach again I would do something like what is happening to you.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: I would go to original sources.Emiliano: Oh the textbooks were not original?Neal: No they were written by philosophers who set the philosophical poblems.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Again in certain pigeonholes. It was ethics, logic and metaphysics and so-on. And you taught those major subjects, relating them to the philosophers.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: We brought in the history of philosophy that way. Now of course, when I taught the history of philosophy, then I used original sources.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Bt it's very difficult. I think every philosopher feels that there is so much that he has left out, was forced to leave out because of schedules and time that somehow or other the course was less satisfactory than it could have been.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Yeah. We had to cut out [indistinguishable]Neal: Yes.Emiliano: We were supposed to read it but we had to cut it out. I kept the book and intend to read it at some point.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Are you planning to go on in philosophy?Emiliano: Yes.Neal: Taking it as a major?Emiliano: English and philosophy.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Oh yes, good.Emiliano: I'm taking another class and I'm going to take philosphy of art next semester.Neal: Oh.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: And that's- I checked into the reading list and it's a selection of readings from Plato, Aristotle and then moving onto Schoppenhauer, Nitzche and a few more, Kant. The writings they did on art.Neal: Yes.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: And that should be pretty fun. And perhaps if we have time to do some post-modern theories. The teacher is Jane Neller, she just started this year.Neal: Who? Oh I have met her as well,
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: How many are there in the philosophy department?Emiliano: [names]Neal: Isn't David- Magnus?Emiliano: Oh yes he is, but he took a year off and will be back next year.Neal: And the one in classics and philosophy.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Professor Cummins.Neal: Joe Cummins of course.Emiliano: And there's also, I don't know if I said this, Miss Jane Neller. So there's 6 and there are other people who teach courses that can be taken for philosophy credits as well.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Yeah.Emiliano: Which is Strauber's Political Theory. You know prof. Strauber?Neal: Yeah. Yeah.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: And Mr. Burchol,.Neal: Oh yes of course.Emiliano: He's teaching next semester existentialism and philosophy of religion.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Well he's my, almost regular golf partner.Emiliano: Oh really?Neal: Yes. He was on the phone just a moment ago.Emiliano: Oh realy?Neal: Yes. Yes.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: And he's a fine, fine young man. I say young, he's already thinking of retirment [laughs].Emiliano: Why did you retire?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Well, at that time I had to. I was 68 years old and you had to retire when you were 68. And it wasn't until some years after that that they raised the age to 70. Now I don't know whether that's gone too. Maybe you can just go on teaching as long as you can breather.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: But...Emiliano: I never knew that.Neal: Yes. Yes. I had to retire.
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: But you didn't want to?Neal: I didn't want to, in one sense. I loved the classroom. I like the give and take of the classroom. I liked getting prepared for what might occur in the classroom.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But I was very sick of reading exam papers and term papers and committee meetings and all of the rest. I'd paid my dues for 30 years doing that and I thought I didn't want to be doing that.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: So I was happy to retire. I didn't find it a shattering experience at all. I just went on doing the things I do except I didn't go to the classes. Went on reading and doing some travelling.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: When I could. And then later, a few years later my wife got very ill and I had to be her sole help for about 12 years and the last 4, she was here and had the help of infirmary over here.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: The nurses over there. But for a long time that was my major activity, taking care of her. And those were difficult years.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Did it feel nice, after retiring, I don't know, this is silly but I see myself teaching at some point, probably way out, because I have to go to graduate school to teach. I can't imagine that- I mean I feel something wonderful in the classroom.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: So great, fine relationship with a professors makes the classroom experience wonderful and, I don't know, as a professor also, you would miss that. Does being here, and in a way so very near the school, kind of...
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Helps the nostalgia or?Neal: Oh yes. It does.Emiliano: It makes it feel like well I'm not really gone from teaching.Neal: That's right of course.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: It helped a great deal. Not only because of the nearness of the college library and the faculty house where I can talk to former colleagues and new members of the faculty, but simply wandering around the campus.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Simply feeling this all together feeling of what the home is like when you return and that's why I really didn't have any, not the slightest kind of aprehension...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: About retirment. I knew it was coming, of course, you had to prepare for years before hand. But [tape change]
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Yes, I never had to prepare myself psychologically for retirement, it was to me like a long break, a long vacation; but a lot of my friends have retired and taken on teaching positions --
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Temporary teaching positions -- for a year at the time or something like that. I never did, I never wanted to. I thought I've done enough now and I want to keep as alive as I can by ...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I knew now I could not make an excuse for not reading a book because I had to prepare for a class, I could go and get that book and read it without feeling that I had taken time from some students' tuition (laughs)
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Or something of that sort. So retirement was never a problem for me, though I understand it is for some people. I am sorry for them, I like retirement.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Although I think that if somebody invited me, or if I had something to say, I might like to go back to a classroom for a week or two.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But then, during these last few years which have been pretty difficult for me, it was impossible. I think retirement is a great thing, if you have enough energy to do what you want to do.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: If you retire and have to spend your time in a wheel chair, or in bed, or something of that sort; then I think permanent retirement of another kind would be welcome.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: I want to ask you (no sound for thirty seconds or so) ... what do you think as a professional philosopher?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Well, philosophy has gone through a difficult time. Always of periods that sometime in the history of philosophy you will find philosophers who will say:
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: "This is the end of philosophy. There will be no more philosophy as a serious human endeavor. " Wittgenstein, throw away the ladder after him. Richard Rorty, a contemporary philosopher. Have you heard of him?
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: I don't like him.Neal: (Laughs) He says philosophy no longer exists as the first form of study or of interest to the intelligent being.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And there have been others, and I don't agree with them either. I've always felt, no matter how technical philosophy becomes, and it can get pretty technical, and the more technical it gets the more obscure it gets it seems to me.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But I've always felt, I guess ever since Socrates, that somehow or other the philosopher either had to come to terms himself privately or would speak publicly in writings or lectures...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: That the end of philosophy, one of the ends of philosophy I won't say the end -- was to find what the good life really is.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: As much as we scrap over the meaning of a particular term: how it is used, when it is correctly used, and so on. Somehow or other I have always thought that the real philosopher, the depth of philosophy, lies --
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: maybe to deep for us to discover -- but lies in what we can really do, what we really should do with this life span that we have aquired, accidentally or deliberately, and so it ... it's difficult for me to think of philosophy as logic.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I don 't deny how important logic is, it is difficult for me to think that the only interest in philosophy is language, even though the importance of language I recognize.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But if a philosopher has nothing at all to say about how life should be lived, how well we can use what ever gifts you have in making this a better world community, than it falls short, it seems to me.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I know that maybe it's difficult to defend this, and it may be thought to be shallow, I don't know. I don't want it to be shallow.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And I don 't think I can offer one, two, three, or four statements about how life should be lived. But somehow or other, that 's a problem that should be wrestled with, it seems to me, intellectually.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: It's an intellectually significant problem, it seems to me, often often denied by some philosophers. I don't find those philosophers particularly interesting, except for maybe some very minor issue of it.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Oh, yes, there is a clarity. You see, it's something like this: there are so many philosophers and philosophies who have set the goal of cleverness.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: The more clever you are the deeper you are, and I think that is sheer nonsense. The philosophers ...Emiliano: They seem to dwell on trivialities.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Yes. Yes, and often they get remarkable following. But sometime, it seems to me, you have to say ... There was one time in philosophy when clarity was the goal.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Descartes. Neal|That's right. That's right. And then there came a time when philosophers said that philosophy was something more than clarity, and what more it's a long long story (laughs).
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: A story to be found in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas and all the rest. And then sometime philosophy was ... The goal of philosophy was thought to be clarity, from ... did I say clarity before. I don 't know ...
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Clarity ...Neal: Clarity and cleverness. These are honorable efforts, I think, in philosophy, and it is important to acquire those skills.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: But somehow or other I feel that there has to be something deeper, something ... A more honorable goal (laughs) in some sense is the aim of philosophy.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: A last question: I read philosophy and I completely agree with you that there is no point to studying philosophy unless you make of that philosophy something that touches you not only on an intellectual level, but also in the way one lives one's life.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: It is like if you read a book, a novel, or a philosophy book, for me, if you don't ... If you are the same person you were before you read it,then either you didn 't understand it or the book was not very good.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: And I guess that 's what you were saying: it has to touch you deeper. How do you think that philosophy has touched people?
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: I find it that we are losing some moral foundations, and the idea that everything is allowed, that we all have our own beliefs and don't mind others'.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: That creates a sort of ... tension is not the right word, but something to that effect. That we lose an idea of how exactly we are supposed to act.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Do you think people have moved away from the sort of moral foundations that Descartes, Kant, and practically all philosophers of that time of modern philosophy and Enlightenment wanted to establish...
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: Up until now when we started with deconstruction, "Let's deconstruct, lets structuralize," and all that sort of thing, do you think that people have lost that sort of touch?
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Yes, I do. But I think there are some signs, though I have not read enough in contemporary philosophers, among some of them, I have seen some signs ...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I am thinking, for example, of a philosopher you may not have heard of: Hillary Putnam. I don't know whether he is at Princeton or not, but he gave the Gifford lectures recently at Edinburgh.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: His skills in technical philosophy are not qualified at all, he is excellent. But reading his works every now and then, he will state that somehow or other philosophy's larger task is to know what to do with this life that we got...
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: how best to employ, not only our skill, but how to use our behavior to make a difference that is affirmative, that is positive, that is healthy, and interesting.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: You know, Whitehead once made a statement that I have never forgotten, he said that it is much more important for a philosophy to be interesting than for it to be true.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And I agree with that completely. If you remember that by interesting he did not mean titillation, he didn't mean a kind of psychic excitement.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: He meant by that word the fertility of your point of view. The cat is on the mat, is it true? It's true, but it's so uninteresting (laughs).Emiliano: (Laughs)
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Where do you go from there? What else can be said? And this was, I think, an important insight of Whitehead.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: A philosophy ought to be so rich, that you do not come to the final step, there is always something more to say, another problem.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Philosophy is often a matter of answering puzzles -- not like a jigsaw where you got the answer before if you just put them right -- but one that goes on and on;
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: you have this problem solved all it does is raise another problem. Now we'll go after that one. That was true of most of the philosophers that I enjoy reading; of James for example, and of John Dewey, and of Charles Perse.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Did you ever hear of Charles Perse? Probably America's greatest philosopher. Arguably, at least, America 's greatest philosopher.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: And that's the way I think of philosophy; if it's interesting is not just because it satisfies my curiosity, but that it leads me into an area that I had not realized was explorable before.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I think that there are some contemporary philosophers now who are beginning to see that. I hope so, at least. I would hate to see the great tradition of philosophy dissipated and discarded because it was no longer interesting.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: I really think that there are some philosophers would just as soon see philosophy taken out of the curriculum, which I think is absurd. Well, I guess that's about it, Emili ...
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: Emiliano.Neal: Emiliano. E-M-I-L-I-A-N-O (Mr. Klausner spells ). Is that right? Emiliano|That's right.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: And the last name?Emiliano: Battista.Neal: Of course I should remember Batista.Emiliano: Mine is spelled with two "t"s. I was saved.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Oh, it is. Well, I hope you have great success in your studies in philosophy, Emiliano. You plan to stay here for the four years?Emiliano: Yes.
  • Neal W. Klausner & Emiliano Battista
    Neal: Come to see me every now and then, or see me on the campus and say hello to me; tell me how things are going.Emiliano: Okay. I promise to do that. Thank you very much.
  • Neal W. Klausner
    Neal: Well, I am working through a period that's difficult for me, so maybe if we had met at another time I could have been better, but ...
  • Emiliano Battista & Neal W. Klausner
    Emiliano: It was wonderful.Neal: You can imagine what difficulties, after the death of a companion of 57 years.
  • Emiliano Battista
    Emiliano: [recorder switched back on but no sound for the rest of the recording]
Neal W. Klausner was born in Neenah, Wisconsin, received his undergraduate degree from Lawrence College and his PhD. in philosophy from Yale University. He taught at the University of the Redlands for eight years before coming to Grinnell College in 1945 to teach philosophy and religion. He retired in 1975 and passed away in 2010 at the age of 102. Interview conducted as part of American Beliefs and Cultural Values, an American Studies class taught by Hanna Griff at Grinnell College in 1993.
Title Neal Klausner Interview
Alternative TitleAmerican Beliefs and Cultural Values
interviewee Klausner, Neal W., 1907-2010
interviewer Battista, Emiliano, 1973- (Class of 1996)
transcriber Battista, Emiliano, 1973- (Class of 1996)
teacher Griff, Hanna (Class of 1981)
Index Date 1993
Date (Other) May 19, 1993
Publisher Poweshiek History Preservation Project
Provenance Drake Community Library (Grinnell, Iowa) Archives
Topic World War (1939-1945)
Topic Community and college
Topic College teachers
Topic College students -- Political activity
Topic Teacher-student relationships
Topic Philosophy
Topic Philosophers
Geographic Grinnell (Iowa)
Keyword Grinnell
Keyword Education
Keyword 1940s
Keyword 1950s
Keyword 1960s
Keyword 1970s
Related Item Poweshiek History Preservation Project
Related Item Drake Community Library (Grinnell, Iowa) Archives
Related Item Digital Grinnell
Genre interview
Extent 1 hour, 33 minutes, 29 seconds
Media Type video/mpeg
Digital Origin digitized other analog
Language English
Identifier (local) grinnell:26720
Identifier (hdl) http://hdl.handle.net/11084/26720
Access Condition Copyright to this work is held by the author(s), in accordance with United States copyright law (USC 17). Readers of this work have certain rights as defined by the law, including but not limited to fair use (17 USC 107 et seq.).
Type of Resource sound recording-nonmusical
In collections