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abstract This article is a coda to Paul Oskar Once Again: Kristeller’s criticism of the scholarly behavior of Raymond Klibansky Paul Oskar (d. 2005) found in my 2015 article “Kristelleriana: Two Biographical Notes.” In a letter of 24 February Kristeller 1995 to the independent scholar W. Cameron McEwan, Kristeller and Raymond (d. 1999) accused Klibansky of refusing to acknowledge Kristeller’s discoveries concerning the Renaissance Klibansky philosopher Nicholas of Cusa and explained how he had been warned against Klibansky by the distinguished John Monfasani contemporary scholars Ernst Cassirer, University at Albany, Erwin Panoksky, David Ross, and State University of New York, Richard Walser. Department of History, 1400 Washington Ave, Albany, NY, United States of America [email protected] https://doi.org/10.5507/aither.2020.015
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Some years ago I published slightly even though they share the same a memorandum that Paul Oskar Kris- basic theme, Klibansky’s bad behavior teller (1905–1999) left behind in his pa- as a scholar. The letter to McEwen is dis- pers at Columbia University detailing the tinguished by Kristeller’s much greater moral failings as a scholar of Raymond concern to record the agreement of other Klibansky (1905–2005), a tabula pecca- scholars concerning Klibansky’s bad torum, as I described it in the abstract character. In a letter 18 February 1995, of the article.1 Recently, however, I have McEwan had posed a series of questions come across a passage in the correspond- to Kristeller concerning his relationship ence between W. Cameron McEwen and with Martin Heidegger, Klibansky, and Kristeller that adds significant details other figures in the years before World and color to Kristeller’s complaints about War II. Kristeller responded on 24 Febru- Klibansky.2 The two texts overlap only ary in part as follows (I have introduced a sequential number between square 1 Monfasani 2015. brackets before each item to be discused 2 This correspondence can be found in Co- so as to facilitate later reference): lumbia University’s Rare Book & Manu- script Library, Paul Oskar Kristeller Pa- pers, Correspondence, Box 35, Folder 6. and is also from McEwen. A partner in an The earliest preserved letter in the collec- online publishing firm, McEwen published tion is one of 19 April 1994 from McEwen; on modern philosophy as an independent the last was written on 19 September 1996 scholar.
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My hostile relations with Kliban- Cassirer on the 100th anniversary of sky go back to 1937. [1] In that year his birth, it didn’t3 contain a contri- I found in the Biblioteca Civica in Ber- bution by me, although I should have gamo ms. Gamma IV, 19 (Iter I, pg. normally been among those included. 8b). This ms., written on paper in the This means that Klibansky either did XVth cent. of 10 fols., contains Pro- not invite me to contribute a paper or clus, Platonis Theologica translated [had decided] not to include it in case by Petrus Balbus Pisanus, ep. Tropi- I had sent him one. ensis, dated March 22, 1462. In his preface to Ferdinand I, King of Naples Kristeller’s recollection was not al- and Sicily (fols. 1-4v), inc. Nicolaus de ways accurate in recalling various mo- Cusa Sancti Petri ad Vincula Presbiter ments of his life,4 but in my earlier article cardinalis, prudentissime atque in- on his criticism of Klibansky I found no victissime regum, in which he states misstatements. Indeed, more than half that he undertook this translation on of his criticisms could actually be doc- the request of Nicolaus Cusanus, but umented as being true, while the oth- only completed it after his death in ers could not be verified nor falsified for 1464. I communicated this important one reason or another, such as reports of fact by word of mouth to Klibansky, personal conversation (e. g., “Klibansky and soon afterwards he repeated it offered to pay [Ernst Moritz] Morasse in print without giving me any credit. for finding errors in my Supplementum [2] When I later found an important Ficinianum. Manasse refused and told me Cusanus Ms. in Brussels I published about it”).5 In the new tabula peccatorum its description, including a preface of the respective text in my contribution 3 Kristeller wrote “it didn’t” in the margin after deleting “does” in the text proper. to the anniversary conference on Cu- 4 To cite three instances: in his oral his- sanus in Bressanone in 1954. This Ms. tory memoir Reminiscences (Columbia had remained unknown before this to University, Oral History Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript Library) Kristeller mis- Klibansky. I remember that both [3] takenly asserted that he came to America Cassirer and [4] Panofsky orally told on the liner Saturnia, when in fact he me that they had reservations about sailed on the Vulcania, the Saturnia’s sis- ter ship; see Monfasani 2020, p. 373, n. 2. him, and that [5] Sir David Ross from In several accounts of his life, he spoke Oxford when he visited Columbia ca. of playing trio (he was an exceptionally capable pianist) in Marburg in 1926 with 1939 told me that I should be very cau- Karl Löwith and Hans Gadamer, when in tious in my dealings with Klibansky. fact Gadamer played no instrument and I also remember that [6] Richard Wal- was not part of the group; see Monfasani 2018, p. 10, n. 8. Finally, as W. Cameron ser who contributed an important edi- McEwen pointed out in his correspon- tion to the series Plato Arabus edited dence, Kristeller was wrong to say in an by Klibansky had considerable trouble interview that Martin Heidegger came to Italy in 1938 when the date in fact was with him. [7] Finally, when Klibansky 1936; see Monfasani 2018, p. 22, n. 49. edited in 1964 a volume in honor of 5 Monfasani 2015, p. 407.
INTERNATIONAL ISSUE NO. 8/2020 John Monfasani 273 Once Again: Paul Oskar Kristeller and Raymond Klibansky published in this article, Kristeller was Ferrante of Naples and explained how certainly confused about one item as the great Platonist philosopher, Cardi- we shall see, but in the case of the other nal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) had charges in the list he was either demon- commissioned Balbi to make the trans- strably correct or plausibly so. We can lation.7 Yet, when Klibansky announced start with the first [1], concerning Kliban- the discovery in the Proceedings of the sky’s behavior when faced with Kristell- British Academy in 1949,8 he said not er’s discovery of a translation of Proclus. a word about the discoverer or how he Raymond Klibansky first made his himself had learned of the discovery. reputation in 1929 with the announce- Even such a learned specialist in Pro- ment that he had discovered a medieval clan studies as Father H.-D. Saffrey in Latin translation of Proclus’commen- his 1979 article on Balbi’s translation tary on Plato’s Parmenides that preserves could, without any knowledge of the true a segment of text no longer extent in the state of the facts, cite Klibansky for first Greek. He would then go on to publish announcing the discovery and Kristeller in 1939 a landmark guide to the history merely for the description of the man- of medieval Platonism, The Continuity of uscript fourteen years later in the first the Platonic Tradition during the Middle volume of his Iter Italicum.9 Ages, which served as a programmatic teller records the years he visited. The first is statement for the grand editorial pro- precisely 1937. In the letter to McEwen, Kris- ject Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi, for teller was guilty of another error. Having which he served as the general editor. obviously given a quick glance at the Iter, where Balbi’s preface is correctly described And finally, in 1953, in conjunction with as running to f. 10, he inadvertently de- Lotte Labowsky, he published the lost scribed the manuscript to McEwen as having part of Proclus’ Parmenides commentary 10 folios when in fact it contains 179 folios. 7 Kristeller referred in a less precise man- preserved in the medieval Latin trans- ner to Klibansky’s failure to acknowledge lation of William of Moerbeke. Having his discovery of the Bergamo manuscript thus from the earliest stages of his career in two of the list of twenty-six charges he laid against Klibansky in the memoran- been intimately connected with Proclus dum published by me in Monfasani 2015, and the scholarship of the medieval Pla- p. 406, item 2: “My work in Italy. I found a few Cusanus mss. and sent them to tonic tradition, Klibansky knew well the [Ernst] Hoffmann. Used by [Paul] Wilpert great significance of Kristeller’s discov- and Gerda von Bredow”; and Monfasani ery in Bergamo in 1937 of a manuscript 2015, p. 407, item 4: “I may have given Klibansky the Bergamo manuscript of of a known but previously anonymous Proclus tr. Petrus Balbus of which he translation of Proclus’ Platonic Theology made so much fuss. His offer to give his extensive material on [Ludwig] Bertalot that bore a dedication of the translator, (my talk with [Gertrud] “Bing”.” 6 Pietro Balbi. The dedication was to King 8 In a report on Plato Latinus, Klibansky 1949, p. 11, he announced the discovery of 6 See Kristeller’s description of manuscript the manuscript in Bergamo. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, Gamma IV 19 9 Saffrey 1979, p. 429, reprinted in Saffrey (now cod. MA 490) in Kristeller 1963, 8a. At 2002. On the manuscript and translation, the start of the section on this library, Kris- see also Pugliese Carratelli 2011.
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Item [2] also involves a manuscript on in life he gave two interviews spe- discovery by Kristeller, in this case, Brus- cifically about his relations with Ernst sels, Bibliothèque Royale, ms. 10817, con- Cassirer in addition to discussing the taining a Latin translation of the treatise same in the course of the retrospective De Fato of the Byzantine Platonist George of his life published in 1998, seven years Gemistus Pletho made by the Greek émi- before his death.13 Cassirer’s wife, Toni, gré John Sophianos and dedicated to Car- also talks of Klibansky in a memoir on dinal Nicholas of Cusa.10 That Klibansky her life with her famous husband.14 In did not know this manuscript before contrast, Kristeller could not boast of Kristeller discovered it would seem not to a close relationship with Cassirer be- be an especially damning criticism save fore World War II, though the two met for the fact that Klibansky held himself in the early 1930s after Kristeller had up as an expert on Nicholas Cusanus as published his doctoral dissertation on well as a master of the medieval and Re- Plotinus and though Cassirer demonstra- naissance Platonic tradition. bly thought well of him.15 When he came Item [3] is a very interesting case. Al- most immediately after his entrance into books reprint of New York, 1963, Kli- bansky had a prefatory note in which he the circle of scholars affiliated with the repudiated at least in part what he as- Warburg Library in Hamburg in 1926, serted in the article (“Among those who survive [since the original publication Klibansky sought to associate himself of the volume] some may have modified publicly with the prominent Neo-Kan- their views during the long interval—this tian philosopher Ernst Cassirer. Al- is so in the case of the joint-editor who was also a contributor”). On the back- ready in 1927, with the publication of ground to the volume see Whitaker 2018, Cassirer’s Individuum und Kosmos, we pp. 86–90 (“The Cassirer Festschrift”). find Klibansky supplying an edition of 13 Klibansky, & Leroux 1998. Carolus Bovillus’ De Sapiente as an ap- 14 Cassirer 1981. 15 In his Reminiscences, Kristeller 1983, pendix to the volume.11 He and Cassirer pp. 157–58: “I might say it was through were together in England in the first half this Bruno Cassirer family that I also of the 1930s. In 1936 Klibansky co-ed- had a kind of social contact with Ernst Cassirer, who was a professor in Hamburg, ited a volume of essays by distinguished and when he came to Berlin stayed with contemporary thinkers and scholars in his cousin Bruno. He was a close friend honor of Cassirer, at the end of which of my teacher Hoffmann, and when my dissertation was published, Hoffmarin 12 he included an essay by himself. Later urged me to send a complimentary copy to Cassirer, which I did, and Cassirer re- acted in a very friendly way, and asked me 10 See Kristeller 1970; reprinted in Kristeller to visit him when I was in Berlin. We had 1993, pp. 21–48. In the letter to McEwen, a very pleasant conversation, and I have because of a typo or inadvertence, Kri- been in touch with him ever since. He steller gives the date of the conference helped me to emigrate.” Since Kristeller as 1954 instead of 1964. attended the University of Berlin 1928–31, 11 Cassirer 1927. Cassirer’s invitation to meet in Berlin only 12 Klibansky & Paton 1936. Klibansky’s ar- makes sense after Kristeller moved to ticle, “The Philosophic Character of His- Freiburg to work with Martin Heidegger. tory,” is on pp. 323–37. In the Harper Torch- Further on in Reminiscences, Kristeller
INTERNATIONAL ISSUE NO. 8/2020 John Monfasani 275 Once Again: Paul Oskar Kristeller and Raymond Klibansky to England in 1933, Cassirer supported attack on 13 April 1945, Kristeller had Kristeller’s application for support of worked with him on a translation of some the Academic Assistance Council,16 even of his essays,19 and had brought him into writing a testimonial for him; and later, the project that would eventually result in 1937, when at the University of Goth- in the very successful volume, The Re- enburg in Sweden, he prepared the way naissance Philosophy of Man.20 Indeed, to for Kristeller’s request for support for commemorate Cassirer’s participation in the project that would become the Iter the project, his name was maintained as Italicum, by writing Fritz Saxl, the head one of the authors.21 So the only plausible of the Warburg Institute, recommending time when Cassirer and Kristeller would consideration.17 But only after Cassirer have had a certain level of intimacy and left Sweden to come to Yale University the opportunity to talk about Klibansky in New Haven in 1941 and then trans- would have been during Cassirer’s Amer- ferred to Columbia University in 1944, ican period, 1941–1945. did he and Kristeller come into frequent This is the place also to take up item contact.18 Before Cassirer died of a heart [7], i. e., Kristeller’s charge that Kliban- sky snubbed him when planning an an- 1983, p. 157, Kristeller related: “Years lat- er, both my teacher [Richard] Kroner and niversary volume on the occasion of the Ernst Cassirer said they would have been hundreth year of Cassirer’s birth. Unless glad to do the same thing for me [i.e., there was a movement afoot for such sponsor Kristeller as a privatdozent to write his Habilitationsschrift] if I had only a volume in the 1970s that had reached asked them, but this I somehow could not his ears but has thus far escaped my know and Heidegger had a strong attrac- tion for me at that time.” knowledge, Kristeller was wrong here. 16 See Whitaker 2017, p. 346. The hundredth anniversary of Cassir- 17 Whitaker 2017, p. 360, n. 24. er’s birth was 1974, not, as Kristeller 18 See Whitaker 2017, pp. 461–62; Remini- said, 1964. A volume in honor of Cas- scences, Kristeller 1983, pp. 461–62: “he sirer did appear near 1964, but it was then had an invitation from Yale, and ar- rived during the war at Yale, and was a reprint in 1963 of the volume that made a visiting professor there for sever- Klibansky had co-edited in England in al years. I went to see him in New Haven, and he gave me a very friendly reception. 1936. In fact, a copy of this reprint in Then when he reached the age limit at Columbia’s Butler Library is actually Yale he was invited to Columbia as a vis- iting professor, and spent an academ- ic year — I think 1944–1945 in New York. me to edit this volume, and he (Cassirer) They had an apartment I think on West had still time to give his opinion on the End Avenue, and he often invited me, and selection of the material, although he it was on that occasion that I met his wife, was dead when the actual work was done Toni Cassirer, a very interesting person in and finished, but his name is still associa- her own right. My dealings with him were ted with that.” extremely congenial, and he did review 19 See Cassirer 1945. Cassirer’s preface is my Ficino book when it came out in 1943 dated October 1944. in a very friendly way, and when I re- ceived [Helmut] Kuhn's invitation to pre- 20 Cassirer, Kristeller, & Randall 1948. pare a Renaissance volume I asked him 21 See Kristeller’s comments at the end of and [John Herman] Randall to join with n. 18 above.
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Kristeller’s own, part of the legacy of Kristeller was right to feel snubbed by books he left the University.22 But this Klibansky, though what happened in complaint may be more than simply false the 1930s remains murky and Kristell- memory of a snub at the hands of the er’s recollection of the 1963 reprint of man whom Kristeller called “his best volume edited by Klibansky is errone- enemy.”23 Among Cassirer’s correspond- ous. A vague recollection of a reprint ence preserved at the Warburg Institute acquired thirty years before the letter to is a three page typed letter from Cassirer McEwen seems to have created in Kris- dated 29 July 1934, the day after his six- teller’s mind a false memory. tieth birthday, thanking his “younger Item [4], on the other hand, although friends and students” for the collection reflecting a private conversation, is more of philosophical essays (Aufsätze) they than plausibly true. Almost a third of have presented him.24 The problem is a recent book on Klibansky and the War- that no such Festgabe, as Cassirer called burg Institute deals with the art histo- it, exists. Perhaps what Cassirer was rian Erwin Panofsky’s long-standing talking about was the table of contents rejection of Klibansky’s desire to appear of a proposed volume. In any case, what as a co-author on the title page of the is especially interesting for our purposes famous book Saturn and Melancholy. is that two copies of the letter survive in Panofsky and Fritz Saxl had conceived the correspondence of Cassirer with Leo and published the work in its first ren- Strauss and Paul Oskar Kristeller (one dition as Dürers ‘Melencolia I.’ in 1923 in the correspondence with Strauss and before Klibansky entered the picture.26 the other in the correspondence with After a meeting between Klibansky and Kristeller), neither of whom were invited Panofsky in Princeton in 1955, the latter to participate in the 1936 volume edited relented and approved Klibansky appear- by Klibansky.25 So it would seem that ance on the title page as one of the three authors.27 However, in the enormous 22 The copy has the Library of Congress shelf mark, D 16.8. K52 1963, with the edited correspondence of Panofsky in name Kristeller written by hand at the the subsequent thirteen years of his life bottom of the verso of the title page, i.e., after this meeting we see no evidence of the page with the publication data of the Harper Torchbook edition. a change in his general attitude towards 23 See Reminiscences, Kristeller 1983, p. 128: “I might mention that from Heidelberg cass/digbib/ssearch. The text of the letter I also know the man whom I might is edited as addressed to Strauss and call my best enemy, named Raymond Kristeller in Cassirer 2009, pp. 138–39. Klibansky, a quite prominent scholar in 26 See Despoix & Tomm & Méchoulan & Le- my field in which we were rivals already roux 2018, pp. 197–288, for the articles of as students.” Elisabeth Otto, Claudia Wedepohl, Philippe 24 Whitaker 2017, p. 361, n. 27. Despoix, and Davide Stimilli. The full title 25 Whitaker 2017, p. 361, n. 27. I have consult- of the book in its first version wasDürers ed the copies to Strauss and Kristeller in ‘Melencolia I.’ Eine quellen-und typenges- PDF available online at the Staats- und chichtliche Untersuchung, Leipzig-Berlin, Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg website 1923, see Panofsky & Saxl 1923. http://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/sub- 27 See Klibansky, Panofsky, & Saxl 1964.
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Klibansky; indeed, no mention at all of America visit, but we also have proof Klibansky appears in the post-1955 cor- that this is exactly what he did and that respondence.28 When Panofsky and Kris- he spoke to Kristeller. In a letter on Co- teller spoke of Klibansky is impossible to lumbia University stationary of 6 March say. Kristeller was in contact with Panof- 1939, Ross wrote Kristeller to set up sky for thirty years. When he he arrived a meeting made possible by his having in America in 1939, he found Panofsky to give a lecture at Yale on the night of 7 already a member of the Institute of Ad- March.33 Later that month, after return- vanced Study in Princeton.29 ing to New York from New Haven, Ross As for item [5], Kristeller gives us wrote a testimonial about Kristeller that a date as to when he talked with Sir he hoped would “be of service” to the David Ross, the famous philosopher, young German in securing a permanent classical scholar, and Provost of Oriel position in America.34 He and Kristeller College, Oxford, namely, on the occasion of Ross receiving an honorary degree 33 The letter in Columbia’s Rare Book & Ma- from Columbia University in 1939.30 The nuscript Library, Paul Oskar Kristeller Papers, Box 49, folder 4, and is part of degree was award in camera on 13 Feb- a correspondence between Kristeller and ruary 1939.31 But on that date Kristeller Ross that begins with a letter dated 2 May 1934, concerning Ross’s discussion with was still aboard ship sailing to America the British Academic Assistance Council from Italy. He did not arrive in New York concerning Kristeller, and ends with until 23 February 1939. He was whisked a letter of 15 April 1954, in which Ross expresses the hope of meeting up with off that very day to New Haven by his Kristeller “when you come to Europe next host, Professor Hermann Weigand, in year.” All the preserved letters in the col- lection are from Ross. order to begin teaching the seminar on 34 In a short note of 13 March on Columbia Plotinus at Yale which has been the jus- stationary, Ross wrote “I shall write tification for his receiving a non-quota a testimonial which I hope will be of ser- vice to you. [Signed]. W. D. Ross” The tes- visa to escape Italy and come to America timonial itself, again on the stationary on the eve of World War II.32 Did Kris- of Columbia’s Philosophy Department, is teller misremember? The answer is de- undated and written in Ross’s nearly in- decipherable hand, of which he sensibly finitively no. Not only is it conceivable arranged to have a typed copy made for that Ross went up to New Haven on his general distribution. Ross’s evaluation at this stage in Kristeller’s career is worth 28 See Panofsky 2014. See also Wuttke’s syn- publishing: “(Copy) / Columbia University opsis of the Panofsky-Klibansky corre- in the City of New York / Department of spondence at Panofsky 2014, 1, pp. 351–52. Philosophy / Dr. P.O. Kristeller is known 29 See Panofsky 2014, 1, pp. 362–63, for a sy- to me as one of the most promising of the nopsis of the Panofsky-Kristeller corres- younger German scholars in the field of pondence. history of philosophy. He had an excel- lent classical training, and has published 30 On Ross see the entry by Warnock & very good contributions to the study of Wiggins 2004; and the entry on him by Plotinus. More recently he has for several Skelton 2012. years devoted himself to the intellectual 31 See Butler 1946, p. 195. side of the Italian Renaissance, and es- 32 See his Reminiscences, Kristeller 1983, pecially to the study of Marsilio Ficino. pp. 360–61. Any university interested in Renaissance
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certainly would have reason to want to his attitude towards Klibansky.37 What talk to each other. The correspondence is undoubtedly clear, however, is that between the two starting in 1934 shows the conversation between Ross and Kris- Ross trying to help Kristeller in the dire teller concerning Klibansky in 1939 re- circumstances at the moment. He had mained so vivid in Kristeller’s memory had read Kristeller’s 1929 dissertation that he could recall it with precision on Plotinus, and in 1937 he received in ordinary correspondence forty-five from Kristeller in Italy the two volumes years later.38 of his Supplementum Ficinianum. More- The remaining item, [6], concerns over, Ross certainly was quite familiar a long time friend of Kristeller’s, the il- with Klibansky. Klibansky must have lustrious expert on Greek and Arabic phi- made contact with Ross not long after losophy, Richard Walzer, whom Kristeller arriving in England in 1933. Already in first met when working under Werner October of that year he visited Oxford Jaeger in Berlin in 1928–1931, and with as the guest of Clement Webb and so whom he continued to be in contact until impressed the medieval historian Mau- Walzer’s death in 1975.39 Once Walzer rice Powicke that the latter proposed him for honorary membership in the 37 Multiple factors might have been in- volved. In 1937 the medievalist Richard 35 Oriel Senior Common Room. Then in Hunt, then at the University of Liverpool, 1936, at the invitation of Ross, Kliban- had sought to raise funds in Liverpool for Klibansky’s Corpus Platonicum and even- sky moved to Oriel College as a lectur- tually was successful; see Whitaker 2018, er.36 Nonetheless, in 1938 Klibansky left pp. 94–95. Oriel College to take up a lectureship at 38 Kristeller himself recognized that in old age he suffered from the well known Liverpool University, suggesting that phenomenon of remembering better, as Ross as Provost of Oriel had cooled in Roland Bainton once said, “yesteryear than yesterday.” In a letter of 23 Sep- tember 1996 to his nephew Edgar Ross, M.D., in the same folder as the correspon- studies would find him a valuable ad- dence with Sir David Ross, Kristeller re- dition to its staff, and it is much to be marked: “my memory [is] still pretty good hoped that some American university … Yet my memory of the last few days and may find the opportunity to attach him weeks is unreliable.” permanently to its faculty: it would in 39 On Walzer see Deitz 2004, pp. 231–32; doing so be making a valuable contribu- on Kristeller’s relationship with Walzer tion to the study of the history of ideas. / over time see Monfasani 2018, pp. 25-26. (signed) W.D. Ross / Provost of Oriel In his Reminiscences, Kristeller 1983, College, Oxford / President of the British p. 156, Kristeller has this to say just be- Academy.” fore the passage quoted in n. 15 above: 35 Whitaker 2018, pp. 84–85. Ross was sup- “The other one [Privatdozent in Berlin] portive of various scholars connected was Richard Walzer. Richard Walzer was with the Corpus Platonicum project. He also a student of Jaeger and had written “accommodated at Oriel” Richard Walzer a good dissertation on Aristotle. He was and Lornzo Minio-Paluello; see Teicher Jewish, and I think even came from an 2017, p. 329. Orthodox family. He developed an inter- 36 Whitaker 2018, p. 90. Klibansky was al- est in Arabic philosophy, and already at ready living in Oxford by 1935; see Whi- the time when I knew him he had learned taker 2017, p. 350. Arabic, and had made it a specialty to
INTERNATIONAL ISSUE NO. 8/2020 John Monfasani 279 Once Again: Paul Oskar Kristeller and Raymond Klibansky arrived in England in 1938 and was es- may reasonably suppose that Walzer too conced at Oriel College, Oxford with the shared his patron’s opinion by that date, support of Sir David Ross,40 he became in- though he could not have shared it with volved in the Corpus Platonicum project, Kristeller until Kristeller started to visit editing with Franz Rosenthal in 1943 Al- England after the war.42 farabi’s De Platonis Philosophia, with Paul The letter of 1995 to McEwen is, in Kraus in 1951 Galeni Compendium Timaei short, a significant addendum to the Platonis. Aliorumque Dialogorum Synopsis memorandum that Kristeller had written Quae Extant Fragmenta, and with Franc- a decade earlier concerning Klibansky, esco Gabrieli in 1952 Alfarabi’s Compen- important not simply for understanding dium Legum Platonis.41 Given his position Kristeller’s intellectual and personal at Oriel College from 1938 onward and biography, but also as something of his involvement in the Corpus Platoni- a corrective to accounts of Klibansky in cum into the 1950s, Walzer could not but more recent times written—quite rea- having gotten to know Klibansky fairly sonably so given their context—from well. And given Sir David Ross’s reserva- a sympathetic, if not to say, panegyrical tions concerning Klibansky by 1939, we perspective.
pursue the influence of Greek philosophy among the Arabs, that is – Arabic trans- lations from the Greek and knowledge of Greek philosophers in Arabic, Arabic commentators on translated Greek texts and all that. He has in later years pub- lished extensively on this subject. I knew him also socially very well. He was mar- ried to Sofie, who was the daughter of the publisher Bruno Cassirer. And through Walzer I met not only his wife but also their parents.” 40 See n. 35 above. Klibansky was also sup- portive; see Teicher 2017, p. 328. 41 The volumes, all published by the War- burg Institute, London, are numbers 1 (Galen, Compendium Timaei), 2 (Alfarabi, De Platonis Philosophia), and 3 (Galen, 42 I have found nothing concerning Kliban- Compendium Legum Platonis) of the se- sky in the Kristeller-Walzer corresponden- ries Plato Arabus of the Corpus Platonicum ce in the Kristeller Papers at Columbia, Medii Aevi. Box 58, folder. 19,
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