Amy Kass’s family and friends, students and colleagues, will testify to her many virtues—her love and devotion to husband, children, and grandchildren (so amply reciprocated by them in these last painful months), her keen intellect and sensibility, her faith in Judaism as a heritage and ethic, her passion for her country. For this and much else, I count Amy as a dear and memorable friend. More memorable still is another rare and precious virtue—a mind and heart at one.
In her reflections on the teaching of the Great Books, Amy made a large point of the lesson she imparted to her students – that the principles they learned from the Ancients were meaningful only if they were applied to their personal lives. Philosophy, she insisted, was not merely an academic discipline but a course of instruction in practical ethics as well. And ethics was more than morality in the usual sense; it meant living a life that was spirited, soulful. When Amy is remembered and commemorated as a superb teacher, as she is by generations of devoted students, it is this vision of learning and living they have in mind.
