Ian Kluge (1948-2023)
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Exported from Holy-Writings.com on 2026-06-18
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters.
Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Sholeh A. Quinn, Ian
Kluge (1948-2023), bahai-library.com.
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Ian Kluge

1948-2023

Ian Kluge was an active and enthusiastic participant in the Irfan Col-
loquium gatherings from 2002-2016. His presence will be missed by
all who knew him. He had wide-ranging interests in philosophical
traditions and the intellectual history of religious thought. He pub-
lished some 27 papers in the Lights of Irfan volumes, two of which he
co-authored with Wolfgang Klebel. The topics these papers covered
include Neoplatonism, Nietzsche, Ontology, minimalism, relativism,
ethics, freedom, Aristotelianism, meta-history, New Atheism, and
many others. Some of the topics that he explored had previously received
very little scholarly attention. These papers were all substantial—for
example, his two-part article on neo-Platonism numbered some 142
pages. He exhaustively mined the Baha’i writings for relevant passages
to the topics he was researching, and at the same time read widely in the
scholarship of the philosophical traditions that he analyzed.

Ian Kluge was a wonderful lecturer, and his talks were always engaging
and entertaining, no doubt a result of the many years he spent as a sea-
soned and sage-like school teacher. He never read from his papers and
had a particular talent for taking complex ideas and making them acces-
sible to non-specialists. Irfan Colloquium participants will remember
and appreciate how he generously brought copies of his papers with
him and distributed them to his audience. He was most approachable,
always encouraging people to ask questions during his talks, and if peo-
ple wanted to continue their discussions with him after the colloquium,
he invited further dialog, having shared his email address and contact
information before he even started his talk.

His legacy remains enshrined in his papers available to read in the Lights
of Irfan volumes.

—Sholeh Quinn
    — Ian Kluge (1948-2023) (Used by permission of the curator)