MORTIMER ADLER

'Mortimer Jerome Adler' (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American Aristotelian philosopher and author. He was born in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry salesman. He dropped out of school at 14 years of age and went to work as a secretary and copy boy at the ''New York Sun'', hoping to become a journalist. After a year, he took night classes at Columbia University to improve his writing. It was there that he became interested, after reading the autobiography of the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in the great philosophers and thinkers of Western civilization. Adler was driven to continue his reading after learning that Mill had read Plato when he was only five years old, while he had not read him at all. A book by Plato was lent to him by a neighbor and Adler became hooked. He then decided to study philosophy at Columbia, where he received a scholarship. But he was so focused on philosophy that he failed to complete the requisite physical education course to earn his bachelor's degree.
Adler became an instructor at Columbia in the 1920s. He continued to participate in the Honors program (today the Core Curriculum) which had been started by John Erskine. This program focused on the reading of the great Classics. His tenure at the university included study with such eminent thinkers as Erskine and John Dewey, the famous American pragmatist philosopher. This kind of environment inspired his early interest in reading and the study of the "Great Books" of Western Civilization. He also promoted the idea that philosophy should be integrated with science, literature, and religion.

Contents

Biography

Quotations

Works

Edited works

References

See also

External links

Biography

Originally wanting to become a journalist, Adler took writing classes at night where he discovered the works of men he would come to call heroes: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill and others. He went on to study philosophy at Columbia University. Though he failed to pass the required swimming test for a bachelor's degree (a matter that was rectified when Columbia gave him an honorary degree in 1983), he stayed at the university and eventually received a teaching position and a doctorate in psychology.^[1]
In 1930 Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, whom Adler had befriended some years earlier, arranged for him to be hired by Chicago’s law school as a professor of the philosophy of law, after the philosophers at Chicago resisted Adler's appointment to the philosophy faculty.^[2][3] Adler was the first "non-lawyer" to join the law school faculty.^[4]
Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and succeeded Robert Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. As the director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of ''Britannica'' from 1965, he was instrumental in the major reorganization of knowledge embodied in that edition.^[5] He introduced the Paideia Proposal which resulted in his founding the Paideia Program, a grade-school curriculum centered around guided reading and discussion of difficult works (as judged for each grade). With Max Weismann, he founded The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas.
Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses, and some of his works (such as ''How to Read a Book'') became popular bestsellers. He was also an advocate of economic democracy and wrote an influential preface to Louis Kelso's ''The Capitalist Manifesto''. Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days. In his own words:

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write—and they do.

Adler took a long time in his own life to make up his mind about theological issues. He considered himself a pagan when he wrote ''How to Think About God'' in 1980. In Volume 51 of the Mars Hill Audio "Journal" (2001), Ken Myers includes his 1980 interview with Adler, conducted after ''How to Think About God'' was published. Myers reminisces, "During that interview, I asked him why he had never embraced the Christian faith himself. He explained that while he had been profoundly influenced by a number of Christian thinkers during his life, ...there were moral—not intellectual—obstacles to his conversion. He didn't explain any further."
Myers goes on to point out that Adler finally "surrendered to the Hound of Heaven" and "made a confession of faith and was baptized" only a few years after that interview. Offering insight into Adler's conversion, Meyer quotes Adler from a subsequent 1990 article in ''Christianity'' magazine: "My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy." In 2000, Adler became a Roman Catholic. He can be considered a Catholic philosopher due to his lifelong participation in the Neo-Thomist movement, despite not being a Catholic for most of this time.
In his 1980 interview, Myers playfully asked Adler which single book he would want to take on a desert island. Adler responded with eleven:

★ Thucydides' ''The History of the Peloponnesian War'' [1]

★ 5 or 6 of Plato's Dialogues

★ Aristotle's ''Ethics & Politics''

★ Augustine of Hippo's ''Confessions''

★ Plutarch's ''Lives''

★ Dante's ''Divine Comedy''

★ some plays of Shakespeare

★ Montaigne's ''Essays''

★ ''Gulliver's Travels''

★ Locke's ''Second Treatise of Government'' [2]

★ Tolstoy's ''War and Peace''
In the summer of 1981 Adler conducted a seminar at the Aspen Institute in Colorado based on his book ''Six Great Ideas''. It was filmed by PBS for a popular television series hosted by Bill Moyers the following year.
Adler was a controversial figure in some circles who saw his focus on the classics as eurocentric and dogmatic, and he was never afraid to speak his mind. Adler was also a world federalist.

Quotations

:"The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind."
:"We ought to desire only that which is good for us."
:"Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men."
:"[I]f local civil government is necessary for local civil peace, then world civil government is necessary for world peace." - ''Philosopher at Large'', 1977
:"Every person is called to the same common vocation, that of being a good citizen and a thoughtful human being."
:"There is no truth, only evidence."

Works

★ ''Dialectic'' (1927)

★ ''The Nature of Judicial Proof: An Inquiry into the Logical, Legal, and Empirical Aspects of the Law of Evidence'' (1931, with Jerome Michael)

★ ''Diagrammatics'' (1932, with Maude Phelps Hutchins)

★ ''Crime, Law and Social Science'' (1933, with Jerome Michael)

★ ''Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy'' (1937)

★ ''What Man Has Made of Man: A Study of the Consequences of Platonism and Positivism in Psychology'' (1937)

★ ''The Philosophy and Science of Man: A Collection of Texts as a Foundation for Ethics and Politics'' (1940)

★ ''How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education'' (1940), 1966 edition subtitled ''A Guide to Reading the Great Books'', 1972 revised edition with Charles Van Doren, ''The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading'': ISBN 0-671-21209-5

★ ''A Dialectic of Morals: Towards the Foundations of Political Philosophy'' (1941)

★ ''How to Think About War and Peace'' (1944)

★ ''The Revolution in Education'' (1944, with Milton Mayer)

★ ''The Capitalist Manifesto'' (1958, with Louis O. Kelso) ISBN 0-8371-8210-7

★ ''The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom'' (1958)

★ ''The New Capitalists: A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings'' (1961, with Louis O. Kelso)

★ ''The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Controversies about Freedom'' (1961)

★ ''Great Ideas from the Great Books'' (1961)

★ ''The Conditions of Philosophy: Its Checkered Past, Its Present Disorder, and Its Future Promise'' (1965)

★ ''The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes'' (1967)

★ ''The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense'' (1970)

★ ''The Common Sense of Politics'' (1971)

★ ''The American Testament'' (1975, with William Gorman)

★ ''Some Questions About Language: A Theory of Human Discourse and Its Objects'' (1976)

★ ''Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography'' (1977)

★ ''Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling'' (1977, edited by Geraldine Van Doren)

★ ''Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy'' (1978) ISBN 0-684-83823-0

★ ''How to Think About God: A Guide for the 20th-Century Pagan'' (1980) ISBN 0-02-016022-4

★ ''Six Great Ideas: Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Liberty-Equality-Justice'' (1981) ISBN 0-02-072020-3

★ ''The Angels and Us'' (1982)

★ ''The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto'' (1982)

★ ''How to Speak / How to Listen'' (1983) ISBN 0-02-500570-7

★ ''Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of Questions Raised by The Paideia Proposal'' (1983)

★ ''A Vision of the Future: Twelve Ideas for a Better Life and a Better Society'' (1984) ISBN 0-02-500280-5

★ ''The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus'' (1984, with Members of the Paideia Group)

★ ''Ten Philosophical Mistakes'' (1985) ISBN 0-02-500330-5

★ ''A Guidebook to Learning: For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom'' (1986)

★ ''We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution'' (1987)

★ ''Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind'' (1988, edited by Geraldine Van Doren)

★ ''Intellect: Mind Over Matter'' (1990)

★ ''Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth'' (1990) ISBN 0-02-064140-0

★ ''Haves Without Have-Nots: Essays for the 21st Century on Democracy and Socialism'' (1991) ISBN 0-02-500561-8

★ ''Desires, Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough'' (1991)

★ ''A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher At Large'' (1992)

★ ''The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought'' (1992)

★ ''Natural Theology, Chance, and God'' (''The Great Ideas Today'', 1992)

★ ''The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical-Moral-Objective-Categorical'' (1993)

★ ''Art, the Arts, and the Great Ideas'' (1994)

★ ''Adler's Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon'' (1995)

Edited works

★ ''Scholasticism and Politics'' (1940)

★ ''Great Books of the Western World'' (1952, 52 volumes), 2nd edition 1990, 60 volumes

★ '' (1952, 2 volumes), 2nd edition 1990

★ ''The Great Ideas Today'' (1961-1977, 17 volumes), with Robert Hutchins, 1978-1999, 20 volumes

★ ''The Negro in American in American History(1969, 3 volumes), with Charles Van Doren

★ ''Gateway to the Great Books'' (1963, 10 volumes), with Robert Hutchins

★ ''The Annals of America'' (1968, 21 volumes)

★ ''Propædia: Outline of Knowledge and Guide to The New Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition'' (1974, 30 volumes)

★ ''Great Treasury of Western Thought'' (1977, with Charles Van Doren)

References

1. "Remarkable Columbians" Columbia U. website on Adler
2. Charles Van Doren,"Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001)", ''Columbia Forum'' online, November 2002
3. Peter Temes, "Death of a Great Reader and Philosopher", Chicago Sun-Times, 3 July 2001
4. Centennial Facts of the Day, U Chicago Law School website
5. Mortimer J. Adler, ''A Guidebook to Learning: For the Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom''. MacMillan Publishing Company, New York, 1986. p.88

See also

★ Educational perennialism

★ Liberal Arts, Inc.

★ Great Books

★ Western canon

★ Shimer College

★ St. John's College

External links

★ Center for the Study of the Great Ideas

★ Mortimer J. Adler Archives