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Mortimer Adler Biography

Mortimer J. Adler aka Mortimer Jerome Adler
Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler
Born: 1902-12-28
Birthplace: New York City
Died: 2001-06-28
Location of Death: San Mateo, CA

Race: White
Religion: Roman Catholic
Field: Philosopher
Famous for: How To Read a Book
Top 500
Influencial People
#500

Field: Philosopher

Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher and author.

Adler was born in New York City. After dropping out of high school at age 14, he worked as a copy boy for the New York Sun. Wanting to become a journalist, he took writing classes at night where he discovered the works of men he would come to call heroes: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill and others. He went on to study philosophy at Columbia University. Though he failed to complete the necessary physical education requirements for a bachelor's degree, he stayed at the university and eventually was given a teaching position and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy.

Adler was appointed to the philosophy faculty at the University of Chicago in 1930, where he met its president Robert Hutchins, with whom he founded the Great Books of the Western World program. He founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. For a long time he was Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and influenced many of the policies of the 15th edition. 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. Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days.

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 Meyer includes his 1980 interview with Adler, conducted after How to Think About God was published. Meyer 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."

Meyer 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, Meyer playfully asked Adler which single book he would want to take on a desert island. Adler responded with:

1. Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War

2. 5 or 6 of Plato's Dialogues
Aristotle's Ethics & Politics

3. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions
3. Plutarch's Lives
4. Dante's Divine Comedy
5. some plays of Shakespeare
6. Montaigne's Essays
7. Gulliver's Travels
8. Locke's Second Treatise of Government
9. 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.

Mortimer Adler Famous Quote

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of men.
More famous quotes by Mortimer Adler


Mortimer Adler News


Is Football a Sport or a Metaphor?
The Exception Magazine
... military adventurism and steroid use?and reminds us of an observation by American philosopher Mortimer Adler, who once suggested that the scariest ...

and more »


Old look at new ways to teach
Indianapolis Star (blog)
I just finished reading an article titled, "The Crisis in Contemporary Education" written by Mortimer J. Adler. In it he speaks about a "crisis as a turning ...



LifeNews.com

On Human Exceptionalism: The Crazy Idea Human Life Should be Respected
LifeNews.com
As the noted philosopher Mortimer J. Adler wrote, if we ever came to believe that humans do not all possess a unique moral status, the intellectual ...



New York Times

The Way We Learn
New York Times
The earliest exponents of general education ? John Erskine, Jacques Barzun, Lionel Trilling, Mortimer Adler ? believed in teaching students the wisdom of ...



Botswana politics and the leadership question
Mmegi Online
Perhaps not surprisingly, a US philosopher, Mortimer Adler, came out with quite some answer arguing that "in Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ...

and more »


GLOBAL MARKETS-US stocks, dollar slip as euro debt woes linger
Reuters
... Joanne Frearson, Harpreet Bhal, Jessica Mortimer, William James and Jan Harvey in London; writing by Herbert Lash; Editing by Leslie Adler)

and more »


UK, NAmerica, Singapore FX volume rises in Oct.
Reuters
... the time when risk appetite was pushing the price of natural resources higher. (Additional reporting by Jessica Mortimer in London; Editing by Leslie Adler)

and more »


Thompson Hotel Rallies New Yorkers To Raise $35K For Haiti Relief
Huffington Post (blog)
The party at Pomeranc's Thompson LES property on the Lower East Side drew guests including Russell Simmons, Whitney Port, Olivia Palermo, Tinsley Mortimer, ...




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