Mortimer Adler Biography Quotes 34 Report mistakes

Overview
Mortimer Jerome Adler (1902 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, editor, and public intellectual who devoted his long career to restoring a broad, humane vision of liberal learning. Trained in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, he combined scholarly rigor with an unusual gift for public exposition, writing and teaching for general audiences as well as for students and colleagues in universities. He became one of the twentieth century's most recognizable advocates of the Great Books, general education, and what he called the Great Ideas.

Early Life and Education
Adler was born in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents and grew up in modest circumstances. He left high school as a teenager to work as a copy boy and later a copyreader at a newspaper, a practical turn that did not dampen his hunger for intellectual life. Night courses at Columbia University opened academic doors. He soon distinguished himself in philosophy and related fields, earned his degrees at Columbia, and began teaching there. His early reading of Aristotle and Aquinas set the frame for his lifelong defense of philosophical realism and of permanent questions in ethics, metaphysics, and political theory.

Columbia Years and Early Debates
At Columbia, Adler was a vigorous classroom presence and a controversial thinker. He engaged with the pragmatist tradition then influential in American philosophy, especially the ideas of John Dewey. While he respected Dewey's concern for experience and education, Adler criticized instrumentalism for neglecting the claims of truth and the objective structure of human goods. These exchanges clarified his own commitments and taught him how to argue for classical positions in a modern idiom. He also began developing the seminar method that later became central to his Great Books advocacy.

Chicago and the Great Books Movement
In the early 1930s Adler moved to the University of Chicago, where he worked closely with Robert Maynard Hutchins, the university's reforming president and a crucial ally. Together they pursued a general education program grounded in classic texts, seminar discussion, and careful reading. Adler taught the philosophy of law and moral and political philosophy while helping to design curricula that linked undergraduate study to enduring questions. Their collaboration brought both admiration and controversy, but it established a durable model for liberal education in the United States.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Syntopicon, and Editorial Leadership
Adler's partnership with Hutchins led to a long association with Encyclopaedia Britannica, then led by publisher William Benton. As general editor and organizer for Great Books of the Western World, he helped shape the 54 volume set released in 1952. His most distinctive contribution was the two volume Syntopicon, a cross reference of 102 Great Ideas that indexed arguments and themes across authors and centuries. The Syntopicon embodied Adler's conviction that philosophy is an ongoing conversation in which diverse minds confront shared problems. He continued to advise Britannica for decades, promoting reference tools that invited readers to enter that conversation.

How to Read a Book and Writing for a General Audience
Adler wrote many works aimed at the thoughtful general reader. How to Read a Book (1940) distilled his pedagogy into a method for analytical reading, emphasizing structure, arguments, and the art of asking questions of a text. He later revised and expanded the book with Charles Van Doren, making it a staple of self education. Other widely read titles included Aristotle for Everybody, The Time of Our Lives, Six Great Ideas, Ten Philosophical Mistakes, How to Think About God, and The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes. Across these works he tried to connect classical insights to modern concerns without jargon.

Institutions, Foundations, and Public Seminars
Adler helped create institutions to sustain the educational practices he championed. With Hutchins he was a driving force behind the Great Books Foundation, which organized reading groups and seminars for adults and students. He founded the Institute for Philosophical Research to support collaborative work on fundamental questions and to extend the indexing and analytical projects begun in the Syntopicon. He also played a formative role in executive and civic seminars that used classic texts as springboards for discussion, notably programs associated with the early years of the Aspen Institute led by Walter Paepcke and influenced by Hutchins' and Adler's seminar methods.

Educational Reform and the Paideia Proposal
Convinced that all children deserve an intellectually rich education, Adler turned in the late twentieth century to K 12 reform. His Paideia Proposal outlined a single track, high quality curriculum centered on reading, coaching in skills, and Socratic questioning, rejecting rigid tracking and vocational narrowing. He argued that democratic citizenship requires training in judgment, not merely specialized job preparation. The Paideia Program, developed with educators around the country, aimed to translate those principles into school practices, teacher development, and assessment rooted in dialogue rather than rote testing.

Philosophical Orientation and Influences
Adler's philosophical stance combined Aristotelian realism with Thomistic insights about natural law, human ends, and the structure of knowledge. He engaged modern thinkers rigorously but insisted that perennial problems remain live. He admired and interacted with figures such as Jacques Maritain, whose neo Thomism helped shape mid century Catholic and broader humanist thought, and he continued to argue with the pragmatist tradition associated with John Dewey. His own writing tried to bridge scholarly argument and civic conversation, keeping major questions of truth, beauty, justice, and happiness accessible to non specialists.

Later Life, Faith, and Continuing Work
In later decades Adler remained a public teacher through lectures, television and radio appearances, and continuing seminars. He served in editorial and advisory capacities, authored new books that revisited earlier themes, and oversaw revisions to projects he had launched. A lifelong seeker, he moved gradually toward Christian belief, publicly entering the church late in life while continuing to affirm the philosophical independence of his arguments. He wrote and spoke into his nineties, exemplifying his belief that education is a lifelong enterprise.

Legacy
Adler died in 2001, closing a career that spanned most of the twentieth century. His legacy is visible in Great Books curricula, adult reading groups, executive seminars, and classrooms that rely on careful reading and Socratic discussion. It also endures in the tools he built, from the Syntopicon to widely read introductions that teach people how to ask better questions. Through his collaborations with Robert Maynard Hutchins, his editorial partnership with William Benton, his coauthoring with Charles Van Doren, and his dialogues with thinkers like Jacques Maritain and John Dewey, Adler kept alive the conviction that philosophy belongs not only to specialists but to citizens. He sought a common intellectual life grounded in shared texts and permanent questions, and he spent nearly a century showing how such a life could be pursued.

Our collection contains 34 quotes who is written by Mortimer, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Justice - Love - Learning.

Other people realated to Mortimer: Allan Bloom (Philosopher)

• 1982 The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (Non-fiction)
• 1978 Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (Book)
• 1977 Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (Autobiography)
• 1952 Great Books of the Western World (editor-in-chief) (Collection)
• 1952 Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas (Non-fiction)
• 1940 How to Read a Book (Book)