Truth's Intrepid Ambassador
"The architect of the Great Books, Mortimer Adler, moved beyond big ideas to the mysteries of faith."
Terry C. Muck | posted 6/01/2001 12:00AM
Philosopher and editor Mortimer J. Adler died Thursday night at the age of 98. As we noted in the following article—which first appeared in the November 19, 1990 issue of Christianity Today—many people are aware of his work on the Great Books of the Western World, and a few know of his important work editing the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but his Christian faith was not well known.You would not usually expect a renowned, twentieth-century philosopher to be a friend of orthodox Christianity. Yet one keeps running into people—committed Christians, deep thinkers all—who have nothing but respect for Mortimer Adler, the author, teacher, philosopher, and intellectual giant who is best known, perhaps, for his work with the Great Books series of the classics of Western culture. They listen to his lectures (on education and philosophy, mostly), they read his books (over 25 to date), and they generally give the impression they would give their eye teeth to speak with the man. Apparently there are some things about his work that attract the righteous.
But Mortimer Adler's entry in Who's Who in America gives little hint that he is a believer. A philosopher educated at that hotbed of naturalism, Columbia University, and a longtime professor at the University of Chicago—no, there is no clue there.
How about his résumé? He left the university in 1942 to start the Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago, a position that enabled him to give editorial direction to the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and develop, edit, write, promote (you name it) the Great Books of the Western World, on the surface a collection of classics, but in reality an attempt to revolutionize American education. No. These are signs of extraordinary energy and scholarship, perhaps, but certainly not Christian apologetics.
Adler's office and headquarters on Ontario Street, a half-block off Michigan Avenue's "Magnificent Mile" on Chicago's Near North side, has the unmistakable feel of a college philosophy department. Old books on philosophers and logic line the walls. Not far away are shelf after shelf of new books: several sets of the Great Books, and whole rows of multiple copies of Adler-authored books—heady titles like Reforming Education, Six Great Ideas, Ten Philosophical Mistakes, The Paideia Proposal. There are dust jackets for his newest books, including his most recent, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. There are also celebrity photographs (Adler with TV commentator Bill Moyers, another with Pope Paul VI), and awards, medals, and certificates of appreciation.
"I've known I would be a philosopher ever since one of my professors at Columbia, F. J. E. Woodbridge, gave me a copy of Aristotle's Metaphysics in 1931," says Adler. "I read it, and was hooked."
Behind his desk is a 15-foot-long credenza with hundreds of open files, future books in progress: "I've talked my publisher [Macmillan] into letting me do two books a year from now on. I'm 88 and I still have much to do."
Adler has never been known to be shy about saying things. Friends might call him loquacious; opponents might say cantankerous. He himself would probably settle for disputatious. He believes in rational argumentation in its best, logical sense.
It is when Mortimer Adler talks about the debates and the controversies and the battles he has spent his life fighting that his voice rises above octogenarian tiredness, and we get clues to the fundamentals of his thought.
June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45
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