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A
Tribute to Mortimer
J. Adler
by Peter
Redpath
GREAT
PHILOSOPHER STILL AT LARGE
Men
were much bigger and wiser in those days, not like they are now. Just
as in the time of Odysseus breaker of horses, and honey-tongued Nestor,
these were men bigger than life, men about whom and by whom great books
are written. Shortly before Mortimer
J. Adler
died, my friend Gary Dunn had asked the elder Adler
whether any great philosophers had lived during the twentieth century.
To Gary's surprise, Adler
named three: Henri Bergson, Jacques Maritain, and Etienne Gilson. In my
estimation, Adler
was wrong. He should have included a fourth: himself. In the tradition
of Socrates, Adler
rarely made that sort of mistake. Like Socrates, he never claimed to
know what he did not know or not to know what he did know. During the
twentieth century, Adler
did not receive his due from the "professional philosophers"
for the magnitude of his philosophical intellect. Understandable. If
Adler
was right about the current state of philosophy, most contemporary
philosophers would have to recognize that they have largely abandoned
the philosophical tradition. Mortimer Adler
died on 28 June 2001, faithful to the end to the philosophical
tradition that he loved. His passing might occasion some contemporary
thinkers once again to dismiss him. To paraphrase Adler,
though he be "dead
in the sense of not jolting us out of lethargy by his living presence,
he is dead in no other sense. To dismiss him as dead in any other way
is to repeat the folly of the Ancient Athenians who supposed that
Socrates died when he drank the hemlock."
Peter A.
Redpath, Philosophy Department, St. John's University, and Chairman of
The Angelicum Academy
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The Spiritual
Odyssey
of
Mortimer
J. Adler
A number
of
people have asked us what the
religion of Dr. Mortimer
J. Adler
was. Dr. Adler
was born into a nonobservant Jewish family. Both of his
autobiographies go into considerable detail concerning his beliefs and
spiritual journey, and he wrote candidly about it in another book
entitled "What Philosopher's Believe." As a teen Adler
discovered Plato, then Aristotle - both ancient Greek philosophers the
Church Fathers so highly recommended as their doctrines contain the "seeds
of the Gospel"
in the words of St. Justin Martyr (see related articles on this page on
the Fathers of the Church and their favorable position regarding the
study of these ancient sages).
A little later, in the early twenties Dr. Adler
discovered St. Thomas Aquinas (the Summa Theologica
specifically), and enthusiastically added Thomism to his philosophical
principles, clarifying and enlightening his Aristotelianism. Adler
was a rigorous thinker, and would brook no nonsense, no contradictions
in his search for truth. He was a frequent contributor to Catholic
philosophical and educational journals, as well as a frequent speaker
at Catholic
institutions, so much so that some assumed he was a convert to
Catholicism. But that was reserved for later. In the interim he
conducted warfare as a non-Catholic
Thomist against the enemies of the very notion of truth, such as
skepticism, relativism and subjectivism. He worked closely with a
number of Dominicans on various intellectual endeavors, including Fr.
Walter J. Farrell, O.P., the author of the excellent four volume
Companion to the Summa (of St. Thomas Aquinas). Dr. Ronald P. McArthur
credited Dr. Adler
with the educational principles underlying the founding of the
four-year, Great Books program at Thomas Aquinas College in Ojai,
California.
Prior to 1983 Dr. Adler
had not joined any religious (or similar) community. In 1983 Dr.
Adler
formally converted to Christianity, specifically to the denomination of
his wife, who was Episcopalian. Sixteen years later, in December, 1999
in San Mateo, California where he lived and shortly thereafter passed
away (d. June 28th, 2001), he was formally received into the
Catholic
Church by His Excellency, Bishop Pierre DuMaine, of San Jose, CA, who
was a long-time friend and admirer of Dr. Adler.
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