Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author.
Having corrected, at least to his own satisfaction, these mistakes, he gave answers to philosophic problems in the categories of thought whence they arose, finding the necessary insights and distinctions to do so by drawing from the Aristotelian tradition, as in his other written works. === New York City === Adler was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 28, 1902, to Jewish immigrants from Germany, Clarissa (Manheim), a schoolteacher, and Ignatz Adler, a jewelry salesman.
After his early schooling and work, he went on to study at Columbia University and contributed to the student literary magazine, The Morningside (a poem "Choice" in 1922 when Charles A.
While at Columbia University, Adler wrote his first book: Dialectic, published in 1927. Adler worked with Scott Buchanan at the People's Institute and then for many years on their respective Great Books efforts.
He and Helen Boynton, with whom he had two children, Mark and Michael, were married in 1927 and later divorced in 1960.
John's College). === Chicago === In 1930 Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, whom Adler had befriended some years earlier, arranged for Chicago's law school to hire him as a professor of the philosophy of law; the philosophers at Chicago (who included James H.
But that was reserved for later. In 1940, James T.
He founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952.
The study was published in 1958 as Volume One of The Idea of Freedom, sub-titled A Dialectical Examination of the Idea of Freedom with subsequent comments in Adler's Philosophical Dictionary.
He and Helen Boynton, with whom he had two children, Mark and Michael, were married in 1927 and later divorced in 1960.
He and Caroline Pring, his second wife, married in 1963 and they had two children, Douglas and Philip.
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.
He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974.
When he wrote How to Think About God: A Guide for the Twentieth-Century Pagan in 1980, he claimed to consider himself the pagan of the book's subtitle.
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.
In his 1981 book How to Think About God, Adler attempts to demonstrate God as the exnihilator (the creator of something from nothing).
Though he refused to take 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 an instructorship and finally a doctorate in psychology.
He didn't explain any further." Myers notes that Adler finally "surrendered to the Hound of Heaven" and "made a confession of faith and was baptized" as an Episcopalian in 1984, only a few years after that interview.
His thought evolved so as to refute "philosophical mistakes" as reflected in his 1985 book, Basic Errors in Modern Thought.
With Max Weismann, he founded the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas in 1990 in Chicago. === Popular appeal === Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses, and some of his works (such as How to Read a Book) became popular bestsellers.
Offering insight into Adler's conversion, Myers quotes him from a subsequent 1990 article in Christianity magazine: "My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible.
Hudson suggests it is no coincidence that it was only after her death in 1998 that he took the final step.
In December 1999, in San Mateo, where he had moved to spend his last years, Adler was formally received into the Catholic Church by a long-time friend and admirer, Bishop Pierre DuMaine.
Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author.
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