Mortimer Jerome Adler
Numerous published works of American educator and philosopher Mortimer Jerome Adler include
How to Read a Book
(1940) and
The Conditions of Philosophy
(1965).
This popular author worked with thought of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. He lived for the longest stretches in cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and own institute for philosophical research.
Born to Jewish immigrants, he dropped out school at 14 years of age in 1917 to a copy boy for the New York Sun with the ultimate aspiration to a journalist. Adler quickly returned to school to take writing classes at night and discovered the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and other men, whom he came to call heroes. He went to study at Columbia University and contributed to the student literary magazine, The Morningside, (a poem "Choice" in 1922 when Charles A. Wagner was editor-in-chief and Whittaker Chambers an associate editor). Though he failed to pass 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. While at Columbia University, Adler wrote his first book: Dialectic, published in 1927.
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. Tufts, E.A. Burtt, and George H. Mead) had "entertained grave doubts as to Mr. Adler's competence in the field [of philosophy]" and resisted Adler's appointment to the University's Department of Philosophy. Adler was the first "non-lawyer" to join the law school faculty. Adler also taught philosophy to business executives at the Aspen Institute.
Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. 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 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. He was also an advocate of economic democracy and wrote an influential preface to Louis Kelso's The Capitalist Manifesto. Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days. In his own words:
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write—and they do.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer...
“The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do.”
“... a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living.”
“I- A Primeira Etapa da Leitura Analítica: Regras para Descobrir de que se Trata um Livro1. Classifique o livro de acordo com o tipo e o assunto2. Diga de que se trata todo o livro com a máxima concisão.3. Enumere as partes principais por ordem e segundo a relação que guardam entre si, e delineie essas partes da mesma forma que você delineou o todo.4. Defina o problema ou os problemas que o autor tentou resolver.II- A Segunda Etapa da Leitura Analítica: Regras para interpretar o Conteúdo de um Livro5. Assimile os termos do autor interpretando-lhe as palavras-chave.6. Aprenda as principais porposições do autor examinando-lhe os períodos mais importantes.7. Conheça os argumentos do autor, descobrindo-os nas sequências dos períodos ou construindo-os à base dessas sequências.8. Determine quais os problemas que o autor resolveu e quais os que não resolveu; e dentre estes, indique quais os que o autor sabia que não conseguiria resolver.III- A Terceira Etapa da Leitura Analítica: Regras para Criticar um Livro encarado sob o prisma da Comunicação de ConhecimentosA- Preceitos Gerais da Etiqueta Intelectual9. Não comece a crítica enquanto não completar o delineamentoe a interpretação do livro. (Não diga que concorda, discorda ou suspende o julgamento enquanto não puder dizer “Entendo”.)10. Não faça da discordância disputa ou querela.11. Demonstre que reconhece a diferença entre conhecimento e mera opinião pessoal apresentando boas razões para qualquer julgamento crítico que venha a fazer.B- Critérios Especiais para Tópicos de Crítica12. Mostre em que ponto o autor está desinformado.13. Mostre em que ponto o autor está mal informado.14. Mostre em que ponto o autor é ilógico 15. Mostre em que ponto a análise ou explanação do autor é incompleta.”
“... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.”
“A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair—a process in time. It is good as a whole through being good in its parts, and through their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts or phases.”