Word: adler
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...assessing the perpetual thinking machine that goes by the name of Mortimer Adler, Harvard Sociologist David Riesman says, "There is something marvelously relentless about him." Both the marvel and the relentlessness shine through in Adler's newly published Ten Philosophical Mistakes (Macmillan; $12.95), which takes to task a Who's Who of the major philosophers since Thomas Aquinas. In the process, the book tells the rest of the world not only what to think but also why it should follow the latest gospel according to Mortimer...
...sweeping intellectual interests and no visible pedagogic doubts, Adler spun out Ten Philosophical Mistakes in 15 mornings of whirlwind writing. "Writing is the easy part," he explains. "It's the thinking beforehand that takes time." Many of Adler's 33 previous books were written just as quickly, and their titles and tone are no less imperative. A sampling: How to Think About War and Peace, Reforming Education, How to Read a Book, How to Think About...
Writing is not the half of what the unquenchable Adler, 82, manages to do. A former professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Chicago, he recently completed a worldwide junket to promote the Encyclopaedia Britannica, of which he is editorial board chairman. He was a founder of Britannica's 54- volume Great Books of the Western World, and personally wrote every one of the 5,000- to 10,000-word essays defining the 102 Great Ideas that constitute the heart of a prodigious index to the Great Books. In addition, he started and still directs the Institute...
...Adler has made a point of pondering and whacking at the errors of his chosen victims in modern philosophy for more than 50 years. As a brash undergraduate at Columbia, he once confronted the august philosopher John Dewey so sharply on a theological issue that the great man stormed from the room growling, "Nobody is going to tell me how to love God." In Ten Philosophical Mistakes Adler makes only an occasional swipe at Dewey and leaves God pretty much alone. But he takes on Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Hobbes, Marx and a passel of other post-16th century thinkers, whose...
...ARNOLD, Charles Adler takes on a very demanding role which requires him to be on stage, exposing his soul throughout the entire play. Adler begins rather weakly, coming off as a whining, complaining nuisance. He improves rapidly, however, and by the cathartic third act we must believe that Arnold is indeed very proud of what he is, what he does, and what he wants to do. He doesn't want the squalor of the back room bars; he wants a neat apartment near a park, a nice place where he can build his family. Adler quite successfully reveals Arnold...