Word: adler
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...copy boy on the Sun, and broke into print writing editorials at $7 a column. One day he read in John Stuart Mill's autobiography that the great Englishman had read Plato before he was ten. Not having read Plato at 15 made Adler "feel like a savage." Then & there he drew a pay advance and bought Plato's Republic. Immediately afterwards he decided 1) to go to college, 2) to become a philosopher...
...love was still philosophy. One day he discovered St. Thomas, and one by one, as he managed to save the money, young Adler bought the 21 volumes of the Summa Theologica...
...Adler married pretty Helen Boynton, daughter of an Illinois manufacturer. To support her in a style he considered adequate, Adler held down not only his two teaching jobs at Columbia, but taught psychology at C.C.N.Y., lectured at the People's Institute and gave a Great Books course in the basement of a church. His total income (pasha-like for that day): $11,000. Far too busy to work for his Ph.D., he hired students at $1 an hour to do research, and whipped out his thesis on musical appreciation in 24 hours. He got his Ph.D., all right...
Then destiny struck, in a footnote on the law of evidence which Adler wrote into his first book. A bright young man named Robert Maynard Hutchins, then acting dean of the Yale Law School, saw the footnote and asked Adler to come up to see him. Adler, who really knew nothing about the subject, studied the law of evidence night & day for two weeks. Then he went to New Haven, in his best black suit. The dean, aged 28, received him in tennis ducks. They instantly impressed each other as great men. When Hutchins became president of the University...
...Kant! Adler gave regular pep talks to the staff. As they tackled each new idea, he would point out mistakes, make suggestions, urge them to hit that line. Sample: "Aristotle and Aquinas are doing fine, but Kant, Descartes, Plotinus, etc. must catch up ... Under Topic 2b, I find only three references to Aristotle, and three to Locke. This cannot be all!! Something has got to be done about this . . . We cannot rest on such a random collection with such a major topic. I am sure I am right. Don't give...