Adler, Mortimer J(erome)

Adler, Mortimer J[erome] (1902–2001), after receiving his Ph.D. at Columbia, became a professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Chicago (1930–52) during Hutchins's administration. His writings of this period include his statement of adherence to the views of St. Thomas Aquinas, What Man Has Made of Man (1938), St. Thomas and the Gentiles (1938), Problems for Thomists (1940), and A Dialectic of Morals (1941). With Hutchins he edited Great Books of the Western World (54 vols., 1952), drawn from 76 authors from Homer to Freud, and for it created a monumental index called the Synopticon. Popularizations of his views about contemporary inability to read or think precisely appeared in his How To Read a Book (1940) and How To Think About War and Peace (1944). His ideas have been promulgated not only through “Great Books courses” but through his own Institute for Philosophical Research, out of which has come his The Idea of Freedom (1958) and Great Ideas from the Great Books (1961). His other activities have included chairing the Board of Editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and his other books include The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense (1970), Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (1977), Aristotle for Everybody (1978), and Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1978).