Mortimer Adler
American philosopher and educator (1902 to 2001); taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, chaired the board of editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica and founded the Institute for Philosophical Research.
Mortimer Adler did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
What they believe
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The world is multicultural and people should be taught about its cultural diversity
The world, certainly, is multicultural, and so we should be taught about its cultural diversity.
thegreatideas.orgSaid c. 1990–1999This on korrents
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Bad fortune is met by strength of character
How can the individual cope with bad fortune? The commonsense answer is, in a word, by strength of character.
thegreatideas.orgSaid c. 1970This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 9 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The world is multicultural and people should be taught about its cultural diversity
The world, certainly, is multicultural, and so we should be taught about its cultural diversity.
Multiculturalism, Part I (The Great Ideas Online no. 53) Said c. 1990–1999
Matters of taste can differ between cultures, but matters of truth are transcultural
The line that divides the multicultural from the transcultural is the line that separates all matters of taste or preference from all matters concerned with the truth and falsity of the propositions being entertained or judged.
Multiculturalism, Part I (The Great Ideas Online no. 53) Said c. 1990–1999
Extreme skepticism about truth refutes itself
In the first place, the extreme skeptic refutes himself.
Multiculturalism, Part I (The Great Ideas Online no. 53) Said c. 1990–1999
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Bad fortune is met by strength of character
How can the individual cope with bad fortune? The commonsense answer is, in a word, by strength of character.
Temperance is the will-power to resist good fortune that offers too much of a good thing
Based on the common-sense truism that you can often have too much of a good thing, temperance consists in the will-power to resist the kind of good fortune that makes an excess of such goods available.
Moral virtue is a settled habit of preferring a good life to a good time
What is required to make the moral choices we ought to make in order to work for the end we ought to seek -- a whole life that is really good because it involves all the things that are really good for a man, all of them in the right order and proportion -- is moral virtue, which is nothing but a habitual disposition to prefer a good life to a good time, to choose what is really good in the long run over what is apparently good here and now.
Neurotic disorders that block good choices call for psychotherapy, not moral exhortation
The remedy is medical not moral. What is called for is the recommendation of some form of psychotherapy, not hortatory remarks about virtue or a good moral character.
Curing a disorder that blocks good choices does not by itself give the power to make them
But when the medical problem is solved the moral problem remains. The removal by therapy of an incapacitation for making the right choices does not automatically confer the power of making them.
The virtues needed to lead a good life cannot be formulated as rules
Finally, let it be said, as emphatically as possible, that these dispositions of character and of mind, which are virtuous insofar as they are employed in making a good life, cannot be formulated in rules or guidelines for action.
What is a korrent?
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