Adler, Mortimer Jerome

▪ 2002

      American educator, philosopher, editor, and writer (b. Dec. 28, 1902, New York, N.Y.—d. June 28, 2001, San Mateo, Calif.), influenced by the ideas espoused by his heroes, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, championed the notion that a liberal education—the study of the great literature of the Western world—could provide the foundation of education for all people and lead to an understanding of the human condition. To that end he, along with Robert Maynard Hutchins, created (1947) the Great Books Foundation, which led members of the public in reading and meeting to discuss classic works. He was a cofounder and regular lecturer at the Aspen (Colo.) Institute. He also had a long association with Encyclopædia Britannica, during which he counted the compilation of the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World (1952) and its Syntopicon, a two-volume index based on 102 great ideas, and the restructuring of the Encyclopædia Britannica for its 15th edition (1974) among the numerous projects he guided; he served on the board of editors from its inception in 1948 and was its chairman from 1974 until 1995, when he retired. Adler dropped out of high school at age 15 and was working for the New York Sun when he determined that he would become a philosopher and enrolled in Columbia University, New York City. Although he completed the course work in three years, his refusal to take a required swimming test kept him from graduating (his bachelor's degree was, however, finally awarded in 1983). Nevertheless, he became (1923) a psychology instructor there, and in 1928 he was awarded a Ph.D. In 1930 Hutchins created the position of associate professor of the philosophy of law for Adler at the University of Chicago, and in 1942 Adler became a full professor. He left the university in 1952 and founded the Institute for Philosophical Research in San Francisco. Among the works created there was the two-volume The Idea of Freedom (1958 and 1961). The institute was moved to Chicago in 1963, and Adler then edited the 10-volume Gateway to the Great Books (1963) and the 20-volume Annals of America (1968) for Encyclopædia Britannica. In the early 1980s he conceived the Paideia Project, a plan for a humanist education in the elementary and secondary grades, which he put forth in the books The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982), Paideia Problems and Possibilities (1983), and The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus (1984). Among the dozens of Adler's other books were How to Read a Book (1940; rev. ed., 1972), The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (1967), How to Think About God (1980), and Six Great Ideas (1981). Adler served (1988–91) as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was a cofounder (1990) of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas in Chicago. His memoirs were published in Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (1977) and A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror (1992).

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