The Great Philosopher Who Became Catholic

ic ^ | June 29, 2009 | Deal Hudson

[NYer]

Eight years ago today, a famous American philosopher died who had lived as a Catholic the last year of his life. Not so long ago, his name -- Mortimer J. Adler -- was synonymous with the "great books" approach to education he had pioneered with Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s. His edition of The Great Books of the Western World is still often seen if you survey the bookshelves of the homes and offices you visit.

 

Adler's pedagogy, like his Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, was rejected by the academy he left in mid-career. He continued to edit, read, and discuss great books at seminars -- like those he taught at the Aspen Institute -- and to write scholarly books. But these were increasingly ignored, so in the late 1970s he took his case to general readers in an excellent memoir, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography, and books like Reforming Education and Aristotle for Everybody. Adler's career began to revive.

 

But it was Bill Moyers's several PBS specials with Adler -- especially his "Six Great Ideas" seminar from the Aspen Institute in 1981 -- that brought Adler back into the public eye. Adler capitalized on the attention with a series of readable books, winning him a new generation of readers. I was one of them. As a young philosophy professor teaching both St. Thomas and the great books, I regarded Adler with awe, knowing that he was a living link to Thomists like Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, who had been his friends.

 

The first time I met Adler I mentioned my fondness for a novelist I was reading, the Australian Nobel Prize winner Patrick White. Adler immediately pulled out a notebook to write down his name and the novels I had mentioned. I was amazed that a philosopher of his stature would care about the opinions of a punky young professor! He encouraged me to stay in touch, and I did.

 

Some years later, Adler asked me to spend three summers with him at the Aspen Institute assisting him in his seminars. Afternoons were often spent smoking cigars and talking philosophy and religion (usually Catholicism). Talking to Mortimer was like talking to nobody else -- his intellectual energy seemed to super-charge my mind, pushing me to think beyond the places where I had stopped before.

 

There was no question too dumb for Mortimer and no assertion so lame that it couldn't be the source of another 30 minutes of conversation. During those summers in Aspen we talked for hours and never noticed the time passing, until someone would finally come to remind us about dinner. (It was Adler, by the way, who told me that cigars never taste better than first thing in the morning.)

 

 

When I met Mortimer he had not yet suffered the heart condition that led him to his late-life conversion in 1986 to Christianity. When I asked him, at our first meeting in Atlanta, why his love for St. Thomas Aquinas had not led him into the Church, he replied, "Faith is a gift, and I have not received it." Rather than ending the conversation, that turned out to be a darned good beginning.

 

He had been attracted to Catholicism for many years, but when he finally received "the gift of faith" he joined a different church. (Rumor has it that his wonderful -- and ardently Episcopal -- wife, Caroline, made sure of that.) Mortimer became a serious, church-attending Christian, albeit of the liberal variety, reading books by Bishop Spong and others. He once took me to a bookstore to buy me the latest title by Spong, but fortunately they were out.

 

The more we talked the more I realized Mortimer really wanted to be a Roman Catholic, but issues like abortion and the resistance of his family and friends were keeping him away. I tried to show him that his own Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics of act-potency led him to understand the necessity of protecting unborn life. But just at that moment, Mortimer would uncharacteristically mutter, "It's all too complicated," and change the subject. But I knew that he knew he was being inconsistent. I didn't have to press him -- because I knew he knew, and it was only a matter of time before he acquiesced.

 

At several of our seminars was the Catholic prelate of San Jose, Bishop Pierre DuMaine. The bishop and I would sometimes tag-team the philosopher on the Catholic Church, and we would all end up laughing about how Mortimer deflected the inevitable conclusion. As it turns out, Bishop DuMaine did not stop the Aspen conversations.

 

After Mortimer finally retired, and Caroline passed away, he moved to the West Coast to spend his final years. We kept in touch by phone, and I called him as soon as I heard from Bishop DuMaine that he had been received into the Catholic Church. To my ears, Mortimer sounded relieved and at peace that he had finally taken that step. The philosopher who had helped bring so many into the Church had himself finally arrived.

 

♦ ♦ ♦

 

Five Books to Read by Mortimer J. Adler:

 

• Aristotle for Everybody -- The best introduction to Aristotle (especially his ethics) that I know.
• Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them -- Here is everything you need to know about what is wrong with modern philosophy, written in a way you can understand.
• The Angels and Us -- One of my personal favorites. Adler has fun using St. Thomas's treatise on angels to explain how the human mind works.
• The Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography -- An important book to understand the course of American education, in addition to Adler's own life.
• The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (with an introduction by yours truly) -- This, I think, is one of Adler's most original contributions to philosophy: an argument for the immateriality of the intellect making human beings different in kind, not degree, from other animals.

[NYer]

---

Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).

[NYer]

Ping!

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

My priest just told me about this site.

http://www.biblechristiansociety.com/index.php

It is really cool and offers free CDs, tapes and MP3 downloads.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

My priest just told me about this site.

http://www.biblechristiansociety.com/index.php

It is really cool and offers free CDs, tapes and MP3 downloads.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

My priest just told me about this site.

http://www.biblechristiansociety.com/index.php

It is really cool and offers free CDs, tapes and MP3 downloads.

[Ozone34]

He was a prolific writer and all of the books recommended are great, especially “10 Philosophical Mistakes”! In addition, as editor of the Great Books series he composed the introductory 2 volume Syntopicon, consisting of extended essays on all the “Great Ideas” which are referenced throughout the collection. Used individual copies of the The Syntopicon are readily available via the internet. It’s a treasure.

One funny anecdote about Adler was that he never graduated as an undergraduate from Columbia because he refused to fulfill the PE requirement! Later, in his 80’s, the university finally gave him his bachelors degree and he went through graduation exercises with all the other students.

[Jacksonian Grouch]

sounds like it's th - th - three times better than the other thing! (wink and nod...)

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Adler's pedagogy, like his Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, was rejected by the academy he left in mid-career."

And most often still is, without a hearing.

[Excellence]

The Great Ideads are also sold as a stand alone book, but it doesn’t have the the Syntopicon.

[livius]

Nice! Actually, I never knew that Mortimer Adler had become a Catholic.

I wish more Jews would become Catholic. Starting with St. Paul, some of our best evangelizers have been Jewish converts.

[Salvation]

**After Mortimer finally retired, and Caroline passed away, he moved to the West Coast to spend his final years. We kept in touch by phone, and I called him as soon as I heard from Bishop DuMaine that he had been received into the Catholic Church. To my ears, Mortimer sounded relieved and at peace that he had finally taken that step. The philosopher who had helped bring so many into the Church had himself finally arrived.**

Wow! What a story!

[giotto]

From the website you linked to, the section called Two-Minute Apologetics:

#1) Ingrain this into your psyche...the Bible is a Catholic book! The Catholic Church gave it to the world!

Uh...what about Judaism? I seem to recall that they were around for 3000 years before the Catholic Church.

[mjp]

Five Books to Read by Mortimer J. Adler:

also good were

Intellect

Desires, Right and Wrong

Some Questions About Language

[vladimir998]

About fifteen years ago I discovered the works of Mortimer Adler.

A little over a decade ago I discovered that he had become a Christian, specifically an Episcopalian. His wife had been an Episcopalian.

Then I discovered he was still alive and living in some sort of assisted living center where he was plugging away daily working on a book. He even kept up with emails sent to him through Radical Academy.

About ten years ago - and I mean that rather exactly, 1999 or 2000 - I wrote to him and asked why the man who always encouraged people to go back to the sources in philosophy had not gone into the Catholic faith.

I always wondered if he ever read my email.

I later read that he had become a Catholic and passed away shortly afterward. He died on June 28, 2001. He was 98.

Did he ever read my email? I’ll never know. At least not on this earth.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“Uh...what about Judaism? I seem to recall that they were around for 3000 years before the Catholic Church.”

What about them? Did those Jews 5,000 years ago use the New Testament?

The Bible is less than 2,000 years old. The Old Testament is older than that of course.

[Salvation]

Thanks, I just added that to my favorites!

[Salvation]

That’s quite a post, there, sir. You will find out if he read your email eventually.

Obviously, the author and the local bishop have tracked and kept asking him deep questions.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“That’s quite a post, there, sir. You will find out if he read your email eventually.”

You don’t want to know how many times I kicked myself for not saving a copy of that email!!!

[Salvation]

**You don’t want to know how many times I kicked myself for not saving a copy of that email!!!**

LOL! That has been my experience too. (Sometimes I will send FReepmails to myself as well as others — don’t ask me why, I just do it once in awhile.

[iowamark]

http://www.greatbooks.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
(includes a list of the books)