If you are looking for philosophical quotes, one excellent exponent is man of letters, Mortimer J. Adler. Though he has since shuffled off of this mortal coil, in his lifetime he was a dedicated and passionate voice for “the great ideas” (he and fellow intellectual Robert Maynard Hutchins pioneered the Great Books of the Western World series). A defender of rationality, rational inquiry, applied philosophy, the search for wisdom, and liberal education, he wrote and taught and was essentially “a public philosopher.” I recently read his book How to Think About The Great Ideas, essentially a snapshot of his general approach found here. In it were conversations in which many interesting philosophical quotes could be found. I will share a few in this blog and direct the interested reader to learn about Adler and public philosophy by seeing what quotations of his are housed in The Wisdom Archive, right here on Values of the Wise.
These ideas have been objects of speculation and enquiry since the beginning of human thought. They are the common stock of the human mind. The vast literature which exists on each Great Idea reflects not only the continuity of human thought about them, but also the wide diversity of opinions to which such thought inevitably gives rise. By learning about The Great Ideas, we discover all the fundamental disagreements—and agreements—of humankind. ~ Max Weismann, co-Editor of the book
Here is what the publisher says about the book: “Time magazine called Mortimer J. Adler a “philosopher for everyman.” In this guide to considering the big questions, Adler addresses the topics all men and women ponder in the course of life, such as “What is love?”, “How do we decide the right thing to do?”, and, “What does it mean to be good?” Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Western literature, history, and philosophy, the author considers what is meant by democracy, law, emotion, language, truth, and other abstract concepts in light of more than two millennia of Western civilization and discourse. Adler’s essays offer a remarkable and contemplative distillation of the Great Ideas of Western Thought.”
Here are some of the wide-ranging, deeply-thought-out philosophical quotes about “the great ideas of Western thought” in How to Think About the Great Ideas:
Everyone, I think, uses the word happiness to name that which he seeks for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. Why do you want to be happy? The only answer anyone can ever give to that question is simply because I want to be happy. There is no ‘because’ for happiness itself. One wants to be happy because happiness is the ultimate good that everyone seeks. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
Usually, in the case of opinions, what makes up our mind one way or the other is not the thing we are thinking about, but our emotions, our desires, our interests, or some authority upon which we are relying. Thus you can see that the nature of opinion is wishful thinking. It is an exercise of the will to believe. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
Men are free under government when it is government for the people, not for the private or selfish interests of their rulers. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
…if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for ought we can certainly know, be true. ~Mortimer J. Adler
Just as, to keep our bodies healthy and strong we must feed them regularly and exercise them, just as we can’t keep them healthy and strong on last year’s feeding and exercise, so we can’t keep our minds alive and growing on last year’s reading and learning. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
We speak of goods as having value in use or value in exchange. And in politics we speak of a good society or a good government. And here the meaning of the word good very often has the connotation of justice. For a good society is a just one and a good government is a just one. Then in ethics we use the term good often to mean the character of a man. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
Put a man in a room, lock the doors, close the transom, seal the windows, pour smoke under the door, yell fire, and that man, as soon as panic seizes him, will start to fight his way out of that room by trial and error, claw his way out just as an animal does. But the point is that men think in another way. In the first place, they think about problems that there is absolutely no need for them to solve so far as their biological needs, their struggle for survival, are concerned: the problems of mathematics, the problems of philosophy, the problems of any of the theoretical or speculative sciences. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
More philosophical quotes by Mortimer J. Adler on topics such as wisdom, liberal education, God, love, justice, progress, and society can be found in The Wisdom Archive.
The same problem arises in the case of truth and in the case of goodness and in the case of beauty. That is the question of their objectivity, the question whether these values are subjective relative to the individual judgment, relative to personal taste, or are they objective values, values concerning which one man might be quite right and another quite wrong. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
To say that man is a rational animal is not to say that humans are always reasonable or that they always act rationally. On the contrary, that is too seldom the case. An interesting point is that only man is ever unreasonable. Only man is irrational. Only man goes insane or becomes neurotic. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
When you stop to think of what coercion means and how coercion is the opposite of freedom in action, you can see, I think, that the essence of this freedom lies in action itself. For when a man is coerced he is not acting; he is being acted upon. He is suffering someone else’s action upon him. He is being pushed about, if you will, or moved and he is not initiating the movement himself. Hence this freedom of which we are talking has both a positive and a negative aspect. Negatively, this freedom consists in exemption from coercion. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
I tend to think that it’s much easier to say what justice is than it is to say what in any particular case is a just handling of that case, just as it is much easier to say what truth is than to say what is true in a particular argument. But that isn’t the only reason why people shy off such ‘big’ and ‘difficult’ words as ‘truth’ and ‘justice.’ ~ Mortimer J. Adler
One can see these two things, love and desire, as impulses moving in opposite directions, the impulses of love being generous and benevolent, giving to the other; the impulses of desire being selfish and acquisitive, getting something for oneself. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
Justice consists in paying one’s debts, love consists in giving gifts. Justice consists of acts which are obligatory, we are under obligation to be just; love consists in acts which are gratuitous, acts we do not have to do; we do them from love and love alone. Justice consists in acts of fairness, in being fair to our fellow human beings; love consists in acts of consideration, in showing them consideration. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
If I look at human nature and consider natural desires, I think all the goods that constitute happiness fall into these four major classes. First, external goods, the things we call wealth, all the economic goods and services we employ, all the commodities. Second, bodily goods, things like health and physical pleasure and rest. Third, the social goods that satisfy our human social nature, our friends and the society in which we live. And finally, fourth, the goods which are especially goods to the soul: knowledge, truth, wisdom, and the moral virtues. Now these correspond to all of our natural desires and the happy man is the man who has all these goods, some wealth, health, some pleasure, friends, society, wisdom or knowledge, if you will, and the virtues. ~ Mortimer J. Adler
More philosophical quotes by Mortimer J. Adler on topics such as wisdom, liberal education, God, love, justice, progress, and society can be found in The Wisdom Archive.
