Mortimer Adler, philosopher at large

PHILOSPHER AT LARGE AN INTELLECTUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY, by Mortimer J. Adler. Macmillan, 306 pp., $12.95.

THE RAGE OF EDMUND BURKE: PORTRAIT OF AN AMBIVALENT CONSERVATIVE, by

Isaac Kramnick; Basic Books, 225 pp., $12.95.

By Don A. Keister

The word for Mortimer Adler is "serious." As a senior at Columbia his "only approach to the girls," he tells us, "was to conduct serious

philosophical discussions or write equally serious philosophical letters" -12 to 15 pages long. And he kept carbons:

For some philosophers philosophy is a kind of intellectual game played for its own sake, with no more relation to “truth" than pingpong or bridge has.

But not for Adler: "If I really thought that truth and falsehood never occurred among philosophical positions, I would cry bitterly awhile for the hours I had wasted and 'the pains I had suffered, then wipe my eyes, whistle a tune, and dig ditches or study sociology."

That little crack at sociologists is fairly typical of the sort of thing that so often failed to ingratiate Adler with his colleagues. The failure was particularly apparent during the famous days when he and his friend Robert Hutchins, the young president of the University of Chicago, came on the scene like new brooms ready for a clean sweep.

In that dust-up Hutchins and Adler took on the specialists the advo cates, in the then current phrase, of "learning more and more about less and less." They believed, these newcomers, in a more "general" type of college education, the key to which was concentration on the "Great Books." Specialization was for later.

There were fundamental and sometimes passionately held differ ences of opinion among the faculty as well as inevitable fears about redistribution of academic territory. And at or near the center of the arguments was Adler, talking hard and earnestly, convinced of the truth, wanting to make it prevail, and stepping all over toes.

Four decades later he quotes with amusement what a would-be helpful friend told him: "The trouble with you, Mortimer, is that your mind moves too fast. You don't wait until one of your colleagues finishes a sentence before telling him what is wrong with what he was going to say."

Not surprisingly Adler's ideas did better off-campus than on. Great Books discussion groups flourished. His How to Read a Book became a bestseller.

Adler moved on to headier air and higher pay in institutes and foundations consulting, conferring and directing ambitious intellectual projects, such as the making of the Syntopicon, an elaborate index of great ideas keyed to a successfully marketed set of the Great Books.

More recently Adler was chiefly responsible for the new look of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Mortimer Adler

...

generalist.

The Rage of Edmund Burke also concentrates on ideas. But in probing Burke's mind Isaac Kramnick reveals a good deal about the complex man himself.

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In this country Burke (1729-1797) used to be known best for his great speech to the British Parliament in 1775 in favor of conciliation with the rebellious colonies. Lately he has become the darling of political conservatives, who cite his Reflections on the Revolution in France as a classical defense of stable government and tradition.

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Kramnick's concern is with the ambiguities and ambivalences that show up when Burke's writings and speeches are closely examined. His position on the aristocracy, for example varies a good deal from text to text.

How these inconsistencies derived from Burke's social origin (he hailed from Ireland, had little money); his upbringing (there were problems with father) and certain possible homosexual tendencies keeps Kramnick involved in analysis for many sometimes rather repetitious pages. But his persistence and the reader's is rewarded by deepened knowledge of the man and his ideas. The truth or falsity of the ideas, whether they tend toward aristocratic conservatism or bourgeois liberalism, is of course another matter not to be tested by reference to origins.

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Don A. Keister is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Akron.