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Insights into the Nature of Things |
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Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
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These are brief insights into the nature of things as viewed by Dr. Adler. More will be added from time to time. Art -- Moral Philosophy/Ethics -- Human Nature -- Philosophy & Science The artist is a creator, not an analyst. Nor is the audience, excepting the critic, analytical. The judgment of taste is an appreciation of the work of art as a whole because it is as a whole that it is enjoyed. But a critic must pay attention to the parts and the elements. It is for this reason that an over-developed critical faculty often hampers an artist or spoils enjoyment.
Aristotle at one point makes the extreme statement that a tragedy is possible without character, but not without action. This must be interpreted to mean that a plot cannot be developed without detailed incidents of action, but that the character of the agents or their thought need not be similarly detailed.
The Odyssey with all its impossible adventures on sea and land is a good story because of Homer's great gift in telling lies, a much better story as a work of art than an accurate historical narrative of just what actually did take place in the voyage of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca.
If there were no objective differences which made works of art more or less beautiful, it would be impossible to say that anyone has good or bad taste or that it is worth making a great effort to improve one's taste.
This final criterion of good filmic style is, therefore, a proper balance between realism and fantasy. It is not easy to accomplish. If most American films are, on the one hand, lethargically naturalistic in their style, the out-standing foreign films, particularly those of Germany and Russia, are often too radically fanciful. The former try to appear as if they did not employ the technique of montage at all and thereby lose distinction; the latter try to carry the technique of montage too far, and thereby lose clarity.
If moral philosophy is to have a sound factual basis, it is to be found in the facts about human nature and nowhere else. Nothing else but the sameness of human nature at all times and places, from the beginning of Homo sapiens, can provide the basis for a set of moral values that should be universally accepted.
If we did not know or could not know what is really good or bad for the individual, we would not and could not know what is right and wrong in the conduct of one individual toward others; nor could we know what is right and wrong in the individual's conduct of his own life.
A person who performs a single virtuous act may not be a virtuous person. Nor does the performance of a single, unjust, intemperate, or cowardly act, or even a few of them, deprive human beings of their moral virtue. To call a particular act virtuous is one thing; to call the individual who performs that act virtuous is quite another. Virtuous individuals can act unvirtuously and vicious individuals can act virtuously, under certain conditions.
We are all faced with having to choose between one activity and another, with having to order and arrange the parts of life, with having to make judgments about which external goods or possessions should be pursued with moderation and within limits and which may be sought without limit. That is where virtue, especially moral virtue, comes into the picture. The role that virtue plays in relation to the making of such choices and judgments determines, in part at least -- our success or failure in the pursuit of happiness, our effort to make good lives for ourselves.
I never tire of reiterating the importance of understanding that moral virtue by itself is not enough to make a life good. Were it sufficient by itself, there would be no point what-soever in all the political, social, and economic reforms that have brought about progress in the external condition of human life.
When the state is correctly conceived as coming into existence not just for the increased satisfaction of man's biological needs, but preeminently to enable human beings to live well and to lead civilized lives, its goodness overshadows any of the evils that those who have complaints against the state can think of. If it is not an unalloyed good, it is at least more good than bad, and the goodness it does have is indispensable to the pursuit of happiness.
Intellect is a unique human possession. Only human beings have intellects. Other animals may have sensitive minds and perceptual intelligence, but they do not have intellects. No one is given to saying that dogs and cats, horses, pigs, dolphins, and chimpanzees lead intellectual lives; nor do we say of nonhuman animals that they are anti-intellectual, as some human beings certainly are. Other animals have intelligence in varying degrees, but they do not have intellectual powers in the least degree.
Our concepts are universal in their signification of objects that are kinds or classes of things rather than individuals that are particular instances of these classes or kinds. Since they have universality, they cannot exist physically or be embodied in matter. But concepts do exist in our minds. They are there as acts of our intellectual power. Hence that power must be an immaterial power, not one embodied in a material organ such as the brain.
While human beings do not have social instincts, as do bees, termites, and other gregarious animal species, humans are instinctually driven or impelled by their natural needs to associate in certain ways. Societies or associations that are formed in order to satisfy natural needs are natural in a sense of that word which is different from the sense it has when calling a society natural means that it is instinctively determined.
Human beings cannot lead good lives in total isolation from one another. We are social, not solitary, animals. We depend for our happiness upon associating with others, living in society and deriving the benefits that living in society confers upon us, especially the goods that are not wholly within our power to obtain for ourselves.
To say that the brain is only a necessary, but not a sufficient condition, is to say that we cannot think conceptually without our brains, but that we do not think conceptually with our brains. The brain is not the organ of thought as the eye and the brain together are the organs of vision, or the ear and brain together are the organs of hearing.
The knowledge we can derive from science and history, are limited to first-order knowledge by their investigative mode of inquiry. They are incapable of enlarging our understanding by the second-order work, or philosophical analysis, with respect to ideas and all branches of knowledge. Without the contributions made by philosophy, we would be left with voids that science and history cannot fill. Even in the one sphere in which the contributions of science and philosophy are comparable -- our knowledge of reality -- philosophy, because it is noninvestigative, can answer questions that are beyond the reach of investigative science -- questions that are more profound and penetrating than any questions answerable by science. By virtue of its being investigative, science is limited to the experienceable world of physical nature. Philosophical thought can extend its inquiries into transempirical reality. It is philosophy, not science, that takes the overall view. Furthermore, when there is an apparent conflict between science and philosophy, it is to philosophy that we must turn for the resolution. Science cannot provide it. When scientists such as Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg become involved with mixed questions, they must philosophize. They cannot discuss these questions merely as scientists; the principles for the statement and solution of such problems come from philosophy, not from science. For all these reasons, I think we are compelled to regard the contributions of philosophy as having greater value for us than the contributions of science. I say this even though we must all gratefully acknowledge the benefits that science and its technological applications confer upon us. The power that science gives us over our environment, health, and lives can, as we all know, be either misused and misdirected, or used with good purpose and results. Without the prescriptive knowledge given us by ethical and political philosophy, we have no guidance in the use of that power, directing it to the ends of a good life and a good society. The more power science and technology confer upon us, the more dangerous and malevolent that power may become unless its use is checked and guided by moral obligations stemming from our philosophical knowledge of how we ought to conduct our lives and our society.
[Stephen] Hawking could have avoided the error of supposing that time had a beginning with the Big Bang if he had distinguished time as it is measured by physicists from time that is not measurable by physicists.
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The Adler Archive Index |
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