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The Mortimer J. Adler Archive |
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Memorial
Services Program |
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Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click
Here for College Education Information & Study
Resources
Bookstore
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These are remembrances which were given at a memorial service for Mortimer J. Adler in July of 2001, shortly after his death on June 28th. We wish to express our gratitude to Robert L. Stone, Esq. for his kind efforts in recording and transcribing the remembrances by Peter Norton, Patricia Weiss, and Charles Van Doren, and to Max Weismann of The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas for allowing us to share them with you. Peter Norton: I spent something over thirty years with Encyclopedia Britannica, and, of course, in that time I met many very intelligent, very smart, very well-read intellectuals and people generally. Unfortunately, I fell into none of those categories. So, when I first knew that I was going to meet Mortimer Adler, back in London in the early Sixties, I was decidedly nervous. In fact, the feeling I really had was one of great awe. I spent all my time trying to talk in sentences as short as possible, so that he would not work out quite what a nitwit was running the London company. But we got on really quite well, and Mortimer, of course, as always, was charming. Here was a man who had not just read but had written more books -- and was still writing at that stage -- than a lot of people have read in their lives. Now, that's not Britannica people, of course, because we had all been weaned on How to Read a Book, and Mortimer had made sure we all read the great books of the Western world, to keep up with it. Consequently, I had quite a lot to be nervous about. But I am not going to talk about what Mortimer achieved, and what he did. I am sure the others who follow me will do that much better than I can. But I would like to talk a little while about a Mortimer that I knew. In the early Seventies, after I had relocated to the United States, at one of Britannica's international functions in Hawaii -- we always chose the best places to have our functions -- sin attacked me. In the course of an afternoon session, when I should have been working with everybody else, I snuck out of the meeting because there was the allure of a great and wonderful ice-cream parlor. And I went down to the ice-cream parlor, and I crept in very quietly to make sure there was nobody there. And it was empty -- except in the far corner there was one very large ice-cream and chocolate concoction, out from behind which came a wonderful, very large, ear-splitting grin on this wonderful, elfin-like face. And that was when I met the other Mortimer. As the years passed, Mortimer and I managed to commit all sorts of terrible sins of gluttony, in all sorts of different parts of the world, in ice-cream parlors and candy shops and places like that. And what I came to find out was that behind this austere intellectual facade was a fun-loving, excitable, and very happy, life-loving little boy. This was the little boy who, after having some problems in his youth with swimming, at an age when most people had given up swimming, succumbed to the challenge of a great marathon swimming match at another Britannica meeting. He agreed that he would do this, and he not only took on this challenge, but he won it in great style and was triumphant. (Now I must point out that the pool he swam in was approximately fifteen feet long, and it was not more than three feet deep, and there were at least twenty people ready to jump in to save him if anything happened). At the end of the course there was a bottle of champagne for the winner, and that, of course, was the sort of incentive that Mortimer always liked. This was the Mortimer who not only liked to joke but could take a joke when it was aimed at him. This was the Mortimer who could walk with crowds and talk with kings, and, although I cannot talk about his virtue, I can absolutely guaranty that he never lost that common touch, that common touch that made so many people love him, and why so many people are here today who miss him. I shall miss my young friend. But I have one remaining regret. I have no doubt that, at this particular moment, Mortimer and his God are in very deep discussions, which I would love to be able to hear. I only hope that God is up to it.
Patricia Weiss: I am Patricia Weiss, president of Mortimer's Paideia Group, Inc. Mortimer published The Paideia Proposal in 1982 and there set forth his ideas for changing American schools from places where lecturing and memorization occurred to places where true learning occurred. Later, Mortimer was asked what he thought his greatest accomplishment was, and he often said that it was Paideia. So I would like to tell you a little bit about what I saw of Mortimer when he was working in the schools. I met and began working with Mortimer in 1983, and over the years, I experienced him as a model of creative work, generosity of spirit, and generativity. He taught about ideas, about teaching, about learning, and about what it means to be educated. My first surprise was his statement that he did not think that he had become educated until he was over sixty years of age. A significant event for both Mortimer and me occurred when he was conducting the seminars for high-school seniors to demonstrate Socratic teaching. (These lectures would later become a videotape series published by the Encyclopedia Britannica.) Mortimer chose five readings: Plato's Apology, Aristotle's Politics and Rousseau's Social Contract, excerpts from Machiavelli's The Prince, the Declaration of Independence, and Sophocles' Antigone. Each day, Mortimer asked the students whether they had ever, before this occasion, read the material assigned for the seminar. Usually the answer was "No," and that did not surprise us. However, it did surprise us that, when he asked about the Declaration of Independence, only one girl raised her hand and said, "I think so, but I'm not sure." Mortimer was shocked, and I was too. Mortimer considered the Declaration one of the country's most important documents, and to find out that the students had not read it was very upsetting to him. Although he was already concerned about the American education system, and had published Paideia by now, this one event seemed to him to indicate a more serious problem. He became even more passionate about the need for Paideia. He would go anywhere to talk about it. Over the next years, he talked to presidents, governors, local businessmen, parents, principals, and students. He kept an incredible travel schedule. Over the years that followed, The Declaration of Independence was often used as our demonstration seminar. And Mortimer's question, "Have you ever read it?," was always asked. After about five hundred seminars with students, principals, superintendents, history teachers, and community members, we found not one group had a majority of people who had the Declaration of Independence. This was very disturbing to Mortimer. He and I discussed this problem, and what was needed in the schools, many times after this. Mortimer was a great teacher. When he made those video tapes, I edited them to fit the show length requested by Encyclopedia Britannica. So I had to watch those tapes for hours. Mortimer could get students to dig into the deeper ideas in a piece. He would focus on the main ideas and get students to examine the meanings of basic words. He taught the value of knowing the definitions of basic words. He would ask, "What does 'justice' mean?" "What do 'equality' and 'liberty' really mean?" What is freedom? He taught about ideas and how to connect them. Mortimer also showed how to work with students in a more meaningful way. He would say, "The initial seminar questions are important, but it is the follow-up question that really gets people to think." His favorite follow-up question was "Why?" He also loved, "What do you mean?," "Why do you say that?," and "Where in the text is your support?" He made people think, reason, and support their answers in ways that I have never seen anybody do. Mortimer had a gift in his ability to work with the students. For even though the American education system shocked Mortimer, he would not refuse to work with its students. For those of you who have never seen him with those students, I must tell you that it was a treat. He was fantastic, and they were fantastic with him. He never wanted to know about the students beforehand. He just wanted to talk with them. He could help students who had never been successful to become successful in his seminar. His excitement and passion for learning was contagious. Once in a seminar on Hamlet for sixth graders, he asked, "Did you like or dislike the play, and why?" One girl responded that she liked it because of the language. She loved the "shouldn'ts' and the 'didn'ts" and so on. He asked whether there was a section she especially liked. She said, "Ah, that 'To be or not to be' speech." He asked her whether she would like to read it aloud. She said yes, and they went to the section. Now, I was sitting next to her teacher, who became very upset at this, and wanted me to pass Mortimer a note to stop, or to do anything to get him to stop. The teacher said that this girl was a nonreader in his class, and he was convinced that she was going to fail and, more so, be very humiliated. This teacher was extremely agitated. I told him to wait and to have faith in Mortimer, and that I was not going to stop him. Mortimer assisted this girl in the most gentle and loving manner I have ever seen. When she stumbled, he was there to offer support, and he did so, until they had finished the entire section. At the end of the seminar, I had the opportunity privately to ask this girl what she thought of the seminar. She loved it. I asked, "What did you like best?" She said, "Being able to read that 'To be or not to be' speech." Now, one has to realize that, under ordinary circumstances, she never would have had this opportunity that Mortimer gave her. Mortimer had faith in students' ability to think, reason, and find things in the text. He would often say, "Don't rob the joy of discovery from people by telling them things that are in the text. Trust the group to find it. They will find it, and it will be much more important to them." Mortimer did have high expectations. He was a demanding teacher: he wanted answers to his questions and reasons for those answers. In a seminar you could watch Mortimer change his posture, when a participant disagreed with him. He would lean forward in eager anticipation of a reason, and the students would not disappoint him. Mortimer said in The Paideia Proposal, "There are no unteachable children: there are only schools and teachers who fail to teach them." And that is true. Mortimer was a wonderful role model as a teacher. He demonstrated how important it was to be reflective about one's teaching. For example, we would meet every day to review the videotaped seminar series that I mentioned earlier. Mortimer was very, very critical of himself. He would just comment, "I should not have hesitated!, I should have seen that!," and on and on. He once told me, "Remember that there is no such thing as a perfect seminar. You can always do better next time." This reflective time of Mortimer's became part of Paideia's seminars and part of our training. Rather than settling for himself once and for all the meaning of a text, Mortimer had the marvelous capacity to be open to exploring things with the students. For example, he was once so excited in a seminar about Aristotle, because a boy showed him a contradiction in the text that he had never seen before. He said, "Isn't it wonderful that after fifty years of working with the text, I am still able to learn something about it." Mortimer taught how to learn from students and from your own teaching. Mortimer had genuine love for learning and also realized how much our democracy is dependent upon the education of the children. This was very important to him. He stated in The Paideia Proposal, "Human resources are the nation's greatest potential riches. To squander them is to impoverish our future." He was passionate in his quest to improve our public education system. Mortimer knew that change would be slow, and that frustrated him. But change is occurring. Phrases such as "All children can learn" are now heard. And seminars in Socratic teaching are taking place. These are directly related to Mortimer's influence. A great man is measured by what he leaves behind him. Mortimer left mountains. I have a lot to thank him for. We all have a lot to thank him for. Thank you.
Charles Van Doren: I met Mortimer for the first time more than seventy-five years ago. I know the place and date exactly: Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City, February 14, 1926. Mortimer was a little over twenty-five years old. I was two -- two days, that is. My father and Mortimer were colleagues at Columbia, leading a great-books seminar together. Dad had brought Mortimer to see his first born, and Mortimer entertained me by neologizing. To neologize is to speak employing words that you make up as you go along. The meaning is not important; it is the sound that counts. I loved the sound of Mortimer's voice then, and I never ceased to do so. At that time he spoke too fast for most people to understand him, unless they paid very special attention, which many people do not like to have to do. Later, he slowed down and spoke in short, simple, direct sentences -- and wrote them too. The mellifluousness that had charmed me as a two-day-old then began to charm everyone else. What a speaker he was. You never had any doubt what he was saying. But, if you disagreed, it was because you did not quite understand. This was also true of his books. With a single exception, every book that he wrote after his sixtieth birthday was distinct and clear, its language perfectly conformed to its meaning. As a reward, almost every book was a best seller (comparatively speaking, no bodice ripper he). And what a teacher, too. In his autobiography, he wrote about what he had learned from my father about leading a seminar. And in every one of the more than two hundred seminars Mortimer and I led together over thirty years in Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and other places, I always learned something important about something important -- as his friend Arthur Ruben used to say. When I was a child, Mortimer astounded and fascinated me. He would visit us, whenever he came to New York on business -- always with an agenda in hand of items to discuss. I thought that was astonishing. We visited him at Stone Pond in New Hampshire, and I was again astonished, to see him happily splashing about with water wings above his head, like Mickey Mouse ears. He never sneezed just once, always three times, never more, never less. And when I learned about his work with the Hayes Office, which among other things ordained that a movie actress could not show her legs more than a few inches above the knee, and especially not the inside of her thighs, I was kerflummoxed. (That's not a neologism.) Since the inside of a woman's thigh was at time (I was thirteen) a matter of enormous interest, I envied Mortimer. I imagined that he had to check out all those beautiful thighs and make sure they were not breaking the rules. And then there came the time when I fell down, face down in the mud, and he picked me up, brushed me off, and gave me a job. It was the best kind of job: as he described it, one you would do anyway, if you did not need the money. And I did it for thirty years. First we worked together making books for Encyclopedia Britannica. Then I, and many others, helped him to design and edit the greatest encyclopedia the world has ever seen. It has fallen on bad days, but it will rise again and outlive us all -- just as Mortimer's philosophical work will do. I remember the first seminar we led together, nearly forty years ago. The text was Plato's dialogue, The Sophist. I had read it twice or three times and struggled to get the point. It could not be what it seemed to be. But Mortimer helped us all to understand it was. The true sophist, Plato is saying, cannot be trapped -- if he is willing to say anything whatsoever to win the argument. If he wants to win at all costs and does not care what is true, and if he is adept at fending off the truth when it is presented, the sophist will triumph, and you will fail. I asked Mortimer after the seminar whether he agreed. "Yes," he said, surprisingly, "Plato is right." But he believed (and I do to) that this is the tragedy of intellect. In other words, truth must be fought for, even though one may not be able to win. Mortimer fought for the truth all of his life, although he believed in the end that he had been defeated. We tried to persuade him that this was not so, but we failed. Time, merciless and remorseless, betrayed him -- as eventually it betrays us all. And now, having said that, I want to praise him. As another man, a great general, praised another philosopher, long ago. The general compared that other philosopher to a satyr. (And, indeed, there was a certain rotundity of body and an amused, ironic look on Mortimer's face most of the time.) That general said that that other philosopher was like Marsyas, the great flute player who challenged Apollo, and whose melodies charmed all who heard them. But the general said that this philosopher produced the same effect with his words only, and did not require a flute. "When we hear any other speaker," the general said, addressing his friend, "His words produce absolutely no effect on us, or not much. Whereas, the mere fragment of you and your words, even at second hand, and however imperfectly reported, amaze and possess every man and woman and make them confess that they ought not to live as they do. Your words seem simple when we first hear them," the general said, "and not worthy or appropriate for their matter, and are even laughed at, because you are always repeating the same thing, in the same words. But when we look within those words," the general said to that other philosopher, his friend, "We find that they are the only words that have a meaning in them, abounding in fair images of virtue and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to the whole duty of a good and honorable man." Thus did Alcibiades praise Socrates, Mortimer, and thus do I praise you. Your words, simple, direct, and clear, still tell us we ought not to live as we do and describe the whole duty of a good and honorable man. I will not end with Plato, who, although he may have started Mortimer on the road to philosophy, did not accompany him for long. Mortimer would refute me is I did not mention his nearly lifelong admiration for Plato's famous pupil. Many times he told me, as I imagine he told you, that he hoped to meet Aristotle in the afterlife, so he correct his errors -- and also have the opportunity to talk about all the most important things with a man who knew, as Mortimer did, what they were and why they were important. Mortimer and I agreed, when St. Christopher was struck from the list of proper saints, that the action, although probably correct, was a pity. I myself have stubbornly persisted in addressing the benevolent giant every day of my life. You know the gentle, little prayer:
I have modified it in various ways over the years, and I offer you another modification now:
Mortimer, we miss you, and we need your help. We all pursue happiness, but we do not know what it is or how to find it. We need you to remind us that happiness is not a moment of ecstasy or a feeling of contentment that can come and go. Instead, happiness is the product of a whole life -- a life lived in accordance with the two kinds of virtue: intellectual and moral. We have to use our minds and not waste them. And we have to acquire the habit of desiring the right things, the things we really need and are good for us, not the wrong things, which are bad for us and for everybody else. In addition to all that, we need to be lucky -- in our country, in our friends, and in our loves. You were lucky in all these, dear friend, and therefore we can conclude that yours was a happy life. It is our great loss, not yours, that it had to end. Memorial Services Program Tribute to Dr. Adler in the Congressional Record Return to Anecdotes Main Page Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine...
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