Mortimer J. Adler Quotes - 50 quotes

Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001) was an influential American philosopher, educator, and author. He is best known for his work in promoting the study of the great books of Western civilization and for his contributions to the field of education. He was born on December 28, 1902, in New York City. Adle... show more

 Moyers: What if we are wrong about human nature? Adler: If we are wrong about human nature, if we are not different from the animals in kind, if we differ only in degree from the higher mammals, I cannot state a rational justification for a different treatment of men and beasts. The Roman law made the fundamental distinction between persons and things. The word "person" is a very important word. I have never found anyone who is willing to call a cow a person. Or a dog a person. Now why not? Why do we refuse the word person to these animals we love and care for, our domestic pets. We sometime joke "my cat is like a person" but we know we are joking, that they are not persons. Now that word person means that we by being persons, not things, have a dignity. And all of us, every human being from the least to the greatest in terms of all the difference talents and aptitudes is a person, has personal dignity, and the rights that we have, the right to freedom, the right to political liberty, are our personal attributes.
- Mortimer J. Adler
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 Bill Moyers: Why the pursuit of truth? Mortimer Adler: It's the deepest human aspiration. It's the thing that distinguishes mankind from all other animals. In fact in his pursuit of truth, and contemplation of truth, man is most like God.
- Mortimer J. Adler
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 Adler: ... a freedom which is man's natural endowment. The freedom of his will by which he is able to choose freely and free choice consists of being able to choose otherwise - no matter how you choose - you could have chosen otherwise. That's freedom of choice. Moyers: If you choose A, you could have chosen B. Adler: And that, I think we do have, we do possess though there are determinists you know, scientists who think that man doesn't have free will, but if we have it, we have it by inherent or native endowment. So I call that the natural freedom of self-determination. Moyers: It comes with the trip. Adler: That's right.
- Mortimer J. Adler
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 Bill Moyers: One of the oldest of all questions...What is truth? Mortimer Adler: Truth consists in the agreement between what we think and what is in the world, what is real.
- Mortimer J. Adler
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 Moyers: The difficult part to see of course, is the proposition that people are born with a freedom that is inherent in human nature. Adler: I don't think it's too difficult. If I said that man, and man alone has an intellect. Other animals have perceptual intelligence, but only man has intellection or understanding, conceptual intelligence, and along with that only man has a will that is free. I mean, I think these two things: free will, and conceptual intelligence, being able to think, and understand as only man can think and understand are the distinctive characteristics of the human race. These are the properties of human nature. And these two properties that underlie freedom of action, the entitlement of freedom of action, and underlie freedom of political liberty. Moyers: And we have them by being human? Adler: That's right. Moyers: In our nature? Adler: That's right.
- Mortimer J. Adler
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 “The laws of the state, when they are just, apply coercive force and constraints to secure us from infringements upon our freedom by other individuals who would use illegitimate or unlawful force to interfere with it. Where just laws do not exist or where they are not effectively enforced, individuals are subject to all sorts of depredations and invasions that diminish their freedom. When just laws are enforced, they enlarge the liberty of the individual.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The constitution to which the citizen has given consent by exercising his suffrage provides for a decision by the vote of the majority. He has accepted the principle of majority rule and, having done so, the citizen has also accepted, in advance the result of majority rule, whether or not the voting places him in the majority or in an adversely affected minority.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “In politics, we will discover the primacy of justice over all other political concepts. Justice regulates our thinking about liberty and equality. … Without the guidance of justice, certain political errors are unavoidable.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The truth of the proposition that all human beings are by nature equal is confined to the one respect in which that equality can be truly affirmed [equality of kind] … their having species specific properties … There is no other respect in which all human beings are equal.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Individual members of a species differ from one another either by innate endowment, genetically determined, or by voluntary attainment, individually acquired. From the individual differences arise the inequalities in degree that make one individual superior or inferior to another in some particular respect.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “These differences come, first of all, from differences in native endowment. … Another explanation of the different degrees of ability looks to what use individuals make of their inborn talents and aptitudes – the degree to which, by their own efforts, they fulfill their innate capacities. … Still another explanation lies in the favorable or unfavorable circumstances under which individuals make the effort to develop themselves.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “They seek to maximize an equality of conditions, even if to do so requires many infringements upon individual liberty, which is the lesser value in their view. … Should [society] ignore the fact that human beings are unequal as well as equal, in both their endowments and attainments, and that they make unequal contributions to the welfare of the community?”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Nature is neither just nor unjust in the gifts it bestows. Only human beings can be just or unjust in the proposals they advance with regard to an equality of conditions or with regard to an inequality of results. … Justice enters into the picture as regulative only in the sphere of circumstantial equality, because only there can we make prescriptive proposals.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “A second reason for rejecting the extremism of the egalitarian is its practical unfeasibility. … If all individuals or all families were somehow to come into possession of the same amount of wealth, the absolute equality would not last long. A magic wand would be needed, not only to bring it into existence, but also to make it endure. No one has ever worked out a plan whereby, short of magic, this extreme form of economic equality might become feasible.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “All members of a society may be equal in kind as haves in a certain respect, but they may also be unequal in degree, one being a have-more, another a have-less. … There is no sense in saying that human beings ought to regard themselves as personally equal in all important respects when they know the fact to be quite the contrary.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 [The positivist theory of justice claims that] “Unjust acts are those prohibited by positive law; just acts are those prescribed by it. ... Spelled out, this means that what is just or unjust is determined solely by whoever has the power to lay down the law of the land. … It also leads to a corollary which inexorably attaches itself to that conclusion – that might makes right. This is the very essence of absolute or despotic government.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “According to this view, the criteria of what is just or unjust… Acts, policies, and laws are just to the extent that they serve and promote the general welfare or the common good; unjust to the extent that they detract from it.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 Mortimer Adler: “In my view of the matter, each of these three theories of justice is false when it claims to be the whole truth, excluding what is sound in the other two theories. … The reconciliation of the three conflicting theories of justice can be accomplished by avoiding the excessive claim each makes and by putting what is true in each of them together in a well-ordered manner.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 In discussing the philosophical branch of politics, we focus on "the ideas we act on in governing our social, political, and economic affairs."

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 For all who think reality exists independently of the mind and that reality is what it is regardless of how we think about it, the definition of truth is the agreement of thought with reality. What makes descriptive judgments true is that it corresponds to the way things are.

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Moral liberty lies in reason’s control of the passions. … It is possessed only by those who, in the course of their personal development, have acquired some measure of virtue and wisdom. … Moral freedom consists in our having a will that is habitually disposed by virtue to will as it ought. Human bondage is our enslavement by appetites and passions of our lower nature.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “An individual’s possession of it may vary from time to time and from place to place. … Our circumstantial freedom consists in our being able to do as we please – our ability to carry out an action (rightly or wrongly). Such freedom can be possessed and exercised by individuals of good or bad moral character. The person’s decision about an action to take may be morally virtuous or the opposite, but in either case, circumstances either permit or prevent him from carrying out the action.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “They appear to forget that the specific equality of kind of all members of the human species is also accompanied by individual inequalities of all sorts … in what individuals make of their own endowments, efforts, and attainments. Human individuals are not all equal in the way so many precision-made ball bearings are alike…all having the same properties without any difference in degree.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Our natural needs are the basis for distinguishing between the real goods to which we have a natural right and the apparent goods to which we do not have a natural right. That is the acquirement of which we may be privileged on condition that our seeking them does not interfere with anyone else’s acquirement of real goods.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Using the word ‘license’ to designate an illegitimate, unlawful, or unjust exercise to do as one pleases. … Otherwise is to ask anarchic freedom which is not compatible with living in a society cooperatively with other human beings.

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “As Aristotle said, the virtuous man does freely what the criminal does only from fear of the law….The criminal, however, does not suffer any loss of liberty when he refrains from breaking the law, for what he wishes to do being unlawful and unjust, is something he ought not to do anyway, even if he were not constrained by law. His license to do as he wishes, not his liberty, has been taken away. Where our conduct does fall under the commands or prohibitions of law, the virtuous man is still able to do as he pleases, since he pleases to do what he ought.

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “…justice is the supreme value, a greater good than either liberty or equality, and one that must be appealed to for the rectification of errors with regard to liberty and equality.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The failure to observe and understand the need for limitations upon liberty and equality leads to serious errors about them and to irresolvable conflict between them.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “By being human we are equal - equal as persons, equal in our humanity. One individual cannot be more or less human than another, more or less of a person. The dignity we attribute to being a person rather than a thing is not subject to difference in degree. … The factual basis for the correct view is biological. All members of any biological species, human or otherwise, are alike in possessing the properties or powers that are genetically determined attributes of that species of living organism.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “One individual may put his native endowments to work in the production of wealth or other goods, while another with equal endowments, may squander his talents producing less. They must then be regarded as unequal in this respect. … With regard to individuals who make unequal contributions by the work they do or the goods they produce, justice may call for an inequality of results in the rewards they receive.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 Mortimer Adler: “Are there any grounds to justify the disenfranchisement of human beings who are by nature political animals? Infancy, mental disablement, and criminality. Criminal behavior justifies a deprivation of political liberty, as well as liberty of action. The criminal, by his own behavior, has himself forfeited the exercise of a right that is unalienably his as a human being.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Being by nature equal (in kind), they are all endowed by nature with certain unalienable rights, unalienable because they are inherent in man’s specific nature, not merely bestowed upon man by legal enactment. Legal enactment may be necessary to secure these rights, but it does not constitute their unalienability.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “For all who think reality exists independently of the mind and that reality is what it is regardless of how we think about it, the definition of truth is the agreement of thought with reality. What makes descriptive judgments true is that it corresponds to the way things are.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The only liberty to which we can make a claim upon society is the freedom to do as we please within the limits imposed by justice and that variant of circumstantial freedom that is the political liberty enjoyed by enfranchised citizens of a republic.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Living in organized societies under effective government and enforceable laws, as they must in order to survive and prosper, human beings neither have autonomy nor are they entitled to unlimited liberty of action. Autonomy is incompatible with organized society. Unlimited liberty is destructive of it. It is for this reason that the distinction between liberty and license cannot be dismissed or disregarded. When that distinction is understood and accepted, it follows that the individual who is prevented from doing what he pleases by just restraints suffers no loss of liberty.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Where he [the Libertarian] is wrong is in failing to see that such curtailments of freedom made in the interests of justice, are proper limitations on liberty. His error lies in asking for more liberty than justice allows.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “In short, should an individual have more liberty than he can exercise justly?”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Man too is a social animal. He naturally needs to live in association with other human beings in organized societies. … A political community is a society that is thus constituted. Being political in nature means that man by nature needs political liberty – the freedom of an enfranchised citizen. This is the basis of man’s entitlement, by natural right, to political liberty. Deprived of political liberty, as slaves are or as the subjects of a despot no matter how benevolent, human beings cannot fulfill their natural propensities and lead fully human lives. They are deprived of a real good to which they are naturally entitled.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 Faith consists of beliefs voluntarily espoused, beliefs that are totally beyond the reach of evidence and rational processes. ‘I believe,’ said an early Christian, Tertullian, ‘because it is absurd’ - that is, nonrational.

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Of these three major forms of freedom or liberty, the only one that needs to be regulated by justice is circumstantial freedom because what one wishes to do may be injurious to someone else.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “We are born with it in our possession. … It is freedom of choice – the liberty of being able to choose otherwise than we did. …There would be no sense at all in saying that we are entitled to have free will or freedom of choice. That is a good conferred on us by nature [whether we like it or not] … The lower animals are deprived of it, but we cannot say they are deprived of something they are entitled to.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “It would be equally devoid of sense to say that we are entitled to the moral freedom that consists of being able to will as we ought. We either acquire or fail to acquire such freedom through choices we ourselves have freely made.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 "An individual in prison with bars or chains prevent him from going elsewhere or doing otherwise. The restraints imposed by imprisonment impair his freedom of action, not his freedom of choice and not his moral liberty. “

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “In the literature devoted to the consideration of truth, there are two quite distinct questions that are often confused. One is the question: What is truth? … The other is: By what means or criteria can we determine whether this or that proposition is true or false?”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The definition of truth as correspondence or agreement of thought with reality does not immediately yield an answer to the second question [What is True?] … if a true proposition is one that accurately describes the way things really are, then if we act upon it, our action should work successfully … This is the pragmatic theory of how to determine whether our judgment about the truth of a proposition is correct or not.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The test of coherence is governed by the principle of incompatibility. If the human mind is confronted with an incompatibility between its prior judgments and a new judgment, it must seek intrinsic coherence or compatibility by choosing between its earlier judgments and the new one.

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Only justice is an unlimited good…One can want too much liberty and too much equality – more than is good for us to have in relation to our fellowmen, and more than we have any right to. Not so with justice. No society can be too just; no individual can act more justly than is good for him or for his fellowmen.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 For Plato, there were two worlds, not one – the sensible world of changing physical things that we apprehend by means of our senses and the world of intelligible objects that we apprehend by means of our intellects or minds…the world of ideas had for him a superior grade of reality. The physical things that we perceive through our senses come into being and pass away … continually in flux, changing in one way or another. They have no permanence … The world of changing physical things is thus for Plato a mere shadow of the much more real world of ideas. When we pass from the realm of sense experience to the realm of thought, we ascend to a higher reality…

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Circumstances that confirm enabling means upon individuals also give them the freedom to do what they wish. Sufficient wealth enables me to dine at the Ritz if I wish to. Deprived of such enabling means, the poor man is not free to dine at the Ritz."

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Let me summarize the four causes by describing them in the simplest terms possible. Because these statements about the four causes are so very simple, they may also be difficult to understand. We must pay close attention to the key words that are italicized in each statement.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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