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Mortimer AdlerMortimer Jerome Adler was born in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry salesman. At the age of 14 he dropped out of school at and went to work as a secretary and copy boy at the New York Sun, a prominent newspaper at the time, hoping to become a journalist. Shortly there after, he began taking night classes at Columbia University to improve his writing skills. At Colombia he became interested in the great philosophers and thinkers of Western civilization, especially after reading the autobiography of the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Adler was inspired to continue his reading after learning that Mill had read Plato when he was only five years old, while Adler had not yet read him at all. A book by Plato was lent to him by a neighbor and Adler became hooked. After receiving a scholarship he decided to study philosophy at Columbia University. Here he became so focused on philosophy that he failed to complete the required physical education course to earn a bachelor's degree. Despite this, his understanding of the classics was so great that Columbia University awarded him a doctorate in philosophy a few years after he began teaching there. Adler became an instructor at Columbia University in the1920s. He continued to participate in the Honors program, started by John Erskine, which focused on reading the great Classics. His tenure at the university included studying with such prominent thinkers as Erskine and John Dewey, the famous American pragmatist philosopher. This environment inspired his early interest in the study of the “Great Books” of Western Civilization. He also promoted the idea that philosophy should be integrated with science, literature, and religion. This early work resulted in the publication of Dialectic in 1927. Here Adler focused on providing a summation of the great philosophical and religious ideas of Western Civilization, ideas further influenced by his fascination with medieval thought and sensibility. It is this combination of interests that dominated his career at educational and research institutions like the University of Chicago, the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), the Institute for Philosophical Research, and the Aspen Institute. Adler helped to found the latter two institutes. At the Aspen Institute, he taught business leaders the classics for more than 40 years. He was also on the board of the Ford Foundation and the board of the Encyclopedia Britannica, where his influence was clearly shown regarding its policies and programs. He is also the co-founder, along with Max Weismann, of The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas. This center is accessible online at http://www.thegeatideas.org/. In 1930, Adler was appointed to the philosophy faculty at the University of Chicago. This appointment led to a conflict with the faculty because of several innovations he proposed in the school’s curriculum. “The changes he proposed were based on his central interests in the reading, discussion, and analysis of the classics and an integrated philosophical approach to the study of the separate academic disciplines.” These conflicts with the faculty led to his reassignment, in 1931, to the Law School as professor of the philosophy of law. While Adler continued his educational reforms on a more conservative basis he continued to integrate the concepts of seminars on “great books” and “great ideas” into his programs at other educational institutions. In 1952, his work in this area culminated in the publication of the “Great Books of the Western World” by the Encyclopedia Britannica Company. The work on which he had concentrated since his Columbia University days, together with a lecture series and essays produced in Chicago, resulted in several publications, including “The Higher Learning in America” (1936), “What Man Has Made of Man” (1937), and his best-selling “How to Read a Book”, published in 1940 and still in print, occasionally revised and updated since it was first published. In 1943, his “How to Think about War and Peace,” written in the social and political climate of WWII, was published as he continued his advocacy of a popular, yet intelligent, approach to public education. Throughout his career as a philosopher and educator, Adler wrote continually, consistently focusing on a multi-disciplinary and integrated approach to philosophy, politics, religion, law, and education. Such works as “The Common Sense of Politics” (1971), “Six Great Ideas” (1981), and “The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus” (1984), reflect this concern. He has also been involved with Bill Moyers in creating a series of video programs focusing on the subject of the American Constitution and biographies of the justices of the Supreme Court and has also been involved in producing videos on the Great Ideas. In 1977, Adler published an autobiography entitled “Philosopher at Large”, which was followed later by another autobiographical account entitled “A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher at Large” (1992). He has spent a lifetime making philosophy's greatest texts accessible to everyone. As he has written, “No one can be fully educated in school, no matter how long the schooling or how good it is.” And throughout his teaching career, Adler remained devoted to helping those outside academia educate themselves further. No one, no matter how old, should stop learning, according to Adler. He himself has written more than twenty books since he turned 70. UNDERSTANDING ETHICS To begin an ethical understanding of Adler we must start with what he calls the ethics of ‘common sense.’ The teleological ethics of common sense, argues Adler is the only moral philosophy that is "sound" in the way in which it develops its principles, "practical" in the manner in which it applies them, and "undogmatic" in the claims it makes for them. Why or in what way is it the only sound moral philosophy? By "sound" he means both adequate and true. So when he says that the teleological ethics of common sense is the only sound moral philosophy, he is saying that it is the only ethical doctrine that answers all the questions that moral philosophy "should" and "can" attempt to answer, neither more nor less, and that its answers are true by the standard of truth that is appropriate and applicable to normative judgments. In contrast, other theories or doctrines try to answer more questions than they can or fewer than they should, and their answers are mixtures of truth and error. Thus, teleological ethics includes the truth of naturalism in that it fully recognizes the moral relevance of empirical facts, especially the facts of human nature and human behavior, but without committing the error of naturalism--the error of denying the distinction between fact and value, the error of attempting to reduce normative judgments to statements of empirical fact. Avoiding this error, it also avoids the fallacy of attempting to draw normative conclusions from premises that are entirely factual. While agreeing with the intuitionists that ethics must have some principles that are intuitively known (that is, self-evident), teleological ethics maintains that there need be and can be only one such normative principle, and that all other normative judgments can be derived as conclusions from it. It thus avoids the error of regarding as intuitively known (and known without any relation to empirical fact) a whole series of propositions about moral duties or obligations that are not self-evident and depend for their truth upon matters of fact. The ethics of common sense also includes the truth of utilitarianism because its first principle is the end, the whole good to be sought, and because all its conclusions are about the partial goods that are either constitutive or instrumental. But it avoids the mistakes of utilitarianism that lie in a wrong conception of the ultimate end and in an erroneous treatment of the relation between the individual's pursuit of his own ultimate good and his obligations to the rights of others and the good of the community. By correcting the most serious failure of utilitarianism, one that it shares with naturalism--the failure to distinguish between needs and wants, or between real and apparent goods--it is able to combine a practical or pragmatic approach to the problems of human action in terms of means and ends with a moral approach to them in terms of categorical oughts. Whereas, in the absence of categorical oughts, utilitarianism and naturalism are merely pragmatic the ethics of common sense, at once teleological and deontological is a moral philosophy that is also practical. By virtue of its distinction between real and apparent goods, this pragmatic moral philosophy retains what truth there is in the various forms of "non-cognitive ethics," such as the "emotive theory of values"; it concedes that all judgments concerning values that are merely apparent goods are nothing but expressions of emotional inclinations or attitudes on the part of the individual who is making the evaluation. While conceding this, it avoids the error of supposing that all value judgments or normative statements must be emotional or attitudinal expressions of this sort, incapable of having any objective or ascertain able truth, comparable to that of descriptive statements of fact. It avoids this error by correcting the failure to recognize that the truth of descriptive or factual statements is not the only mode of objective truth, and that there is a standard of truth appropriate to normative judgments quite distinct from that appropriate to descriptive statements. The foregoing explanation of the soundness of teleological ethics--by virtue of its encompassing whatever is sound in other approaches, divorced from the errors with which it is mixed in these other approaches--also helps to explain why Adler argues that teleological ethics is the most practical form of moral philosophy, or the only practical form of it. DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? Another important contribution that Adler provides to the conversation regarding ethics is a response to the age old question; does the end justify the means? Can it sometimes be right to use a bad means to achieve a good end? Don't the conditions of human life require some shadiness and deceit to achieve security and success? First, Adler explains the sense in which the word "justifies" is used in the familiar statement. After that we can consider the problem you raise about whether it is all right to employ any means - good or bad - so long as the end is good. When we say that something is "justified," we are simply saying that it is right Adler argues. Thus, for example, when we say that a college is justified in expelling a student who falls below a passing mark, we are acknowledging that the college has a right to set certain standards of performance and to require its students to meet them. Hence, the college is right in expelling the student who doesn't. Now, Adler reminds us that nothing in the world can justify a means except the end which it is intended to serve. A means can be right only in relation to an end, and only by serving that end. The first question to be asked about something proposed as a way of achieving any objective whatsoever is always the same. Will it work? Will this means, if employed, accomplish the purpose we have in mind? If not, it is certainly not the right means to use. This brings us to the heart of the matter. Since a bad end is one that we are not morally justified in seeking, we are not morally justified in taking any steps whatsoever toward its accomplishment. Hence, no means can be justified - that is, made morally right - by a bad end. But what about good ends? Adler argues that we are always morally justified in working for their accomplishment. Are we, then, also morally justified in using any means which will work? Adler’s answer to that question is plainly yes; for if the end is really good, and if the means really serves the end and does not defeat it in any way, then there can be nothing wrong with the means. It is justified by the end, and we are justified in using it. People who are shocked by this statement, responds Adler, overlook one thing: If an action is morally bad in itself, it cannot really serve a good end, even though it may on the surface appear to do so. People in power have often tried to condone their use of violence or fraud by making it appear that their injustice to individuals was for the social good and was, therefore, justified. But since the good society involves justice for all, a government which employs unjust means defeats the end it pretends to serve. You cannot use bad means for a good end any more than you can build a good house out of bad materials. It is only when we do not look too closely into the matter that we can be fooled by the statement that the end justifies the means. We fail to ask whether the end in view is really good, or we fail to examine carefully how the means will affect the end. This happens most frequently in the game of power politics or in war, where the only criterion is success and anything which contributes to success is thought to be justified. Success may be the standard, by which we measure the expediency of the means, but expediency is one thing and moral justification is another. ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS For guidance on moral philosophy Adler turns first and foremost to Aristotle. “In my opinion, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, properly construed, is the only sound, pragmatic, and undogmatic work in moral philosophy that has come down to us in the last twenty-five centuries (it is the ethics of common sense and is both teleological and deontological). Its basic truths are as true today as they were in the fourth century B.C. when that book was delivered as a series of lectures in Aristotle's Lyceum.” He goes on to say that “instead of trying to expound Aristotle's Ethics in summary fashion, I am going to state the indispensable conditions that must be met in the effort to develop a sound moral philosophy that corrects all the errors made in modern times.” The definition of prescriptive truth, which sharply distinguishes it from the definition of descriptive truth. Descriptive truth consists in the agreement or conformity of the mind with reality. When we think that that which is, is, and that which is not, is not, we think truly. To be true, what we think must conform to the way things are. In sharp contrast, prescriptive truth consists in the conformity of our appetites with right desire. The practical or prescriptive judgments we make are true if they conform to right desire; or, in other words, if they prescribe what we ought to desire. In order to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, we must formulate at least one self-evident prescriptive truth, so that, with it as a premise, we can reason to the truth of other prescriptives. Hume correctly said that if we had perfect or complete descriptive knowledge of reality, we could not, by reasoning, derive a single valid ought. Modern efforts to get around this barrier have not succeeded, first because modern writers have not had a definition of prescriptive truth, and second because they have not discovered a self-evident prescriptive truth. The distinction between real and apparent goods must be understood, as well as the fact that only real goods are the objects of right desire. Now, in light of the definition of prescriptive truth as conformity with right desire, we can see that prescriptions are true only when they enjoin us to want what we need, since every need is for something that is really good for us. If right desire is desiring what we ought to desire, and if we ought to desire only that which is really good for us and nothing else, then we have found the one controlling self evident principle of all ethical reasoning--the one indispensable categorical imperative. That self-evident principle can be stated as follows: we ought to desire everything that is really good for us. In all practical matters or matters of conduct, the end precedes the means in our thinking about them, while in action we move from means to ends. But we cannot think about our ends until, among them, we have discovered our final or ultimate end--the end that leaves nothing else to be rightly desired. The only word that names such a final or ultimate end is "happiness." No one can ever say why he or she wants happiness because happiness is not an end that is also a means to something beyond itself. The fifth condition is that there is not a plurality of moral virtues (which are named in so many ethical treatises), but only one integral moral virtue. There may be a plurality of aspects to moral virtue, but moral virtue is like a cube with many faces. The unity of moral virtue is understood when it is realized that the many faces it has may be analytically but not existentially distinct. In other words, considering the four so called cardinal virtues--temperance, courage, justice, and prudence--the unity of virtue declares that no one can have any one of these four without also having the other three. This explains why a morally virtuous person ought to be just even though his or her being just may appear only to serve the good of others. Acknowledging the primacy of the good and deriving the right therefrom. The primacy of the good with respect to the right corrects the mistake of thinking that we are acting morally if we do nothing that injures others. Our first moral obligation is to ourselves--to seek all the things that are really good for us, the things all of us need, and only those apparent goods that are innocuous rather than noxious. CONCLUSION 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. Adler argues that this 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. In order to explain Adler points out the distinction between perfections of all sorts (of body, of character, and of mind) and possessions of all sorts (economic goods, political goods, and the goods of association) carries with it a distinction between goods that are wholly within our power to obtain and goods that may be partly within our power but never completely so. The latter in varying degrees depend on external circumstances, either favorable or unfavorable to our possessing them. However, Adler goes on, not all goods that are personal perfections fall entirely within our power. Like external goods, some of them are affected by external conditions. According to Adler the only personal perfection that would appear not to depend upon any external circumstances is moral virtue. Whether or not we are morally virtuous, persons of good character would appear to be wholly within our power -- a result of exercising our freedom of choice. 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