Adler On: Beatitude

Idling and Rest
A Vision of the Future (1984), Chapter 2, fifth part

Defined
Adler's Philosophical Dictionary (1995)

--Terrence Berres

James Monroe -- Political Philosophy

I have found some good, but what I think are obscure quotes by James Monroe. He seems to be consider a kind of "ex-officio" founding father -- but was also a member of Virginia's anti-Federalists movement. Then a few years later he was elected from Virginia as a U.S. Senator under our current Constitution (he was also a delegate to Congress from Virginia under the Articles).


Famous Quotes by James Monroe

"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."

"The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil."

"Never did a government commence under auspices so favorable, nor ever was success so complete. If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy."

"In this great nation there is but one order, that of the people, whose power, by a peculiarly happy improvement of the representative principle, is transferred from them, without impairing in the slightest degree their sovereignty, to bodies of their own creation, and to persons elected by themselves, in the full extent necessary for the purposes of free, enlightened, and efficient government."

America anti-intellectual? Now, let's think this out

Carlin Romano in The Philadelphia Inquirer with a review of Susan Jacoby's new book.

the greatest flaw of The Age of American Unreason, a spirited, provocative polemic by a veteran freelance journalist and author who writes books on weighty subjects usually handled by professors (e.g., justice, the history of secularism), is that it feeds the notion of American anti-intellectualism as a no-brainer truth.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

--Terrence Berres

How liberalism can collapse into nihilism through materialism or false idealism

Leo Strauss, the father of Neoconservatism, predicted that liberalism must give way to relativism and that relativism must eventually give way to nihilism.

Adler On: Autonomy

Defined
Adler's Philosophical Dictionary (1995)

--Terrence Berres

On the Reading of Books

Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes
knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it.” The
one is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s,
cannot read at all. The other is the ignorance of those who have
misread many books. They are, as Pope rightly calls them,
bookful of blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been
literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The
Greeks had a name for such mixture of learning and folly, which
might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages.
They are all sophomores.

Being well read too often means the quantity, too seldom the
quality, of reading. It was not only the pessimistic and
misanthropic Schopenhauer who inveighed against too much
reading, because he found that, for the most part, men read
passively and glutted themselves with toxic overdoses of
unassimilated information. Bacon and Hobbes made the same point.
Hobbes said: “If I read as many books as most men, I should be
as dull-witted as they.” Bacon distinguished between “books to
be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be digested.”

Are You Happy?

Review essay by Sue M. Halpern, The New York Review of Books, April 3, 2008

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

--Terrence Berres

Firing Line -- How to Think About God

A partial transcript (in video dissolves) of Dr. Adler's appearance on Firing Line in support of the publication of How to Think About God (1980).

-Mark Brawner

Firing Line -- Intellect: Mind Over Matter

Audio/slide show of William F. Buckley's interview with Mortimer Adler on the occasion of the publication of Intellect: Mind Over Matter. This is the second half only of the program, in which moderator Michael Kinsley engages Adler and his host.

The audio is, alas, of poor quality. See also, for ease of reference:

Part two and part three.

-Mark Brawner

Kierkegaard in '08

video by greyshino at YouTube

--Terrence Berres

The founding of the 20th century conservative movement: The restoration of traditionalism

Hutchins promulgated the idea of the "great ideas" and the "great conservation." According to Hutchins, a set of great ideas has been enthusiastically discussed by Western thinkers in every generation from Homer to Hemingway. These ideas have an everlasting quality because men in every generation and every place are interested in them. This is where Hutchins' perennialist philosophy came into play.

Hutchins' younger colleague Mortimer Adler identified 102 great ideas, and Hutchins' committee identified 130 great Western thinkers and writers. Adler's Synopticon summarizes what these great thinkers said about each of the great ideas.

Adler On: Art

Defined
Adler's Philosophical Dictionary (1995)

--Terrence Berres

Nietzsche Attack Ad

video by stookes at YouTube (viewer discretion is advised)

(via Pertinacious Papist)

--Terrence Berres

Good Instincts

Jim Holt in The New York Times, March 9, 2008

By the logic of natural selection, any tendency to act selflessly ought to be snuffed out in the struggle to survive and propagate. So if someone seems to be behaving as an altruist — say, by giving away a fortune to relieve the sufferings of others — that person is really following the selfish dictates of his own genes.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

--Terrence Berres

Libertarian primer on the Constitution

Today's Wisconsin State Journal includes some items unrelated to the retirement of Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, including this column by Louise Dotter of Spring Green in which she quotes Mortimer Adler.

(via WisOpinion)

--Terrence Berres