The Forgotten Emancipation

Amy Dru Stanley, at The New York Times, recalls for us the Enlistment Act which took effect on March 4, 1865.

"The Enlistment Act reached beyond the Emancipation Proclamation, which applied only to areas in rebellion. By declaring 'forever free' the black soldier’s wife and children, the act brought liberation to slaves owned by loyal masters in the border states – human property that Lincoln had pledged the Civil War would leave untouched."

At that time the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery entirely, had been passed by Congress and submitted to the states. It was ratified December 6, 1865.

(via University of Chicago Magazine)

From the Center: Understanding the world; Adler on Justice; Olmsted reviews Baggini;

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on Science or Philosophy as means of understanding the world
• Adler on justice as one of the Great Ideas
• Julian baggini on eating and virtue
• An early bad review of Huckleberry Finn

Here on the weblog, we've added Philosophy TV to the sidebar blogroll.

Center Files Amicus Curiae Brief Opposing Human Rights for Nonhuman Animals

Yesterday, I filed an amicus brief on behalf of The Center for the Study of the Great Ideas in opposition to a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) to release a chimp named Tommy from captivity in upstate New York. (The NRP is headed by attorney Stephen Wise, whose work on animal rights was recently featured in the Center's blog here. I last reported on the NRP's attempts to have the lower court release Tommy on a writ of habeas corpus on the Center's blog here. I've also blogged on the subject on my own website www.theoria.com).

Last week, the NRP filed a motion with NY's highest court, requesting that the court review the decision by a lower court which held Tommy is not a "person" under the law.

The amicus brief, filed with Max Weismann's permission, responded point-by-point to NRP's motion. The brief contends that the Appellate Division's rejection of the writ properly rested on its rulings that (a) no nonhuman animal has ever been considered a "person" for purpose of a common law writ of habeas corpus and (b) chimps should not be considered "persons" with legal rights, because "unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties."

In its latest attempt to persuade the courts that chimps are entitled to "personhood" under the law, the NRP suggested that the issue of personhood is a policy issue for the legislature to decide. But as our amicus brief points out, the NY legislature has never bestowed personhood upon any nonhuman animal. 

And as to who gets to decide the question, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), specifically rejected the notion that the question of personhood devolves upon the legislature; on the contrary, the high court decided that this was an issue for the courts to decide under the 14th Amendment's "concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action." Id. at 153, 158. (It's important to note that the ultimate result in Roe v. Wade is not the issue here; a judge on the NY Court of Appeals, a strong proponent of the pro-life position, agreed in an important dissenting opinion in the 1970's that leaving the issue of "personhood" up the legislature is the same argument used by the Nazi judge's at Nuremberg). At the end of the day, "personhood" is an issue to be determined by basic principle's of natural law.

Admirers of the works of Mortimer Adler may be interested in the following passage in our brief:

A chimpanzee has no personal right to freedom or liberty. Why? Because it has no correlative duty “not to violate or infringe any one’s rights in doing so.” As the Appellate Division properly pointed out, “unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions.”

         The correctness of the Appellate Division’s conclusion should be academic. To reach it, one need not accept the “social contract” theory referenced by the court. See, Richard L. Cupp, Jr., Children, Chimps, and Rights: Arguments from ‘Marginal Cases,’ 45 Ariz. St. L. J. 1 (2013); Richard L. Cupp, Jr., Moving Beyond Animal rights: A Legal Contractualist Critque, 46 San Diego L. Rev. 27 (2009). A far more comprehensive analysis, in amicus curiae’s view, was posited by the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. See, Mortimer J. Adler, The Difference of Man and The Difference It Makes (Holt 1969) and Intellect (Macmillan 1990). In a nutshell, non-human animals, having only an instinct to survive rather than a free will to choose otherwise, can neither understand nor carry out moral or legal obligations, such as respecting the life, liberty, and property of others. As the Appellate Division concluded, this incapacity to bear legal responsibilities “renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights—such as the fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus—that have been afforded to human beings.” 

The New York Court of Appeals is expected to rule on the NRP's motion in May, 2015. If the Court accepts the appeal, a briefing schedule will be announced. If the Court of Appeals rejects the appeal, the NRP could seek review by the United States Supreme Court.  We'll keep you posted...

Aristotle for almost everybody

Joseph Reninger reviewed Aristotle of Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (1978), by Mortimer Adler, at Patheos.

How to become smarter

Charles Assisi discusses the importance of reading to the success of organizations and individuals, at Live Mint.

"So, as much as the title may sound humiliating and the kind you don’t want to be seen with, How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler is a must-have. A classic first published in the 1940s, an updated version of the book is now available. It articulates in excruciating detail how to deal with books and get the most out of them."

He goes on to give his brief summary of the book.

What ISIS Really Wants

Graeme Wood at The Atlantic

From the Center: Adler on education versus training, Samuelson on community college philosophy, Kimball on culture

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on general education versus vocational training
• Scott Samuelson on teaching philosophy in community college
• Roger Kimball on the lessons of culture

In the blog sidebar, we've added a link to a general index to The Great Ideas Today, annual supplement to Great Books of the Western World, published 1961 through 1998. On the blog, we've added a page (tab in header) to an index to The Great Ideas Today by volume and the contents of each.

Animal Personhood: A Debate

Here are video and audio recordings of this event, sponsored by the Federalist Society's Practice Groups, and featuring John W. Wade Professor of Law of Pepperdine University School of Law and Steven M. Wise, President of Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc.

"Is the concept of animal rights more about the restriction of human activity, or about truly granting rights to animals? Do current animal welfare laws provide sufficient protections to animals? Should animals have the ability to challenge their own detention, though the writ of habeas corpus?"

The Plan of Graded Reading in Gateway to the Great Books

Gateway to the Great Books is a ten volume companion set to Great Books of the Western World. It was originally published in 1963, and is still offered in eBook form by Britannica.

It includes a number of editorial features, like the first volume's Syntopical Guide and Appendices. One thing it did not include was a table of contents for the entire set, as opposed to individual volumes. You'll find it here on the Center's website. [link fixed -ed.] This, and other information about the set, is now also available at Wikipedia.

Appendix I is a Plan of Graded Reading, which is in the Google Books edition of Volume 1. Not included are Appendix II, Recommeneded Novels, and Appendix III, Recommended Anthologies of Poetry, works not contained in the set.

Just in case someone is looking for suggestions for a third edition of GBWW, Wikipdedia notes that GGB "also contained editorial introductions to the selections, which were generally not included in the Great Books" and "The Gateway volumes were single-column with large, readable type."

Love Is a Fallacy

A short story by Max Shulman

The (ethical) Hazards of Other Planets

Chuck Klosterman in The Ethicist column at The New York Times poses a question in terms of space travel, or time travel, but then generalizes.

"Is there a moral problem with allowing someone to try an act in which the outcome is not only dangerous but also impossible to anticipate?"

Top 10 vicious literary hatchet jobs

With this year's Hatchet Job of the Year Award due to be announced, let's look back at Rupert Hawksley's all-time list at The Telegraph [link updated -ed..

From the Center: Leaders, their education and virtue; Dear Dr. Adler;

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• How business leaders would benefit from studying great writers
• Humility as a virtue for leaders
• Adler's philosophical advice column

Here on the weblog, we've added The Academe Blog to the Books and Ideas Blogroll in the sidebar.

Meet-the-Author: Tim Lacy

Tim Lacy posted the text of his recent talk at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

"Occasioned by the publication of my 2013 book, The Dream of a Democratic Culture, herein I lay out how I first encountered the great books idea as a research topic, as well as what I discovered..."

From the Center: Adler on lifelong learning, Brenzel on classical education

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on school versus education

  "Why, Bertrand Russell asks, is this 'joy of mental adventure' so common in children, so rare in later life?"

• Yale's Jeffery Brenzel on The Essential Value of a Classic Education

Monopoly: Kafka Edition

Monopoly: Kafka Edition pic.twitter.com/5trQ0cw4Zc

— the dead author (@thedeadauthor) January 19, 2015

Macbeth and the Moral Universe

Harry V. Jaffa at the Claremont Review of Books

Was Cosmic Inflation the 'Bang' of the Big Bang?

A. Guth (Alan Guth) gives his answer, briefly, at Cal Tech.

He also discussed 'The Inflationary Universe' at The Edge.

Diane Wolkstein: On Storytelling

A brief video at The Great Books Foundation,

"Diane Wolkstein, storyteller extraordinaire, visited our Chicago office in 2013 and discussed the nature of storytelling, the human need for stories, and where the need comes from. Diane’s work is a perennial Great Books favorite, with three of her stories appearing in Junior Great Books anthologies: 'Mother of the Waters' (Junior Great Books Read-Aloud, Pegasus Series), 'The Banza' (Junior Great Books Series 3, Book One) and 'White Wave' (Junior Great Books Series 3, Book Two)."

A stilled voice heard

Franklin Foer reviews A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe, edited by Nina Howe, at The New York Times.

"A voice still heard. What a sad, anxious assertion of the great critic’s relevance. Alas, the claim is not terribly true, not anymore."

True enough, though, to read the book?

You can consider Howe's essays, some in this collection, some not, linked in Sam Tanenhaus's review a few month's back, also in the Times. And The New Republic has gathered Howe's work as a contributor at its website.

Among Believers

William Dalrymple reviewed The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Volume I at The New York Times.

He notes a distinction between classical Western and Eastern literature.

"It is unlikely... that many more great works of classical European literature will surface; the canon of ancient European literature we have now is likely to remain largely unchanged a century hence.

"It is often assumed that the same is true for the other great classical literatures of the world, but this is very far from the case. In particular, the rich treasures of ancient Indian literature remain almost completely unexplored, even to those few who can read languages such as Sanskrit or classical Tamil. For there survives in manuscript form in libraries across South Asia a corpus of literature which is, at a conservative estimate, a thousand times larger than what has survived in Greek."

Schall on 'Lessons of Paris 1/7'

Not long ago, an essay by Fr. James Schall, S.J. sent to Center members turned out to be quite controversial. While some thought it insightful, others thought it offensive. (Fit only to be relegated to the blog, one of the latter said. Ouch!)

Returning to his earlier subject, Fr. Schall recently wrote on what he sees as the 'Lessons of Paris 1/7', at MercatorNet.

From the Center: Krystal on the canon, Adler on Infinity

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Arthur Kristal on the canon.

  "It wasn’t until John Erskine of Columbia and Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago lobbied, in the 1920s, for a list of indispensable works in literature and philosophy that the canon became equated with a syllabus.

  "More than anyone else, however, it was Erskine’s student Mortimer J. Adler who popularized the idea of the Great Books. Adler, who also ended up at Chicago, went on to write the best-selling How to Read a Book (1940), whose appendix of 'Recommended Reading' (all of it 'over most people’s heads') served as a springboard for the 1952 Encyclopædia Britannica’s ancillary fifty-four-volume series of Great Books of the Western World, selected by — who else? — Adler and Hutchins."

• Mortimer Adler on Infinity as a Great Idea.

From the Center: Isaiah Berlin on the 20th Century, Adler on Induction

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Why and how Isaiah Berlin attributed the horrors of the 20th Century not to fear, greed, jealousy, or love of power, but to ideas;
• Mortimer Adler on Induction as one of the Great Ideas;
• Birthday greetings for Adler's last living birthday in 2000.

From the Center: Adler on reading and in school

This past week's communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on how to approach reading difficult material;
• Adler's school days; and
• a request for volunteer technical help.

What the Fate of The New Republic Reveals

Russ Douthat at The New York Times.

"The New Republic as-it-was, the magazine I and others grew up reading, was emphatically not just a 'policy magazine.' It was, instead, a publication that deliberately integrated its policy writing with often-extraordinary coverage of literature, philosophy, history, religion, music, fine art.

"It wasn’t just a liberal magazine, in other words; it was a liberal-arts magazine, which unlike many of today’s online ventures never left its readers with the delusion that literary style or intellectual ambition were of secondary importance, or that today’s fashions represented permanent truths."

P.S. Any suggestions of other print or online publications that could be considered a 'liberal-arts magazine'?

From the Center: Derbyshire on Goldstein's Plato, Adler on Immortality

This past week's communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Jonathan Derbyshire reviews Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein; and
• Mortimer Adler discusses the Great Idea of Immortality .

NY Court: Chimps not 'persons' with human rights

Today, a three-judge panel of the NY State Appellate Division ruled unanimously to deny personhood to a chimp named Tommy. Last year, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a writ of habeas corpus to deliver the chimp from private captivity.

In the amicus curiae brief I filed with the appellate court earlier this year, I contended that the writ of habeus corpus has only ever applied to human beings and that no non-human animal can be equated with a human being:

"Jurisprudentially, rights follow from duties....If a creature cannot intelligibly be said to have obligations, it cannot be said to have rights."

For support, my brief cited two of Mortimer J. Adler's books: The Difference of Man and The Difference It Makes (Henry Holt 1969) and Intellect (Macmillan 1990). 

Today, the court agreed on the same grounds:

"Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions. In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights – such as the fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus – that have been afforded to human beings."

The Nonhuman Rights Project has vowed to appeal to New York State's highest court. If they do, I will follow with another amicus brief. Stay tuned...

What Competency-based Education Cannot Do: Part I

Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, argues at SignPosts for Liberal Education that

"for liberal education, teachers and classes are essential. Why? Because it’s not just about information, but about dialectic."

He opposes education based on testing student competency in various areas.

"In particular, the highest goal of dialectic—namely, dependable judgment based on thorough consideration of issues that really matter in life—is not assessable by 'objective' testing instruments. It can only be assessed by competent dialecticians who watch students’ progress over time as they grapple with ideas, listen to others, join with others in inquiry, become proficient at asking insightful questions, become deft at working through premises and consequences, and so on."

Thomas Aquinas College Offering New Two-Year Program In The 'Pretty Good Books'

As 'reported' at Eye of the Tiber,

"Thomas Aquinas College describes their new program syllabus as, composed exclusively of the just barely adequate texts that have, for good or for ill, kinda-sorta animated, for the lack of a better word, Western civilization."

(via Jay Gold)