great presentation - ivcc.edu · dr. mortimer j. adler (december 28, 1902-june 28, 2001) the great...

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3/20/2012 1 presented by Andrew Fisher March 2012 What is the Great Conversation? What are the Great Books? What is a Liberal Education? What are the Great Ideas? What is an Idea? What is an Idea? Why are there 102 Great Ideas? Who is Mortimer Adler? What is the Synopticon? What are the Sources for the Great Books? Q&A The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day. The goal toward which Western society moves The goal toward which Western society moves is the Civilization of the Dialogue.

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Page 1: Great Presentation - ivcc.edu · Dr. Mortimer J. Adler (December 28, 1902-June 28, 2001) The Great Books Foundation (with Robert Hutchins), the Basic Program of Liberal Education

3/20/2012

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presented by Andrew Fisher

March 2012

What is the Great Conversation? What are the Great Books? What is a Liberal Education? What are the Great Ideas? What is an Idea? What is an Idea? Why are there 102 Great Ideas? Who is Mortimer Adler? What is the Synopticon? What are the Sources for the Great Books? Q&A

The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day.

The goal toward which Western society moves The goal toward which Western society moves is the Civilization of the Dialogue.

Page 2: Great Presentation - ivcc.edu · Dr. Mortimer J. Adler (December 28, 1902-June 28, 2001) The Great Books Foundation (with Robert Hutchins), the Basic Program of Liberal Education

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The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry.

◦ Its dominant element is the Logos. ◦ Nothing is to remain undiscussedNothing is to remain undiscussed. ◦ Everybody is to speak his mind. ◦ No proposition is to be left unexamined. ◦ The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the

realization of the potentialities of the race.

This ideas of the Great Conversation are found in the Great Books.

These books are the means of understanding our society and ourselves.

They contain the great ideas that dominate us without our knowing itwithout our knowing it.

There is no comparable repository of our tradition.

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To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books.

All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations.

On the other hand, the revival of interest in these books from time to time throughout history has provided the West with new drive and creativeness.

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Great Books have salvaged, preserved, and transmitted the tradition on many occasions similar to our own.

The books contain not merely the tradition, but also the great exponents of the tradition.

Their writings are models of the fine and liberal arts.

They hold before us what Whitehead called They hold before us what Whitehead called “‘the habitual vision of greatness.”

These books have endured because men in every era have been lifted beyond themselves by the inspiration of their example.

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Sir Richard Livingstone said: “We are tied down, all our days and for the

greater part of our days, to the commonplace.

That is where contact with great thinkers, ggreat literature helps.

In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius.

And some of their vision becomes our own.”

They were the principal instrument of liberal education, the education that men acquired as an end in itself, for no other purpose than that it would help them to be men, to lead human lives and better lives than they wouldhuman lives, and better lives than they would otherwise be able to lead.

The aim of liberal education is Human excellence, both private and public (for man is a political animal).

It regards man as an end not as a means; It regards man as an end, not as a means; and it regards the ends of life, and not the means to it.

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For this reason it is the education of free men.

Other types of education or training treat men as means to some other end or are atmen as means to some other end, or are at best concerned with the means of life, with earning a living, and not with its ends.

The liberally educated man understands, by understanding the distinctions and interrelations of the basic fields of subject matter, the differences and connections between poetry and history science andbetween poetry and history, science and philosophy, theoretical and practical science; he understands that the same methods cannot be applied in all these fields; he knows the methods appropriate to each.

The liberally educated man comprehends the ideas that are relevant to the basic problems and that operate in the basic fields of subject matter.

He knows what is meant by soul He knows what is meant by soul. State, God, beauty, and by the other terms

that are basic to the insights that these ideas, singly or in combination, provide concerning human experience.

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The liberally educated man has a mind that can operate well in all fields. ◦ He may be a specialist in one field. ◦ He can understand anything important that is said

in any field and can see and use the light that it y gshed upon his own.

The liberally educated man is at home in the world of ideas and in the world or practical affairs, too, because he understands the relation of the two.

The method of liberal education is the liberal arts, and the result of liberal education is discipline in those arts.

The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen understand and thinklisten, understand, and think.

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As we live in the tradition, whether we know it or not, so we are all liberal artists, whether we know it or not.

We all practice the liberal arts, well or badly, all the time every dayall the time every day.

As we should understand the tradition as well as we can in order to understand ourselves, so we should be as good liberal artists as we can in order to become as fully human as we can.

The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable, Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being.

The only question open to him is whether he The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.

The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one.

The tradition of the West in education is the tradition of the liberal arts.

Until very recently nobody took seriously the suggestion that there could be any othersuggestion that there could be any other ideal.

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The great books were written by the greatest liberal artists. ◦ They exhibit the range of the liberal arts. ◦ The authors were also the greatest teachers. ◦ They taught one another. y g◦ They taught all previous generations, up to a few

years ago. ◦ The question is whether they can teach us.

To be a human being is to be endowed with the proclivity to philosophize. ◦ To some degree we all engage in philosophical

thought in the course of our daily lives. ◦ Acknowledging this is not enough. g g g◦ It is also necessary to understand why this is so and

what philosophy’s business is.

We explore everyday philosophy through the Great Ideas

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They are not technical terms. They do not belong to the private jargon of a

specialized branch of knowledge. Everyone uses them in ordinary conversation.

But everyone does not understand them as well as they can be understood, nor h d dhas everyone pondered sufficiently the questions raised by each of the Great Ideas.

To think one’s way through to some resolution of the conflicting answers to these

i i hil hiquestions is to philosophize.

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The Great Ideas Program aims to do no more than to provide some guidance in this process.

I am limiting the consideration of these ideas to an elementary delineation that will try to achieve three results for you.

First, it should give you a surer grasp of the various meanings of the word you use when you

lk b h Idtalk about the Idea.

Second, the delineation of each Idea should make you more aware than you normally are of questions or issues that you cannot avoid confronting if you are willing to think a little further about the Idea—basic ones, ones that human beings have been arguing about over the centuries.

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Third, in the consideration of each Idea, we are led to the consideration of other ideas. ◦ How does our understanding of truth affect our

understanding of goodness and beauty? ◦ How does our understanding of what is good and g g

bad carry us not only to an understanding of what is right and wrong, but also to an understanding of justice, and how does that affect our understanding of liberty and equality as well?

Contrary the popular belief

no special, technical competence of the kind that is required for the particular sciences and other special disciplines is required forand other special disciplines is required for thinking about the Great Ideas.

Everyone thinks about these ideas,

…wittingly or unwittingly

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In the vocabulary of daily speech, the word “idea” is generally used to name the subjective contents of our own minds--things that each of us has in his or her own mind.mind.

In order for a discussion between two or more persons to occur, they must be engaged in talking to one another about something that is a common object of their conjoined apprehensionconjoined apprehension.

Consider, for example, a number of individuals arguing with one another about liberty and justice, about war and peace, or about government and democracy.

They probably differ in the way they subjectively think about these matters.

h h ld f d h l Otherwise, they would not find themselves arguing about them.

But it must also be true that they could not be arguing with one another if they did not have a common object to which they were all referring.

That common object is an idea in the objective sense of the term.

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These two uses of the one word “idea”--the subjective use of it to signify the contents of an individual’s conscious mind and the objective use of it to signify something that is a common object being considered and discussed by two or more individuals--may be a source of confusion to many.

We might try to eliminate the source of confusion by We might try to eliminate the source of confusion by restricting the use of the word “idea” to its subjective sense and substituting another mode of speech for “idea” in its objective sense.

We might always use the phrase “object of thought” instead. Thus, freedom and justice, war and peace, government and democracy might be called objects of thought.

We live in two worlds: (1) the sensible world of the common

perceptual objects that we move around and use in various ways

(2) the intelligible world of ideas the (2) the intelligible world of ideas, the common objects of thought that we cannot touch with our bodies or perceive with our senses, but that, as thinking individuals, we can discuss with one another.

How many Great Ideas are there?

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The number could have been more or fewer than 102, but probably not much fewer than 92 or much more than 102.

Controversies since engaged in on the publication of the second edition of the Great Books of the Western World have whileWestern World have, while including much criticism of the choice of authors, conspicuously avoided criticizing the choice of ideas.

ANGEL ANIMAL ARISTOCRACY ART ASTRONOMY

AND COSMOLOGY

BEAUTY BEING

HYPOTHESIS IDEA IMMORTALITY INDUCTION INFINITY JUDGMENT JUSTICE

DESIRE DIALECTIC DUTY EDUCATION ELEMENT EMOTION EQUALITY

GOD GOOD AND EVIL GOVERNMENT HABIT HAPPINESS HISTORY BEING

CAUSE CHANCE CHANGE CITIZEN CONSTITUTION COURAGE CUSTOM AND

CONVENTION DEFINITION DEMOCRACY

JUSTICE KNOWLEDGE LABOR LANGUAGE LAW LIBERTY LIFE AND DEATH LOGIC LOVE MAN

EQUALITY ETERNITY EVOLUTION EXPERIENCE FAMILY FATE FORM

HISTORY HONOR

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PHYSICS PLEASURE AND

PAIN POETRY PRINCIPLE PROGRESS PROPHECY

SAME AND OTHER SCIENCE SENSE SIGN AND SYMBOL SIN SLAVERY SOUL

MATHEMATICS MATTER MECHANICS MEDICINE MEMORY AND IMAGINATION METAPHYSICS PROPHECY

PRUDENCE PUNISHMENT QUALITY QUANTITY REASONING RELATION RELIGION REVOLUTION RHETORIC

SOUL SPACE STATE TEMPERANCE THEOLOGY TIME TRUTH

METAPHYSICS MIND MONARCHY NATURE NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY OLIGARCHY ONE AND MANY OPINION OPPOSITION PHILOSOPHY

TYRANNY AND DESPOTISM UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR VIRTUE AND VICE WAR AND PEACEWAR AND PEACE WEALTH WILL WISDOM WORLD

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler (December 28, 1902-June 28, 2001) ◦ The Great Books Foundation (with Robert Hutchins),

the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago (with Robert Hutchins), ◦ The Great Ideas seminars at the Center for the

Study of The Great Ideas—all promoting liberal education through an understanding of great works of philosophy, literature, history, science, and religion.

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www.gutenberg.org for text www.librivox.org for audio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Booksfor the “Sample List” of the Great Books

The Great Books and their authors may be found in a separate handout.

◦The book has contemporary significance◦ it has relevance to the problems and issues of our timesand issues of our times

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◦ the book is inexhaustible◦ it can be read again and again with benefit ◦ "This is an exacting criterion, an id l th t i f ll tt i d b lideal that is fully attained by only a small number of the 511 works that we selected. ◦ It is approximated in varying degrees by the rest.

◦ the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individualsthe minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.

The Great Books of the Western World is a hardcover 60-volume collection (originally 54 volumes) of the books on the Great Books list. Many of the books in the collection were translated into English for the first time.translated into English for the first time.

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A prominent feature of the collection is a two-volume Syntopicon that includes essays written by Mortimer Adler on 102 "great ideas." Following each essay is an extensive outline of the idea with page references tooutline of the idea with page references to relevant passages throughout the collection. Familiar to many Americans, the collection is available from Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., which owns the copyright.

The two volumes that make up the Syntopiconcomprise a distinctive kind of index. The term "syntopicon" means a collection of topics.

In these two volumes there are nearly 3,000 topics parceled out among 102 ideas.

The purpose of these volumes is to provide a subject-matter index to writings included in thesubject-matter index to writings included in the Great Books of the Western World.

Underlying the creation of the Syntopicon is the conviction that the books in this set have an overall unity in the discussion of common themes and problems.

Such a unity exists because all of the books belong to the western tradition.

The arrangement of the Syntopicon. The Syntopicon consists of three main parts: the 102 idea-chapters, a Bibliography of Additional Readings, and an Inventory of Terms. The 102 chapters and the Inventory ofTerms. The 102 chapters and the Inventory of Terms, taken together, are the tools the reader uses to participate in the great conversation across the centuries within the context of each idea.

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Ways of using the Syntopicon. A perusal of the Syntopicon will make evident the various

ways it can be used. At the simplest level, a reader can take one topic within

one outline (Science 2a. The relation between science and religion, for example)

and look up the references to it. p A slightly broader range of interest may lead a reader to

do research on a major topic that has several subtopics: Liberty 1., Natural freedom and political liberty, is a good example, since the subject has eight subtopics.

Some individuals may be zealous enough to do research on a whole idea, by looking up all the references to all the topics in it.

The Pursuit of Truth◦ Openness to Inquiry◦ Openness to New Ideas◦ How to weigh the evidence

Understanding of Definition Understanding of Definition Human Nature is What it is Times Change People Don’t◦ What makes us human is the Great Ideas

Text for the Great Books may be found at: www.guternberg.org Audio for the Great Books may be found at:◦ www.librovox.org◦ www internetarchive org◦ www.internetarchive.org

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1. Robert M. Hutchins, The Great Conversation.2.http://www.thegreatideas.org/adlerbio_short

.html from Adler