The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUEST: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. MORTIMER ADLER "MORTIMER ADLER SUMS UP" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the Firing Line program (#954/2222) taped in New York City on November 30, 1992, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1992 NATIONAL REVIEW
Fifty years ago Mortimer Adler wrote his book, The Dialectic of Morals, in which after ten years' experience with students, he repeated and then attempted to answer sequentially the questions that led and continue to do to so many men and women, questions concerned with ethics, to judge fruitless any research to distinguish def initiv~ly what is wrong and what is right. That was also about 50 books ago. Mortimer Adler now gives us a moral and intellectual autobiography, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror, in which he subsumes so many questions of general interest. He already concludes, which will not surprise his many followers, that Aristotle was right in his ethical f orrnulations and that lesser ethicists are, well, lesser thinkers. Dr. Adler, who received his PhD from Columbia in 1928, is almost certainly the best-known practicing American philosopher, who, as he approaches his ninetieth birthday, continues with a slavishness thought to have been rendered unconstitutional by the 13th Amendment [laughter] to serve his muse. He does this, so to speak, on the side, serving as the principal figure in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Great Books Foundation and the Aspen Institute. I note with some pride that he has appeared as a guest on Firing Line more often by far than any other figure, living or dead. In this devastatingly brief half hour, I propose to ask him questions in the same order in which he poses those questions to himself in his autobiography, the third part of which is called, "Reflections About My Life as a Whole," and he begins with teaching and learning. Dr. Adler, what are your findings on the art of teaching and learning? My experience, Bill, is that I have learned more from teaching than I ever learned as a student. In fact, I would almost say the teacher who does not learn from teaching is not teaching at all. Since teaching is a cooperative art, one in which the teacher works with the nature, not gives the nature anything-- What do you do with that aphorism that the Socratic manner is not a game at which two people can play? It is not a game at which-- Because actually the- doesn't he? The teacher has got to know where he's going, Yes, but he has to also serve the student by helping the student to activate his own mind. If one thing were known to all teachers, that nothing is ever learned from a teacher--ever from a teacher--but everything that is learned is 1
learned actively by the activity of your own mind, with or without the help of a teacher. The teacher only helps and their job is to help the student learn by the use of his own mind. What do you mean when you refer to the ffi~ ffi:~ifi.ffijg mode or the maieutic manner? That's the Socratic manner. And Socrates was a good teacher because he always led the student on by asking questions. In fact, he claimed not to know the answers to the questions he was-- MR. BUCKLEY: But that was a device, wasn't it? I think largely it was a device, yes. Is it a device at your hands? questioning I am really the student No, I think not. I think the Socratic manner of is a little too concealed. I find that in teaching pursuing this myself with the student and helping get on with the thinking for himself. Well, but does the maieutic mode presuppose that you will get from the student stuff that was in his mind that he didn't know was there or else that he had not even organized before? That is correct. The questions should be such that they pose to the student grounds for thinking. There's no learning without thinking, and the thinking done by the student is activated by the questions in the maieutic mode that the instructor asks. I had a professor who said to me, "I'm not nearly as bright as my students. I have to think before I write." [laughter] I always do that. Well, let's move on to the second major category, in which you talk about the vocation of philosophy. The general impression in the Western world is that a philosophist is a recluse who runs to the attic of a library and sort of hides out with odd thoughts that were seriously talked about generations and centuries ago. You've never treated philosophy in that way at all. No, I think, Bill, that-- I know it's going to sound like-- I think I'm the only philosopher in the United states who has written 50 philosophical books who is not a 2
professor of philosophy. And I think I wouldn't have written those books if I had been in the university. I think one of the most happy accidents of my life is leaving the academic scene. I'm simply not-- I'm an academic misfit. Well, let me ask you what you-- Are you saying that if you had stayed in the academic scene you would have been so absorbed in research oriented directly to that profession that you would not have had the time to do what you did, or what? I think that being non-professorial I was able to write books, as the professors don't write them, for the general public. I mean, I have always tried to write philosophy for Everyman to read. A book I wrote many years ago, Aristotle for Everybody, was a book like that. It seemed to me that Aristotle was capable to being explained to everybody in simple terms. I've never used technical language-- Well, you also wrote How to Read a Book. That's right. And in that chapter on the vocation of philosophy, I think I explained how one writes a book. Someone once said, "Why don't you write a book on how to write a book?" Well, I did it in this book here. I explained how I write a book. I get my publishers to give me a contract well in advance of writing it by giving them the title. And with the title I give them an outline, a tentative outline, which is the table of contents. And that signing the contract in advance happens in July or August. At the beginning of September I take a series of folders, one for each chapter. And during the year I keep on thinking about it and drop notes into those folders according to the chapters. I sometimes revise it, revise the table of contents, a little bit, but not very much. I've got a good slant on the book and the table of contents is written before the book is written. And when I sit down to write the book, I take those folders out and I don't think. I write. I separate the-- I think most authors don't do this. I do not combine thinking and writing. All the thinking has been done in the folders. So in effect you are simply transcribing thoughts that you have already accumulated. I'm solving the rhetorical problem of how do you explain to the reader in simple terms, words of one syllable, short sentences, short paragraphs. And once you get started, the book almost writes itself. I've got to learn that technique. 3
There's one further rule. And that is the rule of idling in the afternoon. I get to the typewriter at seven in the morning and I finish a chapter--ten, 12, 15 pages--by 10:30 or 11. I then mark it up and send it to Chicago for transcription. You mean you write by hand? You say transcription. Or are you dictating? No, I send my marked-up manuscript to my secretary for re-typing, which she then types and Xeroxes and sends back to me. stuff? Does she get holographic stuff or typewritten Typewritten stuff. Okay. And in the afternoon I sit and look at the ceiling. I don't go to sleep, but I allow my mind to be active of purpose, not moving. So that all kinds of things that I've shut out of my mind in the morning come back to me in the afternoon and I sit there with a piece of paper in hand and make notes for the next day's work. So I get up the next morning and I'm ready to write that chapter. Idling in the afternoon is a very important part of the job. Well, that's hardly idling. It is idling. Idling is when the motor is turning over but the car is going nowhere. [laughter] And I'm conscious but I'm not thinking purposely. I'm ~ot going anywhere. It allows everything to come into my mind, don't you see? I remember reading Margaret Coit's biography of John Calhoun years ago and she said that on Sunday mornings he would plow the fields, and then he would come back, have lunch and simply sit down and write out the speech--he had those great orations-- Yes. --the speech that he had thought through as he was plowing the field, so he was not idling. No. He was simply engaging in some activity even as some modern professor might, say, drive a car. 4
That's right. Well, let me ask you this. You disdain the distinction between a professional philosopher and an-- Professorial. --active philosopher. Professorial. Yes. But you disdain the notion that philosophy is not a useful study-- I certainly do. --for people in everyday life. Now when you make that point, is it because in your judgment people who give philosophical attention to the order of their thinking become endowed with a prescriptive sense of orientation? They can face moral problems with a background that's instantly evoked. No, I think the difference between my work and the writings of the professorial philosophers in the universities is, they write for one another and for the j ournals, and I write-- I'm proudest of the fact that in most of my books there are no footnotes. It doesn't need documentation. Everything is explained--most everything is explained--in the text. And my audience is Everyman. I am trying to write philosophy for John Doe, because I think everyone in a sense is morally obligated to face philosophical questions and think them through for themselves. Well, I know that that's your mission, but I am now asking you a practical question. Having learned philosophy from your books or from you, you endow your students with a practical knowledge that helps them to do what? To think through-- Well-- To think through dilemmas, to think through-- No. In fact the book I am just finishing right now, is a book called The Four Dimensions of Philosophy. It will be out next June. The metaphysical dimension you're acquainted with. That's speculative philosophy. The other three dimensions are moral philosophy, which is concerned with right and wrong and right desires, and beyond that there are two further dimensions which most people don't know about. I think philosophy is the understanding of the great ideas, the basic ideas that everyone faces. Understanding those ideas is the object of the thought. Intelligible objects is a very important part of the philosophical exercise. And finally, think of all the books, the titles of which are Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of 5
History. Philosophy is the understanding of the basic subject matters. Those two dimensions, the objective dimension, where you talk about the intelligible objects and great ideas, and the understanding of the basic subject matters are very important contributions that if philosophy didn't make them, there is nowhere to make them. I mean, the scientists-- Even when a scientist writes a book about the philosophy of science, he is writing as a philosopher, not as a scientist, because science is not the study of the philosophy of science, as philosophy is. Okay, well, let me ask you a very practical question. Let us suppose that a 30-year-old man or woman is confronted today with the question, ought the United States to risk the lives of 100 soldiers in order to deliver goods to Somalia. Let's say that the woman had studied under Dr. Adler and the man had not. To what extent has the woman profited from your intellectual training vis-a-vis the man-- I think-- --in accosting that question? Not at all. Tell me why. Because simple, practical questions of that kind have no answer that can be supported by reasoning. Why are they simple and practical? Well, they are practical all right. Either you go to Somalia and manage to get the goods we're sending there, the food we're sending there, to the starving people or not, and you're doing something about a country in anarchy. But-- I'm very surprised to hear you say that, because it seems to me that if that question had been put to Socrates, it would at least have made up one dialogue in which he ruminated over the implications of going and of not going, to statecraft, to the prestige of the Athenian, to,the idea of justice. But you see, nothing you know about justice, nothing you know about sovereignty, nothing you know about life and death, starvation, anarchy, helps you to answer that question because the practical implications of the question are: Are the lives of American soldiers worth risking on this occasion? How should they be protected? How long-- Think of all the subsidiary questions you have to ask. 6
But doesn't philosophy help you to construct a hierarchy of values? Yes, but that hierarchy of values won't tell you how to answer this particular question. it? But it will tell you what questions to ask, won't Well, it will tell you what to think about. But when you think about it, you are left with-- You see, the philosopher doesn't say--doesn't tell anybody what he should do here and now in this case. He's asking questions of principles. The principles often do not solve a problem when it's a concrete, practical situation here and now. Those are prudential questions. A man of prudence might be able to answer the question a little better than the philosopher. The philosopher stays at the level of principles and says what the principles--justice, mercy, helping human beings live-- But neither in your own life nor in the actions of a state are the concrete questions philosophical questions. Okay. Well, let's move to your next category, which fascinates me. You call it "A Philosopher's Religious Faith." Now am I correct in the general assumption that religious faith is considered in most professional or professorial philosophical departments as sometning extrinsic to the study of philosophy-- Yes. --and that you challenge that proposition and have for years? In metaphysics, the highest part of metaphysics is philosophical theology. Yes. The chapter I wrote about a philosopher's religious faith is the history of my battling with the problems of the existence of God. I wrote a book on that subject, How to Think About God. On which we spent an hour. We did. At the time I wrote the book I was a pagan. I had no faith, no religious belief. The book prepared me-- I got to the point where I got to the chasm, where the leap of faith across the chasm is required to believe in--not to establish the proof of God's existence--but to believe in God. They are quite different things. One is not a belief; 7
one is a rational affirmation of a true proposition that God exists. But on the other side of the chasm is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Mohammed and Jesus Christ, Moses. That's the God who is benevolent, who is providential, who cares for us-- Who has attributes. --and is concerned with our destiny. Now the leap across that chasm can be motivated by only one thing, by having some indication that one thinks that God is concerned with one's own life. After I proved God's existence philosophically, philosophic theology, I did not pray to God because the God I had proved existed was not worth praying to, because the proof does not-- Because He was inaccessible? No, because the one proposition the sacred theologian asserts is that God is morally good and is worth praying to because he is benevolent and caring. And so I realized that praying was a sign that one believed in God. And subsequent to my writing the book as a pagan and proved God's existence, I found myself praying to God. I said, "Mortimer, what are you doing?" supplication? Praying as a form of obeisance or for No, as-- As a supplicant? As a supplicant. Praying in t h e sense of admitting one's powerlessness in life without God's p ower. And it seems to me that when one prays to God, one believes in God as one does not believe in God if one merely affirms God's existence as a philosopher. So one's gone beyond phi losophy. The leap of faith is not from less sure grounds for the affirmation of God's existence to more sure grounds, but i t from the affirmation of God's existence to belief in God as benevolent, caring, just and merciful. Well, now your discovery of God was in the nature of an epiphany rather than in the nature of philosophical deduction. Absolutely. But having had that epiphany, you then proceeded--i know from a knowledge of your books--to make certain deductions which in your judgment directed thought 8
about God in a fruitful channel, but not necessarily led to His discovery. No. The leap of faith involves going beyond argument to what cannot be proved--cannot be proved. And the sign that one has made that leap is asking God for help. Well, but having done that, you then proceeded to attempt to cast light on any number of attempts to define God, which you thought were fruitless. I had done that earlier. Yes, you had done that earlier, that's right. Yes. All the intellectual thinking about God I had done at the point at which I wrote the book How to Think About God. And at the end of that book I indicated how one would get beyond this purely rational, philosophical theology. I think the word "natural theology" is a misnomer. St. Thomas, when he wrote the Summa contra gentiles for the Moors and Jews in Spain was writing as an apologist. He was an apologist for the Christian religion, explaining, defending it to these heathens--not heathens really, but persons outside the faith. And I don't think there is any natural theology. There is philosophical theology, Christian apologetics and sacred theology. Those are the three divisions of theology. Well, when you concluded that Aquinas was wrong, when you concluded that Aquinas was incorrect, it was in respect of which error that you thought outstanding in his construction? He allows himself as a Christian to assert that God is perfectly good. He is not-- That knowledge he has as a Christian and not as a philosopher. I think the Summa makes a slip at that point. Otherwise I think the proof--my proof of the existence of God really depends upon Aquinas. The one thing that Aquinas says in the Summa theologiae--not in the "five ways," which are not--that's Aristotle. Unfortunately st. Thomas had to prove God's existence way up there in front for rhetorical purposes. But in the credos on creation he says that being is the proper effect of God, which is to say that only God causes being. In other words there is no ex-- Nihilation. Except by God. All other causes are causes of change and motion--and all natural causes. But the only cause if one is talking about bringing something into being out of nothing, that is God's causation. Ex nihilation is God. 9
Well, let me ask you this question, which interests a lot of people who are, if not themselves students of philosophy, observers of philosophical life and of philosophical quarrels. Is the generality correct that a practicing Judeo-Christian has a tough time of it professionally in the colleges and universities which have the highest academic prestige? I think our universities don't have any philosophical theologians in them at all, and except for the Catholic universities where sacred theology is a subject that is taught--and not very well, by the way--not very well taught in Catholic universities-- I despair of-- That speech I gave in 1940 in New York, I told the professors who sat in the audience what I thought of them in respect of theological questions. It didn't win you any votes, huh? It didn't win me any votes at all. Thank you very much, Professor Adler, author of A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror, and happy birthday. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. 10