mortimer adler how to speak how to listen

Adler And to secure these rights, just governments, the very governments instituted by men in deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Adler All men are created equal, they are endowed with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which means good. Adler In fact, five of the ideas appear in the second paragraph of the Declaration.

Studs Terkel Why I suppose you have those, those very phrases, the very phrase and ideas appear again and again, don't they, in the Declaration of Independence. And my effort in the last few books I've written, Aristotle for Everybody before this and in the book on How to Think About God and this book, is to deal with important ideas, which about a philosopher should be dealing with anyway, in language and in terms that anyone can understand, because I think, you know, these six ideas, three of them, truth, goodness, and beauty, the ideas we judge by and the basic values we employ in measuring things, and the other three ideas, liberty, equality, and justice, which are absolutely central in our understanding of politics and economics and society, and understanding of our American framework of government. And, and one of the great, one of the great troubles in my view of what has happened to philosophy in the 20th century academically, is it has become as technical and as professional, professional and specialized as mathematics or logic or physics or, or chemistry, and it's, it's lost its meaning for most people. Adler It's the - of all the academic disciplines, it's the only one that is not a specialty. One of the first things you say is that philosophy is everybody's business and that it's part of everyday being. And so I thought perhaps the reflections of Mortimer J. And his most recent book, How to Read a Book is certainly one of his most popular and indeed a bestseller, the most recent one is Six Great Ideas published by Macmillan. Studs Terkel Editors, rather, and director of the Institute of, of Philosophical Research that gave us the Syntopicon, we can perhaps talk about that a little, too. Adler who, you know, you knew him, people do, from the Great Books courses that he and Robert Maynard Hutchins instituted at the University of Chicago during those glory days at the University, and Professor Adler is chairman of the board of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

At the same now I was thinking of perhaps the most celebrated of our popular philosophers, of Mortimer J. Only philosophers can make a living.' He says, 'Look at Bertrand Russell.' He was very funny.

Studs Terkel A few years ago Mike Nichols in a, in a comic routine spoke of being - he was a British writer, and he says 'Poets can't make a living these days.' He - 'Playwrights can't, writers can't.

Mortimer adler how to speak how to listen