CHICAGO — Philosopher and education reformer Mortimer J. Adler, who sought to bring intellectualism to the general public with the Great Books program, his own best-selling books and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has died. He was 98.
The former Chicagoan died Thursday at his home in San Mateo, Calif.
As an author and editor, Adler built a publishing empire on an unlikely foundation: the philosophic system of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.
That system influenced his work as compiler of the Great Books of the Western World and as editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Earlier, in the 1930s, it was the underlying theme of the educational reforms Adler and his colleagues carried out at the University of Chicago under the leadership of then-president Robert Maynard Hutchins.
In an age of relativism and multiculturalism, Adler championed what he viewed as universal values and the Western tradition. His heroes — Aristotle, Aquinas, John Locke and John Stuart Mill — were assailed as irrelevant by student activists in the 1960s and subjected to "politically correct" attack in later decades.
But Adler said: "You can't be a philosopher and an activist. If you do, you get all mixed up."
While many modern philosophers aimed their teaching at graduate students and readers of specialized journals, Adler addressed the general public. The Great Books Foundation he and Hutchins established in 1946 oversaw groups in thousands of communities, offering people the opportunity to read and discuss classic works of literature.
Discussion of the books is a big part of the learning process, he stressed, saying, "Solitary reading is as horrible as solitary drinking."
Adler also wrote or co-wrote more than 45 books. Several, including the 1940 "How to Read a Book," became best sellers.
"Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read," Adler said. "I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write — and they do."
He thought it preposterous that people could ever consider their education as finished, saying adults should go on learning forever.
"Our minds, unlike our bodies, are able to grow and develop until death overtakes us," he said.
A Columbia University graduate, Adler had been a protege of Professor John Erskine, pioneer of the Great Books concept, and he helped teach seminars there until 1929, when Hutchins summoned him to the University of Chicago.
The revolution in undergraduate teaching launched by Hutchins, Adler and their colleagues at Chicago challenged accepted modern educational theory. It stressed a core curriculum that all students must study.
Adler left the university in 1952 to direct the Institute for Philosophical Research, but he retained his connection with Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In that year, the first edition of Britannica's Great Books of the Western World appeared. It incorporated the Syntopicon, Adler's codification of 102 "great ideas" culled from the Great Books' 74 authors.
He also coordinated production of The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, which appeared in 1974, when he became chairman of Britannica's board of editors.
The short, stocky Adler did not fit the popular image of a philosopher.
A New York native, he dropped out of high school at age 14 after being suspended from the school newspaper.
Aspiring to be a journalist, Adler became an assistant at a newspaper and enrolled in night courses at Columbia University. There, he discovered the writings of great thinkers such as Mill and Socrates and enrolled at Columbia full time.
At his 80th birthday party, Adler offered some rules for success and happiness. "Never work more than seven days a week or 12 hours a day, and sometimes a little less. To grow younger with the years, work harder as you get older." Adler also advised his guests: "Never exercise — as for dieting, eat only the most delicious calories."
Adler's first marriage ended in divorce; his second wife, Caroline, died in 1998. He is survived by sons Douglas, Philip, Mark and Michael.