The Time of Our Lives. The Ethics of Common Sense by Mortimer J. Adler (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Time of Our Lives. The Ethics of Common Sense. By MoRTIMER J. ADLER. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. Pp. 361. $7.95. It says something for the vitality of philosophical thought, and for a philosopher who can formulate it, to argue that, while this century in no sense seems utopian in realization, it is still nonetheless a better century than any preceding one. The thirteenth century has been eloquently argued for as the " greatest of centuries." Mortimer Adler proposes the twentieth instead in his latest book, the third one developed from the annual series of Encyclopaedia Britannica Lectures delivered at the University of Chicago and designed, like the earlier two books, to stimulate the revival of traditional philosophical inquiry in this century. Adler's books are always models of organization, and the present one is no exception to well-planned development, philosophical exposition, and persuasion. I stress " persuasion," in the sense that Adler, to use a fruitful distinction of his own, concentrates on " first order " problems, which is to say, he argues about the basic issues that matter for man and not primarily about whether man can successfully transcend the use of his tools of communication (Adler solves this by doing it); and to develop philosophical exposition about first order problems is to argue persuasively in the philosophical sense of the term. The book has four major parts. Part One presents the commonsense answer to the question of how one can make a good life for one's self. Part Two states philosophical objections to the commonsense answer; the defense of this answer entails meeting philosophical critics of common sense on their own ground. Part Three, by expanding and deepening the commonsense answer, transforms the answer into moral philosophy. Part Four confronts the difficult social, economic, political, and educational problemsalong with the critics-