Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography by Mortimer J. Adler (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 3~5 Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography. By MORTIMER J. ADLER. New York: Macmillan, 1977. Pp. 349 with index. $12.95. The renaissance of the study of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas which began in the mid-nineteenth century and ended in the mid-twentieth "scholastica tertia" has its own history, now being unfolded in some detail. Within it, however, only bits of the story of the shape which this revival took in the United States in the second quarter of the twentieth century have come to light. Publishing records and histories of higher education, especially Roman Catholic, relate some institutional facts about it. Anecdotes and random facts reveal its power in depth: Thomas Merton's reading and study of St. Thomas, especially with Daniel Walsh at Columbia , matured his conversion and monastic vocation. Graduate students at Columbia and Chicago, after reading St. Thomas, became Catholics, even priests, and went on as thinkers and writers to exercise a large influence in the intellectual and religious life of the American Catholic community. Without much faith in the project, Bennett Cerf amiably agreed one day to the suggestion of an official of the Archdiocese of New York, then neighbors with Random House in the Villard House, to publish The Basic Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the sales success of which then amazed all. Walter Farrell's four volume "A Companion to the Summa" outstripped all sales expectations and gave birth to an industry: "Theology for the Laity," lectures on St. Thomas, and created a genre:" College Theology." In 1946 Benziger Brothers re-published in three volumes a translation of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas which was first put in print in 1916, and could never keep it in print after that. Of the reasons for this unique American revival, and of the personalities who fueled and nourished it, almost nothing systematic has been written. For this reason Mortimer J. Adler's autobiography Philosopher at Large will supply a great need. For during twenty years of that renaissance Adler, a young professor of philosophy at Columbia and later at the University of Chicago, was the most fascinating and perhaps the most influential figure of the American Thomist revival. In addresses, articles, and books, public discussion about law, education, psychology, and the central problems of philosophical theory, and often in hot controversy, his espousal of St. Thomas so dominated the period as for some to give it a name. Philosopher at Large is not autobiography in the usual sense; it is solely the story of Adler's intellectual development and activity. Little of his personal life is revealed; the year of his birth is not -mentioned, nor are incidents of his childhood (except in brief summary at the end of the book). Almost nothing of his marriages or his children, or of his religious convictions (except a brief summary of reasons he did not become a Catholic) is mentioned. The narrative begins with a fifteen year old boy reading John Stuart Mill 3~6 BOOK REVIEWS in the editorial offices of the old New York Sun, and advances steadily through his career at Columbia as student and teacher, dwelling especially on his association with John Erskine in the General Honors ("Classics of Western Civilization ") program. It takes up his fruitful friendship with Robert M. Hutchins, then at Yale and later at Chicago. The book describes the prolonged battle of curriculum reform at the University of Chicago, his role in the The Great Books, St. John's College, the Syntopicon, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Aspen, The Institute for Philosophical Research, his books on philosophy, law, and letters, and the incredibly successful How to Read a Boole through over fifty years to the present. He was so frequently involved in controversy and public debate at almost every stage that Carl van Doren wrote of him: " The ancient garden where most men Step daintily, in specimen dust He bulldozes; plows deep; Moves earth...." From Philosophy at Large an historian of Thomism in America will piece together the events of 1930-1945 which made up the Adler period. They began in New York at Columbia on a Saturday morning, the first of many, in...