Felix Adler's Concept of Worth

Felix Adler's Concept of Worth* ROBERT S. GUTTCHEN FELIX ADLER (1851-1933) is today better known as a teacher and as the founder of the Society of Ethical Culture (in 1876) than as a philosopher specializing in ethics. He taught a course in ethics at Columbia University for many years and there are generations of colleagues and students who revere his memory. He was one of the founders of the International Journal of Ethics (now Ethics) in 1890. He wrote two major works, An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918) and the Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal, which is the publication of the Hibbert Lectures delivered in Oxford in 1923.1 The above paragraph reads as if it were an obituary notice paying proper respects to the dead. But it is a contention of this essay that Adler is deserving of critical attention and not merely devotion, A few words about his background, however, are quite pertinent. Adler's family life and education were focused on the religious. He received much of his religious education from his father, Rabbi Samuel Adler, a leader of Reform Judaism in Germany, who had already emigrated to the United States when Felix was nearly six years old. He had taken over the leadership of Temple Emanuel in New York City. Felix started in his father's footsteps, and his graduate work in Germany was to prepare him for the rabbinate. It is clear that he drank deeply into the teachings of both early Hebrews and Christians in formulating his concept of worth, Adler's concept of worth is multidimensional, and the following major aspects can be distinguished: an historical dimension; a psycho-social dimension; a logical dimension; an ontological dimension; and an ethical dimension. * Robert S. Guttchen of Hofstra University was killed in an accident at his Vermont summer home in August of 1971. He was 45 years old. He had just completed revising the present text, including the basic documentation upon which it rests, but he had decided to wait until he returned to the university, and its library, in the fall to update the other bibliographical references. These references, which show that Felix Adler's--and Robert S. Guttchen's--ideas can help to illuminate the current scene, were prepared nearly a decade earlier in the original draft of this article. Nevertheless, the reader should find them interesting and useful, and each will see for himself some of the ways that they might have been extended to include more recent discussions if tragedy had not intervened. The undersigned , as Robert S. Guttchen's literary executor, wishes to thank Professor Evelyn Shirk for a most helpful reading of the manuscript as insurance against lapses, and Provost William P. McEwen and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences of Hofstra University for providing essential secretarial assistance. RICHARD P. CECIL An Ethical Philosophy of Life: Presented in its Main Outlines (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1918) and The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1924). These two works are cited below as EPL and RSI respectively. [2131 214 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I. THE HISTORICALDIMENSION OF WORTH Looking back at his own development, he wrote in 1918, at the age of sixty-seven: The predominance of the ethical principle in religion dates from the prophets of Israel. The religious development of the human race took a new turn in their sublime predictions, and I for one am certainly conscious of having drawn my first draught of moral inspiration from their writings, z However, by the age of twenty-two, he had already separated himself from Judaism, and he never accepted Christianity. He did not simply reject these religious doctrines, while retaining the ethical aspects. Instead, he worked out his own ethical philosophy, which he thought of as building upon the best in these ancient religious and ethical traditions. The development of a new position required an intellectual justification for it, and this justification involved criticism of these traditions. The result might be called a philosophy of ethical history. In his Hibbert Lectures, Adler proclaimed: "Out of the depths into which it has fallen humanity cries to-day for help." 3...