Customer Reviews

How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A few thousand people in the San Francisco Bay Area were fortunate to have experienced something extraordinary in 1953 and 1954. Over 52 weeks, for 30 minutes each week, Mortimer Adler discussed the Great Ideas on live television, usually with a fellow named Lloyd Luckman. Because of the format, the shows took the form of conversations. This book is a finely edited transcript of those conversations, and they are definitely worth reading.

The title perhaps presumes that people know how to think, and offers to guide them in applying that skill to the Great Ideas. Using that hook, even readers who don't think they can think will soon be thinking, and will be glad for it. Think, for instance, about Adler's statement "...adults are more educable than children, just as children are more trainable than adults." Hmmm... then why do we send children to school instead of adults? Adler gives the answer: so they can learn how to learn. I like books that help me think better, and this one does.

The focus for thinking in this book is the Great Ideas, a great idea that Dr. Adler (along with Robert M. Hutchins, who became President of the University of Chicago at age 29!) brought to life in the Great Books of the Western World (1952). Not all of the Great Ideas are discussed in this book - only 22 of the original 102 (Equality was added later) are addressed here, though some are discussed over several chapters.

That is certainly a step up from "Six Great Ideas" (1981), and it is complete enough, well spoken enough, and well edited enough that any reader will be very well rewarded. The book does not need to be read front to back, and in fact you might want to read the chapter on How to Read a Book before you read any of the rest.

I suspect, however, that most will do as I did - flip through and find a chapter or section that seems particularly appealing (How to Think about Beauty; How to Think about Work; How to Think about Punishment) and start there.

Of course all this is my opinion, and Adler says that "Opinion is of the greatest importance today in business and in industry." My hope is that this one is helpful to you.

"How to Think about The Great Ideas" is not, as I had presumed, a collection of previously published works by philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. Let's face it: now in his late 90s, Adler is no longer the prolific writer he once was, so we can forgive him for not breaking new ground. But no matter--over the past couple of decades I've bought every book of his I could lay my hands on, and I have never yet wasted my money. This new book is a wonderful addition to my Adler library.

Rather than a collection of reprints, "How to Think about The Great Ideas" is an edited set of transcripts from a public-television series Adler broadcast in the early 1950s. These half-hour programs--all 52 of them--covered 22 of the 102 (now 103) Great Ideas that Adler published in his "Syntopicon" that accompanied Encyclopedia Britannica's "Great Books of the Western World." This new set of transcripts offers me a quick reference to those shows, which I own on videotape.

Ader is a superb teacher, and his new book--edited by Max Weismann, cofounder, along with Adler, of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas--serves as an excellent introduction to The Great Ideas. The material is presented in a non-academic, conversational manner. The reader should bear in mind, however, that in the half-hour formats of the original shows, Adler was able to give only an introduction to the selected topics. I would greatly encourage the newcomer, after finishing this book, to consult Adler's later works where the author goes into much more detail. The ensuing years have also allowed Adler to refine some of his arguments.

I commend the editor for including an index. Adler's other works sometimes lacked an index, thereby diminishing their usefulness.

If I have any criticism of the book, it is this: the editor explains that he chose to omit the tables and charts that Adler used in his original televised presentations, regarding them as "distractions." The decision is an unfortunate one. In my own notes, I have dutifully copied these visual aids, because they make it easier for me to understand the material and to visualize how the various "pieces" fit together.

In summary, "How to Think about The Great Ideas" offers a great introduction to some of The Great Ideas. Readers may not necessarily agree with everything Adler has to say, but he WILL make them THINK. What more could we ask of a teacher?

How do you summarize a summary of 2500 years of thought? Great! Mortimer Adler was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th Century, primarily because of the literally ecyclopaedic nature of his knowledge. I say literally encyclopaedic because he edited the Encyclopaedia Britanica and wrote The Synopticon, a summary of Western philosophy, among the scores of other books bearing his name. He is best known for popularizing the Great Books theory of education. This is based on his own original reseach distilling the essence of Western Thought into 102 "Great Ideas." How To Think About The Great Ideas is a condensation of transcipts of a popular TV show of the 1950's, but the superficiality such an origin suggests does not permeate the book. The TV show covered only 21 of the great ideas, while the book deals with about half of the 102. The somewhat colloquial style will surprise readers who may have read Aristotle, Decartes, or Kant in full. We are not accustomed to hearing about philosophy from TV. But the simplicity of the presentation only serves to heighten the clarity of the ideas. The Great Ideas which you struggled over in college really can be discussed in ordinary language, and this is the real achievement of this book. The ideas build from the basic question of "What is truth?" to a consideration of the nature of man, human freedom, society and even a review of the arguments for the existence of God. Adler himself came to faith from agnositicism in his 80's before his recent death at the age of 98. Even so, the book is more of an invitation than an argument. It is best approached as a string of pearls, a series of thoughtful but isolated studies, rather than an essay in how to approach life or a true philosophical treatise. Refer to the Synopticon the academic treatment. But Adler never wrote just for academics. He believed philosphy is for everyone, and this book proves it. Now that Mortimer Adler has recently passed away, How To Think About The Great Ideas will remain as his exortation for all of us to lead thoughful lives.

I found this book very helpful.

I was introduced to Adler's writing about a year ago and have read 4-5 of his books, his two autobiographies, and 30 or so of his papers through the TGI website with Max W.

This book is a great summary of basic ideas in very accessible manner, such as: definition of truth; the moral *obligation* not just the right, to be controversial; crystalization of Adler's arguments against Darwin of why man's mental capabiliteis are a difference in kind and not degree from apes and other animals, etc.

The consice presentation clarified earlier readings and more than made up for any shortcomings due to editoral sloppiness, lack of charts, and difficulty in general with transcripts of a TV show.

A good book for those just beginning their reading of Adler's summary and critique of philosophy and a good reference summary book for those well read with Adler's books.

Paul Baier
Boston, MA

This is an excellent book for academicians, journalists, historians,
philosophers, linquists and a whole host of thinkers in the
arts and sciences. The author discusses theoretic universals
in some level of detail. For instance, he roughly equates
consistency with truth. In mathematics, a proof is not complete
without enough consistent examples of an application and no
deviations from the theorem. The author discusses the distinction
between knowledge and opinion. He states succinctly that ignorance can be preferable to academic errors. In addition, he points out that opinions are accepted voluntarily. Emotions are
likened to instinct in that they are not learned. Freud discussed things to avoid; namely, bad love, pride and too much
reliance on monetary things to the exclusion of aesthetics.
The good thing is desirable over the bad. Goods are classified
into wealth, goods of the body, goods of the soul or spiritual
domain, knowledge, truth and wisdom which is the highest
form of knowing. Children spend much time learning skills;
while adults and elders develop and impart wisdom. Learning is
discovery and discussion. We learn things in the natural sciences
by observing them in a lab. For instance, a drop of blood may
be examined under the microscope for specific characteristics.
A frog may be dissected and examined under the microscope to
learn more about the vital organs-their placement and functioning.
This book is a wonderful acquisition for a continued discussion of philosophical, theoretical and scientific techniques and processes. It is a good value for the price charged.

As the other reviews have explained, this book is a transcript of 52 television shows that Mortimer Adler made in 1953-54, shortly after completing the Great Books/Syntopicon project for Britannica.

Even if you are already familiar with Adler, this makes an excellent introduction to his work and indeed to the Western intellectual tradition (or at least that portion of it represented by the Great Books). Many of the chapters recapitulate earlier works of his (such as ch. 47, "How to Think about War and Peace") or anticipate later works (ch. 52, "How to Think about God"). As a bonus, they include some witty and even poignant asides and show evidence of how broad Adler's interests were -- he even remarks on his graduate work in psychology. His later works, in most of which he focuses more narrowly on purely philosophical topics, are often so intellectual as to be austere.

I have just one small complaint: the volume is not edited very well. It does a good job of preserving the spontaneous flavor of the TV shows, but the punctuation is careless, words are transcribed incorrectly here and there, and there are a few glaring misprints (such as "scratch the service", "give your emotions free reign", "The Illiad"). But the book is such a delight that I cannot get too worked up about this.

This work is a handy reference to which I refer often. Adler provides a very useful "history of ideas". Each section covers what the some of the greatest thinkers have said about a particular idea, ideas such as "justice", "knowledge", "truth","God", etc. This book is a must if one wants to get a quick "birds eye" view of ideas and what great thinkers have said about them, and provides a nice springboard and direction for further study.

Each chapter represents one program and most consist of a dialogue of sorts between Adler and Luckman, with Adler also answering viewer questions. But as it must already be clear what this book is, I will seek to establish why I gave it only three stars. Firstly, because Amazon does not permit assigning 3 and 1/2 stars. Second, that it is rather long considering how much there is to actually gain from it. The number of subjects that he attempts to cover reduces most of the discussions to a rather elementary introduction. This is good in the sense that it might whet the appetite, before you might get bored by a tedious analysis, but often you get a sense that Adler's final word is good enough before he moves on. Some of the brevity and incompleteness is a function of the presentation, and this limits how much you might actually gain in understanding the topics. The accurate presentation of dialogue adds nothing to the book. Probably it would be most interesting to those who are fond of Dr. Adler and like reading his other books. It is hard to recommend another book that would fulfill the same function that this one does, and this is the first of his that I've read.

Adler does a lovely job introducing some profound ideas for the uninitiated thinker. Unfortunately, he dilutes his treatment of the great ideas for a wide audience and annoyingly peddles some of his products and methods in the process.

The best parts of the book are when he avoids this outcome and talks the idea through. This includes: the definition of man, emotions, art, justice, and God. In these segments, Adler is a faithful Aristotelian and dutifully organizes the terms in which to define these ideas, particularly man. These are probably the most challenging parts of the book (though they are nothing compared to the original texts which he's breaking down), but they are the most satisfying for the inquisitive reader. On top of that, Adler provides some invaluable quotes from Aquinas, Mills, and Aristotle that truly illuminate some issues and make reading those tough writers more attractive.

The worst part of the book are ironically the chapters that cover Adler's specialties like education, leisure, and philosophy. In these, he leaves too many unanswered questions and reveals some exasperating naivety. His hopes for television becoming a medium of teaching are laughable, but he probably takes this stance in hope of promoting his own program. His regard for youth education is glib and unexplained since he seems to care only for adults, who he assumes have quite large amounts of free time. He never defines liberal arts education, but instead cops out with a simple definition from Ancient Greece and refers his viewers to a book written by his colleague. His proscribed method of teaching is also surprisingly ambiguous. However, he'll constantly promote the liberal arts education and his method for teaching it. Even after reading three chapters devoted to defining philosophy, Adler has yet to provide any concrete statements but runs around in circles while promoting his philosophy project that's supposed to reform the discipline of philosophy. Some of these moments in the book will prompt some reasonable frustration from the reader.

Aside from those weaknesses, the book is still worth reading and pretty easy to get through. Just be prepared to be left with more questions than answers.