Table Of ContentFurther Autobiographical Reflections of a
PHILOSOPHER AT LARGE
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"Fifteen years ago, when I was only seventy-five
years old, I wrote my autobiography prema-
turely. ... Much has happened in my life since
then .... I am, therefore, impelled to take a second
look in the rearuiew mirror, and hope that those
who found the earlier volume engaging will be
similarly entertained by this one."
So begins A Second Look in the Rearuiew
Mirror, Mortimer Adler's continuing intel
lectual autobiography, the record of the
development and evolution of his mind,
his personal philosophy, and his analytical
powers. Here, the second volume of Dr.
Adler's autobiography describes the edi
torial process that led to the second (and
enormously controversial) edition of Great
Books of the Western World; the inauguration
of the Paideia Project for educational
reform; and Dr. Adler's involvement with
the Aspen Institute. Drawing on unpub
lished materials, fugitive papers, and
materials no longer in print and therefore
inaccessible, A Second Look is enriched with
portraits of luminaries such as Robert
Hutchins, Jacques Barzun, and Henry and
Clare Boothe Luce, and describes, for the
first time in print, the religious conversion
that led, after a life of principled atheism, to
his formal baptism into the Episcopal
Church at the age of eighty-four. As engag
ing and challenging as the life it docu
ments-chapters include "Academic
Misimpressions," "Departure from Aca
demic Life," "Educational Reform," "Edito
rial Work," "The Aspen Institute,"
''Teaching and Leaming," "The Vocation of
Philosophy," "A Philosopher's Religious
Faith," and "The Blessings of Good
Fortune"- A Second Look in the Rearuiew
Mirror is intellectual entertainment of the
highest order.
A SECOND LOOK
IN THE
REARVIEW MIRROR
FURTHER
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS OF A
PHILOSOPHER AT LARGE
Mortimer J. Adler
MACMILLAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
New York
MAXWELL MACMILLAN CANADA
Toronto
MAXWELL MACMILLAN INTERNATIONAL
New York Oxford Singapore Sydney
Copyright© 1992 by Mortimer J. Adler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, record
ing, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Macmillan Publishing Company Maxwell Macmillan Canada, Inc.
866 Third Avenue 1200 Eglington Avenue East, Suite 200
New York, NY 10022 Don Mills, Ontario M3C 3N1
Macmillan Publishing Company is part of the Maxwell Communication Group
of Companies
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-
A second look in the rearview mirror: further autobiographical
reflections of a Philosopher at large/Mortimer J. Adler.
p. cm.
Sequel to the author's autoblbgraphy: Philosopher at large, c1977.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-02-500571-5
1. Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902- . 2. Philosophers-United
States-Biography. I. Title.
B945.A286S43 1992
191-dc20
[B] 92-5062
CIP
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Printed in the United States of America
To My Wife
Caroline Pring Adler
with loving gratitude for the
last thirty years of my life
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE ix
PART ONE
THE YEARS BEFORE 1976 1
1. Retrospection 3
2. Academic Misimpressions 10
3. Departure from Academic Life 35
PART Two
THE YEARS AFTER 1976 59
4. Educational Reform: The Paideia Project 61
5. Editorial Work: The Board of Editors 121
6. The Aspen Institute 174
PART THREE
REFLECTIONS ABOUT MY LIFE AS A WHOLE 221
7. Teaching and Learning 223
8. The Vocation of Philosophy 234
9. A Philosopher's Religious Faith 263
10. The Blessings of Good Fortune 287
Vil
Contents
Vlll
301
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MORTIMER]. ADLER 303
INDEX 315
PROLOGUE
~ifteen years ago, when I was only seventy-five years old, I
l!]wrote my autobiography prematurely. It was published in
1977 under the title Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Auto
biography.1
Much has happened in my life since then. In addition, now that
I am approaching ninety, further retrospection has been illumi
nated by what I have learned and done in the intervening years. I
am, therefore, impelled to take a second look in the rearview
mirror, and hope that those who found the earlier volume engag
ing will be similarly entertained by this one.
In Philosopher at Large, I told all or most of the stories about
episodes in my life that I could document by materials in my
voluminous files. I could add to them, but that is not the purpose
of this book. Like the earlier volume, it is mainly concerned with
the use of my mind, but unlike the earlier autobiography, its struc
ture is much less controlled by chronology.
Following Parts One and Two, which deal respectively with
things that happened before 1976 and events that have occurred
since then, the third and longest part of this book is a reflective ap
praisal of the main streams in my life as a whole-my involvement
in teaching and learning, with philosophical thought and the pursuit
of truth, and with religion and theology. In the Epilogue, I list the
blessings of good fortune that have attended the course of my life.
1. It is now available in a paperback edition. I will refer to it from time to time.
IX
X PROLOGUE
Like Philosopher at Large, this, too, is largely an intellectual
autobiography rather than a set of reminiscences that dwell on
personal relationships or intimacies. For that reason, I have used
Notes appended to some chapters to reproduce a number of items
that consist of fugitive papers, unpublished materials, or materials
no longer in print and therefore inaccessible-or difficult to ob
tain. I have placed these appended materials at the end of the
chapters to which they are most relevant. 2
With the pu,blication of this book in the autumn of 1992, I will
be in my ninetieth year. I can look back upon my life almost as if
I were in the position of the person who is called upon to speak
about me at my funeral or memorial service.
That is the vantage point from which I am writing this book. It
is superior to the position I was in when, in 1974-1975, I wrote
my earlier autobiographical memoir. Then I was just past seventy.
Now I can see how the last fifteen years have realized what then
seemed only promising-a vision of the last part of my life that
began to dawn on me sometime after I had turned the corner at
fifty.
Looking back at the whole, divided into decades or quarters, I
am persuaded that life gets better as one gets older. I have written
more books in the last stretch' of years, some of them much more
readable and even, perhaps, slightly wiser than anything I wrote
earlier. I have learned more and profited more from what I have
learned; and I have enjoyed the work I have done more fully.
If one lives long enough, one enjoys a pleasure that is totally
absent from earlier stages of life-the pleasure of being publicly
honored for one's accomplishments and of having more and more
persons explicitly acknowledge the influence one has exerted on
their lives and the debt they owe for it.
I should add that in the last period of my life, I have worked
harder and to better effect than ever before. The only exception to
this statement may be the time in the middle forties when I wrote
the 102 essays on the great ideas in twenty-six months, with no
time off at all, no vacations, and seven days a week. That probably
2. Instead of an Appendix placed at the end of the last chapter, I have placed Notes
appended to certain chapters, because I would like the materials contained therein to
be immediately accessible to readers after they have finished reading the chapter.
Prologue XI
was the most sustained and exacting application of energy to a
task that had to be performed on schedule.
Being genetically endowed with health and vigor, I have been
more vigorous mentally, if not physically, than at earlier periods.
The only sense in which I feel my ripening age is my diminished
bodily mobility. I can no longer run or hop, skip, and jump, and
I walk much more slowly than I did ten years ago. But in the use
of my mind, I feel younger, not older, as the years go by.
All of this, it seems to me, is summed up in "Rabbi Ben Ezra,"
a poem by Robert Browning. The first stanza reads as follows:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"
I read this poem in college, when I was very young and imma
ture. In spite of that, I somehow felt good about what Browning
said about taking an optimistic view of aging-of completing one's
life by being able to do in the latter part of it what one could not
do in the earlier portion. But only mature men and women can
fully understand the fundamental truth expressed in Browning's
poem, and by fully mature I mean after sixty.
