Adler Essay Research Paper Overcrowded New York — страница 3

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appear to. In 1952, the Institute was relocated from San Francisco to Chicago. While in Chicago, Mortimer began working with the Encyclopaedia Britannica company because he was offered a contract that gave him financial security for the rest of his life. He established a Britannica Lectureship at the University of Chicago. The Britannica Lectureship required Mortimer to meet certain deadlines. Adler managed to find time to work on a number of editorial projects for Britannica, as well as serve the company as a consultant while carrying on the work of the institute and delivering the first and second series of Britannica Lectures at the University of Chicago. In New York on January 15, 1974, the 15th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, called Britannica 3, was presented to a

press conference and to another press conference the next morning in London. The 15th edition was called Britannica 3 to draw everyone’s attention to the three-part structure of the new encyclopedia. Before the Syntopicon was published, Adler coined a word to name the invention of an idea-index. The Outline of Knowledge was called a Propaedia, which means an introduction to learning or knowledge. The nineteen volumes of essays on major subjects were called Macropaedia, which means large units of learning or knowledge. The ten volumes of short entries of minor subjects were called Micropaedia, which means small units of learning or knowledge. Adler felt, “The painful truth is that the work of an encyclopaedist is never finished, because facts change and knowledge expands, and

because there is always room for improvement.” For fifty years, he did many writings on ethics. He examined the errors in moral philosophy by four giants of philosophy: David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey. Adler reiterated his conviction that only the ethics of Aristotle provide reliable and pragmatic explanation to basic moral problems. In some of his works he concentrates on human motivations on what drives us to lead moral or immoral lives. Adler had written, “It should not be surprising that an ethics of desire, which is so uniquely Aristotelian, should also be an ethics in which the notion enough plays a central role. In its concern with wrong desires, it might even be called an ethics of enough.” Mortimer analyzed wrong and right desires, along

with the elucidation of what makes them right or wrong. In detail, he deals with human needs and wants for pleasure, money, wealth, fame, power, honor, liberty, love, friendship, knowledge, wisdom, and pleasure. Adler felt the only solution to the central problem of ethics is how to seek what is really good for one’s self while at the same time not harming others. What is the basis from which all desires stem? The basis from which all wrong desires spring is three-pronged: either (1) the wrong desire is for something that is only a partial good, yet is desired as if it were the only good; or (2) something is a limitless good for those who desire it as a definite end; or (3) though it may originally have the appearance of good is an indisputable good that is harmful rather than

harmless. The prime examples of this classification are pleasure, money, and fame and power. In the physiological aspect, along with the organs of sight, hearing, and smell are the four organs relating to the skin that are the sensitive instruments for awareness of heat, cold, pressure, and pain. These are found in the epidermis although some are found in the internal organs. There are no sensitive nerve endings for pleasure. In neurological terms there is no sense of pleasure even though most people speak and think of pleasure and pain as converses. In certain instances the word pleasure describes experience of satisfaction when desire is fulfilled or avenged. “The moral problems concerning pleasure must always focus on pleasure-or for that matter pain-solely as objects of

desire and never on pleasure and pain as the experienced satisfaction or frustration of desire.” The Epicureans or hedonists in moral philosophy asserted that pleasure is the only good, but they failed to distinguish between pleasure as an object of desire and pleasure as satisfaction of desire. Both Plato and Aristotle refuted by asking whether it is better and wiser to desire both pleasure and wisdom. Adler stated pleasure was an object of desire. Most of the wrong desires fall in the sphere of eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, and sexual activities. About such pleasures, the moral virtue called temperance is concerned. Incessant gluttony, drunkenness, passivity, cruelty in the treatment of other human beings, and lechery or unrestrained sexual desires are the immoral