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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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"That's just a Platonic idea and has nothing to do with

reality." The slurring dismissal hurled by that statement

against the consideration of ideas calls for a reply.

Of all the sciences, only mathematics deals with objects that

cannot be perceived by our senses or detected by instruments

of observation. The objects that advanced mathematics studies

lie totally beyond the reach of the imagination. A schoolboy

may think that the triangles or circles he studies in geometry

are figures he can draw upon a piece of paper, but no percep-

tible figure, however carefully constructed with physical in-

struments, has the mathematical properties that can be

demonstrated, but not visibly exhibited…

Like mathematics and unlike all the natural and social sci-

ences, philosophy deals with ideal objects in the first instance.

The ideas—the objects of thought—that we reflect upon when

we start to philosophize lie beyond the reach of sense percep-

tion and imagination. That is why, like mathematics, philoso-

phy can be described as "armchair thinking." No more than

mathematics does it employ techniques of observation, experi-

mentation, the gathering of data by empirical research, or an

investigation of phenomena by means of apparatus or instru-

ments. Like mathematics, it is not empirical or investigative.

Nevertheless, as in the case of mathematics, this fact does not

prevent philosophy from being useful in thinking about expe-

rienced reality—about nature, human behavior, and social in-

stitutions. The better our understanding of ideas, especially the

great ideas, the better we understand reality because of the

light they throw on it…

Becoming acquainted and conversant with the great ideas

will not prepare the individual for any special career—in busi-

ness, the learned professions, or highly skilled occupations of

one technical sort or another. Specialized schooling is required

for that. But everyone is called to one common human vocation

—-that of being a good citizen and a thoughtful human being.

Editor’s note: I would take exception to this last statement by Adler. If we become thoughtful human beings that will be enough. We will then possess a discernment and wisdom to perceive what it means to be a “good citizen.” Governments were not brought down from Mount Olympus; they are made by man and can be dismantled by man, and the thoughtful human being will know what to do when. Actually, “thoughtful" is not quite right, either. The greatest sagacity comes not from thinking and reasoning but via accessing the “inner riches”, the creative side of one’s deeper person. See discussion on the “true self” page.

Only by the presence of philosophy in the general schooling

of all is everyone prepared to discharge the obligations common

to all because all are human beings. Schooling is essentially

humanistic only to the extent that it is tinged with philosophy

—with an introduction to the great ideas…  

Unlike the words that usually appear in the vocabulary ques-

tions of scholastic aptitude tests, the words that name the great

ideas are not strange words or words infrequently used in

everyday speech. On the contrary, with few exceptions, they

are as familiar and they are used as frequently as the most

common words in the ordinary person's vocabulary. In fact,

many of them are included in a vocabulary the reach of which

does not extend beyond a thousand words…

The words that name the great ideas—none of them technical

terms in any special science, all of them terms of common

speech—constitute the basic vocabulary of philosophical

thought, which is also to say the basic vocabulary of human

thought. If philosophy is everybody's business, then not only

should everyone be able to use these words correctly in a sen-

tence when the standard of correctness is merely grammatical,

but also everyone should be able to engage, to some extent, in

intelligent discourse about the object of thought under consid-

eration.

How much can the individual say, sequentially and coher-

ently, when he is asked to consider one or another great idea?

What questions is he able to ask about that object of thought?

What answers can be given to these questions? Which answers

hang together and which are opposed? What practical differ-

ence does it make whether we adopt one or another of the

opposed answers? And how is one great idea related to others? …

The words that constitute the vocabulary of philosophical or

human thought, I said earlier, would almost certainly be in-

cluded in a vocabulary that numbered no more than a thousand

words; perhaps as few as five hundred. The Great Ideas, A Syn-

topicon lists 102 such words. At the time some forty years ago

when I was engaged in constructing the Syntopicon, I and my

colleagues thought 102 was the number we needed in order to

delineate the discussion of the great ideas that occurs in the

great books of Western civilization. But now, with a different

purpose in view, I think I can cut that number down to sixty-

four, adding one or two as well as subtracting many.

My purpose now is to list the words that are not only in

everyone's vocabulary, but that also name great ideas that

everyone who has completed a basic, humanistic schooling

should be reasonably conversant with. Only a few of the ideas

I am going to name have emerged into prominence in modern

times or have taken on special significance in the twentieth

century. As Mark Twain correctly quipped, "The ancients stole

all our ideas from us." Here, in alphabetical order, are the ones

that should be in the possession of human beings at all times,

but, perhaps, not in all places, because it must be acknowl-

edged that they are characteristically Western ideas.

ANIMAL

ART

BEAUTY

BEING

CAUSE

CHANCE

CHANGE

CITIZEN

CONSTITUTION

DEMOCRACY

DESIRE

DUTY

EDUCATION

EMOTION

EQUALITY

EVOLUTION

EXPERIENCE

FAMILY

GOD

GOOD AND EVIL

GOVERNMENT

HABIT

HAPPINESS

HONOR

IMAGINATION

JUDGMENT

JUSTICE

KNOWLEDGE

LABOR

LANGUAGE

LAW

LIBERTY (or FREEDOM)

LIFE AND DEATH

LOVE

MAN

MATTER

MEMORY

MIND

NATURE

OPINION

PLEASURE AND PAIN

POETRY

PROGRESS

PUNISHMENT

REASONING

RELATION

RELIGION

REVOLUTION

SENSE

SIN

SLAVERY

SOUL

SPACE

STATE

TIME

TRUTH

TYRANNY

VIOLENCE

VIRTUE AND VICE

WAR AND PEACE

WEALTH

WILL

WISDOM

WORLD

The list might be enlarged a little in the following manner.

Under government, we might place democracy and tyranny.

Under virtue, we might place courage, temperance, and

prudence. Under knowledge, we might place history, math-

ematics, medicine, philosophy, science, and theology, and

perhaps even astronomy, mechanics, and physics. Even with

all these additions, the number would come to much less than

a hundred…

Why these six and where they stand in the overall pattern of

the great ideas as they are related to one another, I will try to

say in the next chapter.