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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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... It cannot be too often repeated that philosophy is every-

body's business. To be a human being is to be endowed with

the proclivity to philosophize. To some degree we all engage in

philosophical thought in the course of our daily lives.

Acknowledging this is not enough. It is also necessary to

understand why this is so and what philosophy's business is.

The answer, in a word, is ideas. In two words, it is great

Ideas - the ideas basic and indispensable to understanding

ourselves, our society, and the world in which we live.

the great ideas constitute the vocabulary of thought

These ideas, as we shall see presently, constitute the vocab-

ulary of everyone's thought. Unlike the concepts of the special

sciences, the words that name the great ideas are all of them

words of ordinary, everyday speech. They are not technical

terms. They do not belong to the private jargon of a specialized

branch of knowledge. Everyone uses them in ordinary conver-

sation. But everyone does not understand them as well as they

can be understood, nor has everyone pondered sufficiently the

questions raised by each of the great ideas. To do that and to

think one's way through to some resolution of the conflicting

answers to these questions is to philosophize.

This book aims to do no more than to provide some guidance

in this process. Not for all of the great ideas; that would take a

very long book indeed. But for six of them, six of obvious im-

portance to all of us: truth, goodness, and beauty on the one

hand; liberty, equality, and justice on the other.

I am not only limiting myself to the consideration of these six

ideas. I am also limiting the consideration of them to an ele-

mentary delineation of each idea that will try to achieve three

results for the reader.

we constantly make judgments of 'true' and 'false' but on what basis do we make these decisions

First, it should give the reader a surer grasp of the various

meanings of the word he uses when he talks about the idea. In

the course of any week, every one of us probably says "That's

true" or "That's false" a dozen times. What do we mean when

we say that? By what criteria do we make that judgment? And

how can we support our judgment if the person we are talking

to challenges us? Getting the idea of truth a littler clearer than

it is for most people will help them to answer these questions.

When they move, even a little, toward a better understanding

of the idea of truth, they are, of course, philosophizing whether

or not they consciously think of themselves as doing so.

Second, the delineation of each idea should make the reader

more aware than he normally is of questions or issues that he

cannot avoid confronting if he is willing to think a little further

about the idea—basic ones, ones that human beings have been

arguing about over the centuries.

'my truth and your truth'

Does what is true change from time to time or is it immuta-

ble? Can one thing be true for me and the very opposite true

for you? Are all differences of opinion that divide persons into

opposing camps capable of being resolved by finding which of

the conflicting opinions is true and which false, or are some

differences of opinion not matters of truth and falsity at all?

What is the answer to the skeptic who claims that the effort to

get at the truth is always in vain? [that nothing is true or false]

Third, in the consideration of each idea, we are led to the

consideration of other ideas. How does our understanding of

truth affect our understanding of goodness and beauty? How

does our understanding of what is good and bad carry us not

only to an understanding of what is right and wrong, but also

to an understanding of justice, and how does that affect our

understanding of liberty and equality as well?

None of the great ideas is self-enclosed or sealed off from

others. Hence, the delineation of each of the six ideas will carry

us beyond that idea to one or more of the other five; and when

we have considered all six, each in itself and each in relation to

the others, we will find ourselves more at home in the whole

realm of ideas, or at least more conversant with the bearing that

these six ideas have on quite a large number of other great

ideas. That is one reason why I have chosen these six. They are

truly pivotal ideas—each a center around which a number of

other great ideas revolve…