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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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Out of sixty-four great ideas, all of them essential ingredi-

ents in the vocabulary of human thought, why just these:

TRUTH, GOODNESS, and BEAUTY; LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE?

One answer jumps out of the page at us as we look at those

six words. All, with the one exception of beauty, are pivotal

terms in the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Dec-

laration of Independence: "We hold these truths . . all men

are created equal"; "unalienable rights" (which, as we shall

see, lie at the heart of justice); "among which are life, liberty

. . deriving their just powers." And, if we understand

"happiness" to consist in living a good human life, then "the

pursuit of happiness" requires us to understand what makes a

good life good.

In addition, if we turn to the Preamble of the Constitution of

the United States, we find among the goals it sets for the gov-

ernment of this republic: establishing justice, securing the

blessings of liberty, and promoting the general welfare (the

word "welfare" like the word "happiness" requiring us to un-

derstand the idea of good).

Finally, there is the renewed pledge to these ideals that Lin-

coln uttered in his Gettysburg Address when he spoke of a

nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition

that all men are created equal." …

Why these chosen few? That answer works somewhat differently for

the first three of the six ideas and for the second three.

Two things can be said of both trios with equal accuracy. In

both cases, the three ideas that are grouped together do, in fact,

belong together; it would be extremely difficult to discuss any

one of them adequately without reference to the other two. In

both cases, one of the three associated ideas is the sovereign or

governing one to which the other two owe some measure of

subservience or obedience—truth in the one case, justice in the

other.

A further point should, perhaps, be added. Each trio in its

own way illuminates a large set of other ideas—ideas that also

belong together. In the case of LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE, it is the trio as a whole that functions in this way. Not so in the case of TRUTH, GOODNESS, and BEAUTY. Here each of the three ideas by itself throws light on a set of related ideas.

It would be too much to say that these chosen few constitute

the central source of light that illuminates the whole realm of

great ideas—or at least all sixty-four of them named in the

preceding chapter. But light is cast on a great many of them by

the six I have chosen as a starting point for the exploration of

the basic objects of human thought. How can a person become

a truly thoughtful human being without engaging in that explo-

ration? If so, what better place to begin?

In order to draw the lines of light that radiate from the chosen

six to a large number of other ideas, it is necessary to recognize

certain patterns of contexture inherent in the sixty or so great

ideas that have been named—patterns that are concealed by a

purely alphabetical arrangement of those ideas. An alphabetical

arrangement of anything is a cowardly retreat from an intelli-

gible ordering of the material.

Let us first consider the trio LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE,

of which we said that it is the trio as a whole that throws light

on other ideas. These three ideas are the ones we live by in

society. They represent ideals which a considerable portion of

the human race has sought to realize for themselves and their

posterity.

would we need the great ideas if we lived alone on a desert isle

The solitary individual, provided with a comfortable life on

a tropical island, would not be moved to cry out for liberty,

equality, and justice; nor would he have any occasion to engage

in a struggle to achieve them for himself. Only in human soci-

ety, in which the individual is associated both cooperatively

and competitively with other human beings, is there any artic-

ulation of claims for liberty, equality, and justice, and only in

society do individuals engage in the actions needed to support

such claims…

If we seek to understand government itself and the forms of

government, especially the antithesis between constitutional

government and despotism; if we are moved to consider the

desirability of democracy and the threat it always faces from

tyranny by the majority; if we recoil from slavery and other

forms of human subjection; if we are concerned with violence

and war as illnesses that weaken the fabric of society, while at

the same time recognizing that revolutions, which may involve

violence and war, are sometimes drastic expedients; if we hope

for a peaceful resolution of the differences that bring men into

conflict with one another—if we engage in thinking about

these matters, we cannot get very far without finding that at

every turn of thought we must have recourse to an understand-

ing of LIBERTY and EQUALITY as well as JUSTICE.

Our understanding of those three great ideas thus radiates

out to illuminate our consideration of many others. Ticked off

in alphabetical order, they are: CITIZEN, CONSTITUTION, DEMOCRACY, FAMILY, GOVERNMENT, LAW, REVOLUTION, SLAVERY, STATE, TYRANNY, VIOLENCE, WAR AND PEACE, and WEALTH.

meanwhile, back at the desert island 

I turn now to the other trio: TRUTH, GOODNESS, and BEAUTY.

These three ideas are the ones we judge by. Unlike the ideas

we live by (LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE), these three func-

tion for us in our private as well as in our public life. The

solitary individual enabled to live comfortably by himself or

herself would still have occasion to judge something to be true

or false, to appraise this to be good and that evil, to discrimi-

nate between the beautiful and the ugly.

Such judgments, appraisals, and discriminations may also

occur, of course, when individuals are engaged in social inter-

action with one another. But quite apart from all the circum-

stances of social life, an individual's mind will not be able to

avoid making such judgments, appraisals, and discriminations.

Thinking about LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE involves

thinking about I and Thou—about the relationships between

oneself and other human beings.

Thinking about TRUTH, GOODNESS, and BEAUTY involves, in

the first instance at least, thinking about the whole world in

which we live—about the knowledge we have of it, the desires

it arouses in us, and the admiration it elicits from us. Here it is

the relation of the self to everything else, not just other human

beings, which is brought into focus.

I said earlier that, in recognizing the significance of TRUTH,

GOODNESS, and BEAUTY, we must note how each of the three

ideas by itself throws light on a set of related ideas. Let us now

see how that works out.

We cannot understand the difference between KNOWLEDGE

and OPINION without being aware of how each is related to

TRUTH. The truth to be found in poetry is not the same as the

truth we look for in history, science, or philosophy. The criteria

of what is true and false, and the devices we employ to test the

truth of anything that is proposed for our affirmation or denial,

vary as we pass from mathematics to the empirical sciences,

from the empirical sciences to philosophy, and from philoso-

phy to theology and religion.

The very act of making judgments is an act that asserts some-

thing to be true or false. The character of the judgments we

make—whether judgments that something is or is not the case,

or judgments that something ought or ought not to be—cannot

be understood without seeking an answer to a fundamental

question about radically different modes of truth.

We must also ask whether truth exists only in judgments of

the mind or also in statements we make when we use language;

whether there is truth in the senses, the memory, and the imag-

ination, as well as in the mind; whether the kind of truth that

makes our reasoning valid is the same kind of truth as that

which makes our judgments sound; whether appeal to experi-

ence is always an ultimate test of truth.

Here, then, ticked off in alphabetical order, are the ideas that

our understanding of truth helps us to understand a little

better: EXPERIENCE, IMAGINATION, JUDGMENT, KNOWLEDGE, LANGUAGE, MEMORY, MIND, OPINION, POETRY, REASONING, RELIGION; to which we might add the ideas that are related to KNOWLEDGE and OPINION — MATHEMATICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, THEOLOGY.

The idea of GOODNESS has its own sphere of influence. We

cannot think of the good without thinking of the desirable, or

of the desirable without thinking of the good. One of our most

frequent uses of the word good is in such phrases as “a good

man," "a good will," and "a good life." Our understanding of

what is meant involves our understanding of the virtues as

good habits, proceeding from a good will, and of happiness, or

a good life, as one that is enriched by the possession of all good

things, among which certainly are wealth, honor, the love of

friends and family, a decent amount of pleasure and avoidance

of pain, knowledge and especially wisdom, not to mention a

healthy life, liberty, equality, and the supporting conditions

provided by a good society—one that is just and peaceful.

Once again ticked off in alphabetical order, here are the ideas

on which our understanding of GOODNESS throws light: DESIRE,

FAMILY, HABIT, HAPPINESS, HONOR, LIFE (a healthy One), LOVE, MAN, PLEASURE AND PAIN, VIRTUE AND VICE (perhaps also SIN), and WILL. One might go a bit farther and add emotion because it is involved in the effort of the will to be good and to form the good habits that are the virtues; and if sin is touched on, then perhaps we may not be able to avoid questions about the goodness of God and about man's goodness in relation to God. In

addition to all of these, we cannot fail to note that the consid-

eration of GOODNESS relates to ideas already mentioned in other

connections: not only KNOWLEDGE and PEACE, but also the great

ideas that comprise the other trio: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE.

BEAUTY has the smallest circle of related ideas the under¬

standing of which it affects. We expect to find beauty in works

of art and poetry, especially the products of the arts that are

sometimes called "fine arts" in contrast to "useful arts," and

sometimes beaux arts, or arts of the beautiful. We also expect to

find it in the things of nature. Beauty, like goodness, is thought

to inhere in objects that we desire or love. It affords us a certain

experience of pleasure, one that occurs in the sphere of our

knowing (knowing that involves the senses, the imagination,

and the mind) rather than in the sphere of our actions. Thus,

the other great ideas, in alphabetical order, to which BEAUTY

relates are: ART, DESIRE (perhaps also EMOTION), EXPERIENCE, IMAGINATION, KNOWLEDGE, LOVE, MIND, PLEASURE and PAIN, POETRY, and SENSE.

The reader who carefully examines all the lines of light or

strands of influence that delineate the bearing of the chosen six

on other great ideas will see that, of the two trios, the first is

the more fundamental. It dominates the second. The values it

encompasses are transcendant and universal, applicable to

everything. That is why we will begin with it, devoting Part

Two of this book to the ideas we judge by (TRUTH, GOODNESS,

and BEAUTY) and then going on, in Part Three, to the ideas we

live by and act on (LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and JUSTICE)…