The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Volume 2

by Mortimer J. Adler

Publisher:

Encyclopedia Britannica

, 1990

Overview

The makers of Encyclopædia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Locke, for example, begins his essay Concerning Human Understanding with the remark that ‘the understanding … sets man above the rest of sensible beings.’ Men and other animals alike have the powers of sense, memory, and imagination, but, he says, ‘brutes abstract not … The power of abstracting is not at all in them.’ This power of having ‘general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.’” (Page 3)

“Faith, hope, and charity, according to Saint Paul, are indispensable to lift man’s life to a plane, and direct it to a goal, which exceed his nature. These gifts of God’s grace are subsequently treated by Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin as virtues—supernatural, not natural virtues. Aquinas specifically calls them ‘theological virtues’ to distinguish them from other supernatural endowments, such as the infused moral virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.” (Page 777)

“But for Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas virtue is a basic moral principle. By reference to it they define the good man, the good life, and the good society. Yet even for them it is not the first principle of ethics. They define virtue itself by reference to a more ultimate good—happiness. For them the virtues promote and serve happiness as means to an end.” (Page 776)

“What Dr. Johnson calls moral truth consists in the obligation to say what we mean. In contrast what he calls physical truth depends not on the veracity of what we say but on the validity of what we mean.” (Page 727)

Product Details

• Title: The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Volume 2
• Author: Mortimer J. Adler
• Edition: Second Edition
• Series: Great Books of the Western World
• Volume: 2
• Publisher: Encyclopedia Britannica
• Print Publication Date: 1990
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Anthologies › Indexes
• ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
• Resource ID: LLS:GBWW02
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:10:58Z

About Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for the longest stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and Adler’s own Institute for Philosophical Research. Adler was married twice and had four children.