Education: Debating in the Groves of Aspen

During a visit to the University of Chicago in 1934, Gertrude Stein landed in a steamy after-dinner debate with Philosopher Mortimer Adler about the merits of teaching literature in translation. Stein was firmly against it, and Adler defended the proposition fiercely. Suddenly she rose from her chair, marched over to Adler, and rapped him on the head. Said Stein: "I can see that you are the kind of young man who is accustomed to winning arguments."

That he is. Last week Mortimer Adler, now a jaunty 74, author of 26 books, progenitor of the Great Books of the Western World and of the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, was relishing another intellectual free-for-all. His opponents were British Philosophers Anthony Quinton and Maurice Cranston, who had been invited to debate Adler on his own turf—the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. Moderated by Bill Moyers and billed as a medieval-style "public disputation" on the future of democracy, the affair celebrated the 25th anniversary of Adler's Chicago-based Institute for Philosophical Research.

To kick off the debate, Adler delivered a carefully argued paean to constitutional democracy, lauding it as "the ideally best form of government" because of its commitment to universal suffrage and the common good. "Only democracy," said Adler, "has the justice which comes from granting every man the right to participate in his own government." But Adler predicted that with the inevitable factional disputes between rich and poor, "political democracy will not work unless it is accompanied by economic democracy." And for democracy to survive, war and terrorism must end. Adler's remedy: "A single worldwide community" that would replace all existing international law and alliances.

The London School of Economies' Cranston, 57, a liberal political theorist, was much less sanguine about democracy's capacity to reconcile "the competing, conflicting wills" of its motley electorate. For him, democracy is merely "the least unjust" form of government, in which "the ignorance of the many is mitigated by professional experience of the politicians." Quinton, 52, an analytic philosopher from Oxford, adopted a still more gloomy view, calling government "a necessary evil" that "allows for tyranny by the collectivity over the individual." Quinton also mocked Adler's belief that all want to share in government by voting. "I vote out of a sense of shame," said Quinton, adding that he looked upon the vote as if it were a life jacket on a ferry boat. "I want the right to use it if something happens."

Far Right. It was, of course, a debate no one could win, meant to be more illuminating than persuasive. An audience of 200, largely summer seminarians and institute fellows, had a chance to offer their views. One black charged that "this is a discussion of the concept of nothing"; real democracy, he argued, did not exist anywhere. Some of the auditors criticized all three philosophers for being cautious and too far to the right; others asked whether civil disobedience should be taught in schools (answer: a qualified "sometimes" from Adler).