49 Years Ago In Time

By Melissa August, Amanda Bower, Beau Briese, Rhett Butler, Kathryn Hoffman, Sora Song, Heather Won Tesoriero, Kadesha Thomas, Josh Tyrangiel

When MORTIMER ADLER's Great Books of the Western World made its debut, TIME devoted a cover story to the maverick philosopher, calling his "one of the best minds at large today."

He has been denounced as a charlatan, a sensation-seeker, a medieval reactionary, a would-be agent of the Inquisition. He has developed an unequaled gift for making enemies and influencing people. He has spoken rudely of such sacrosanct characters as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ("It is time that [his] pedestal were dismounted") and Bertrand Russell ("He made a fool of himself"). He has spoken ill of children ("the most imperfect of all human beings") and dogs ("they are only brutes"). He has dared to say, several times and in public, that Darwin was wrong. He has committed the modern heresy of declaring that there are such permanent, absolute values as Truth and Justice. Like a Socratic traveling salesman, he has moved up & down the country, talking to the young and causing acute attacks of thought in thousands of college students who scarcely ever thought of thinking before.

--TIME, March 17, 1952