Felix Adler

From Philosopedia

Adler, Felix (13 August 1851 - 24 April 1933)

Adler, founder of the Society for Ethical Culture, was born in Germany, the son of a Reform rabbi. At six, he immigrated with his family to New York City. After graduating from Columbia College, he returned to Germany for advanced study, earning a Ph.D at the University of Heidelberg.

Freethinker Andrew D. White, president of Cornell University, in cooperation with banker Joseph Seligman, endowed a chair of Hebrew and Oriental literature for Adler for three years.

In 1876, Adler was invited to give a lecture to a group interested in Adler's ideas of a creedless ethical movement, a moral "universal religion" without a deity at its base. He told them:

• We propose entirely to exclude prayer and every form of ritual . . . . to occupy that common ground where we may all meet, believers and unbelievers . . . be one with us where there is nothing to divide, in action. Diversity in creed, unanimity in the deed. . . .

On 15 May 1876, he said in his founding address at the new New York Society for Ethical Culture.

• For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith. The earth has been drenched with blood shed in this cause, the face of day darkened with the blackness of the crimes perpetrated in its name. There have been no dirtier wars than religious wars, no bitterer hates than religious hates, no fiendish cruelty like religious cruelty; no baser baseness than religious baseness. It has destroyed the peace of families, turned the father against the son, the brother against the brother. And for what? Are we any nearer to unanimity? On the contrary, diversity within the churches and without has never been so widespread as at present. Sects and factions are multiplying on every hand, and every new schism is but the parent of a dozen others.

By 1877, the New York Society for Ethical Culture had been incorporated and went on to initiate social reforms, such as "model tenements," the founding of a free kindergarten in 1878, free legal aid to the poor, and child labor laws.

New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street, New York City, NY 10023

Adler chaired the National Child Labor Committee from 1904-1921. His published lectures include Creed and Deed (1880), The Moral Instruction of Children (1892), Life and Destiny (1903), The Essentials of Spirituality, Marriage and Divorce, (1905), The Religion of Duty (1905), The World Crisis and Its Meaning (1915), and An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918).

Influenced by Emerson’s idea of a purely moral religion, he was for a time (1877—1891) president of the Free Religious Association.

The International Journal of Ethics, founded by Adler in 1890, is published today by the University of Chicago Press as Ethics.

Adler became professor of social and political ethics at Columbia, teaching from 1902 until his death.

Howard Radest, in The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, has described how Adler built the Ethical Culture Society, with its schools, obtaining $400,000 from John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Adler was a philosophic idealist, and the Society he founded is a "religion" (some object to the word) based on ethics rather than creed and theology. As described by Wolfgang Saxon,

• Dr. Adler saw a pragmatic faith without God, a belief in the infinite worth of the individual, the centrality of ethical principles, and the urgency to redeem the democratic promise by improving the lot of the poor and fighting privilege. This, he thought, offered a reasoned approach that reached out to those wanting an attractive alternative to Christianity and Judaism.” The platform he supplied spread to other parts of the nation and continues to inspire those interested in social ethics and free religion.

{BDF; CE; CL; ER; EU, Howard B. Radest; FFRF; FUK; FUS; HNS2; JMR; TRI; WSS; RAT; RE}