Adler made an impression on me with the slogan: philosophy is everyone’s business, and with the book “How to Read a Book.” However, he had a particular religious and ethico-political agenda which — in my estimate — was wrong. But I think he was on the right track in espousing Aquinas’s (and Aristotle’s) dialectical method, in which actual and possible objections are raised and answered.
But, it is the views and topics of Bertrand Russell which have impressed me more — mainly because of their secular perspective. [They are not bogged down with a religious or pseudo-religious background.]
In the following essay, Russell distinguishes the problems of technical or academic philosophy, from the practical problems which everyone has, and whose solution calls for wisdom.
Read the second essay “Philosophy for Laymen” in Unpopular Essays, 1921.