Ideas Have Consequences (1948)-INTRODUCTION: to Ideas Have Consequences (1948) (Richard M. Weaver) Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. Richard Weaver's conservative classic is at its very best as he dissects the tragedy above, the Rationalist descent into naturalism and the rejection of transcendent truths. For instance, one of the truths that was thrown out is the idea of hierarchy, supplanted by the notion of egalitarianism, with disastrous results: [R]ebellion against distinction is an aspect of that world-wide and centuries long movement against knowledge whose beginning goes back to nominalism. For it requires only a slight transference to say that, if our classifications of the world of physical nature are arbitrary, so, too, are those of human society. In other words, after we grant that those generalizations about the world which we necessarily make-and this is a necessity no one can really deny-do not express an objective order but only afford convenient modes, the same must be granted about society. With this conceded, inherent pattern is gone; nothing is justified that does not serve convenience, and there remains no court of appeal against subversion by pragmatism. Thus, repudiation of knowledge of what is destroys the basis of renewal. It is not fantastic but, rather, realistic to see as an ultimate result of this process the end of civilization. [...]Thus the tendency of the Rationalists/Egalitarians of continental Europe towards tyranny and the resistance of the more skeptical Anglosphere. The book is filled with such insights and rich in aphorisms--one could go on just quoting it all day, especially because you aren't likely to ever say it better than Mr. Weaver does in this almost poetic text. In the latter portion of the book, Weaver suggests some solutions to "modern man's descent into chaos": The first positive step must be a driving afresh of the wedge between the material and the transcendental. This is fundamental: without a dualism we should never find purchase for the pull upward, and all the idealistic designs might as well be scuttled. I feel that this conclusion is the upshot of all that has been here rehearsed. That there is a world of ought, that the apparent does not exhaust the real--these are so essential to the very conception of improvement that it should be superfluous to mention them. The opening made by our wedge is simply the denial that whatever is, is right, which takes the form of an insistence upon the rightness of right., Upon this rock of metaphysical right we shall build our house.That this is the fundamental conflict of modernity explains everything from the Darwin Wars to the Left trying to banish religion from the Public Square to the conservative "War on Science." Mr. Weaver helps us to see are just the particulars of a broader metaphysical duel. If that's the wider war though, Mr. Weaver sets his sights on a few discrete battlefields, first: Because we are now committed to a program which has practical applications, we must look for some rallying-point about which to organize. We face the fact that our side has been in retreat for four hundred years without, however, having been entirely driven from the field. One corner is yet left. When we survey the scene to find something which the rancorous leveling wind of utilitarianism has not brought down, we discover one institution, shaken somewhat, but still strong and perfectly clear in its implications. This is the right of private property, which is, in fact, the last metaphysical right remaining to us.There follows a virtual love song to the idea of property in which the very fact there is no rational reason that anyone should have a right to property becomes its strength. Next comes "The Power of the Word", After securing a place in the world from which to fight, we should turn our attention first to the matter of language. The impulse to dissolve everything into sensation has made powerful assaults against the forms which enable discourse, because these institute a discipline and operate through predictions which are themselves fixities. We have sought an ultimate sanction for man's substance in metaphysics, and we must do the same for his language if we are to save it from a similar prostitution. All metaphysical community depends on the ability of men to understand one another.And from thence he brings us to a concluding chapter on restoring piety: Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego. And, before we can bring harmony back into a world where now everything seems to meet "in mere oppugnancy," we shall have to regard with the spirit of piety three things: nature, our neighbors--by which I mean all other people--and the past.It is, of course, the great irony of the Age of Reason that those who claim to look at the world without the blinders of faith and religion base their metaphysics on blind faith in the self: I think, therefore I am. The piety that Mr. Weaver calls for is a corrective to this grotesque egotism and the desire to locate all of existence in oneself. It is, at its simplest, a demand for consideration, that we consider ideas and people--and, of course, God--that lie beyond the four corners of our own minds, even though Reason tells us that there is no need to do so. His is a summons back to faith and though the situation today is not as dire as when he wrote--due in no small part to his having helped create modern conservatism--it remains a timely message. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A+) Tweet Websites:-PROFILE: Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963) (Religion & Liberty) -Richard M. Weaver (Wikipedia) -ESSAY: Life Without Prejudice: Would be life without principle, as Dr. Johnson and H. L. Mencken knew. (Richard M. Weaver, Summer 1957, Modern Age) -ESSAY: The Image of Culture: It brings people together by uniting them under a higher ideal. (Richard M. Weaver, Spring 1964, Modern Age) - -ARCHIVES: Richard M. Weaver (Modern Age) -ESSAY: Oakeshott and Weaver: Two Types of Conservatism (William Reddinger, March 21, 2024, Online Library of Liberty) -REVIEW ESSAY: A Great Individualist: H. L. Mencken may be known as a curmudgeon, but he’s best understood as a conservative. (Richard M. Weaver, Spring 1962, Modern Age) -EXCERPT: Introduction to Ideas Have Consequences -EXCERPT: CHAPTER II: DISTINCTION AND HIERARCHY (Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences) -QUOTATIONS: Richard Weaver (Conservative Forum) -Weaver Fellowship (ISI) -ESSAY: Right Thinking Richard Weaver (Stephen Goode, Feb 8, 1999, Insight on the News) -ESSAY: Richard M. Weaver on Civilization, Ontology, and War (Joseph R. Stromberg, February 27, 2001, Anti-War) - -ESSAY: Irving Babbitt & Richard Weaver: Conservative Sages (George Panichas, August 16th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative) -ESSAY: Ideas Still Have Consequences: Richard Weaver on Nominalism & Relativism (Darrell Falconburg, December 6th, 2020, Imaginative Conservative) -ESSAY: Richard M. Weaver: Philosopher From Dixie (Joe Scotchie, Southern Events) -ESSAY: Richard Weaver: Historian of the South (Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Lew Rockwell) -ESSAY: Weaver of Liberty (Joseph Stromberg, March 06, 2001, Mises.org) -ESSAY: Ideas Have Consequences" and Biased Reason (Ellen Myers, Creationism.org) -ESSAY: Ideas Have Consequences (Richard Kew) -ESSAY: Ideas Still Have Consequences (Rev. Dale Tedder) -ESSAY: IDEAS AND ACTIONS DO HAVE CONSEQUENCES (Westminster Presbyterian) -ARTICLE: Ted Smith Becomes Leading Scholar on Conservative Icon Richard Weaver (VCU) Richard M. Weaver (Know Southern History) WEAVER & PERELMAN -ESSAY: Quintilian & Richard Weaver: Their Treatment Of the "Noble Orator" (Glen Dunn, Bradley.edu) -ESSAY: The Narrative of Freedom: Reflections on Memory and the Role of Rhetoric in a Civil Society (Vigen Guroian, Breakpoint) -ESSAY: Power-Politics - Vs. Ecclesiastical Cultures (David Rockett, Fall 1994, Contra Mundum) -BOOK SITE: Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963: A Life of the Mind by Fred Douglas Young (University of Missouri Press) -ESSAY: The Metaphysics of Conservatism (Edward Feser, 12 Jan 2006, Tech Central Station) -ESSAY: Politics of Progress (James R. Harrigan, 02 May 2003, Tech Central Station) -ESSAY: The Burke Habit: Prudence, skepticism and "unbought grace." (JEFFREY HART, December 27, 2005, Opinion Journal) -ARCHIVES: "richard weaver" (Find Articles) -REVIEW: of Ideas Have Consequences (Notes on Books by Gerard Reed) - -REVIEW: of Ideas JHave Consequences (Francis P. Sempa, University Bookman) -No. 21 - Richard Weaver: Ideas Have Consequences (Dr. Enrico Peppe, 7 January 2004, IC's Top 25 Philosophical and Ideological Conservative Books) -REVIEW: of In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963, Edited by Ted J. Smith III (David Bovenizer, Virginia Institute for Public Policy) Book-related and General Links: |
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