Ideas Have Consequences

Rating:
Summary: The Great Stereopticon
Review: The Great Stereopticon is not the latest in digital CD player technology, but the latter is a medium of the former. Prof. Weaver's book, written in the late 1940s, with a Muse of fire, is still current, because the crisis in our civilization continues, and of that he wrote. The 'Great Stereopticon' is the term that Richard Weaver uses to describe the prevading noise generated by our culture, which nearly drowns out the still, small voice of truth, goodness, and virtue. The main point of the book is that ideas, in this case bad ones, can start in motion a train of events, which as they emerge from the world of thought, produce nasty and often unintended consequences. The author traces the decline of the core vision of Western civilization to the progressive divorce of Man and Nature that began with Bacon, and which has continued, as Scientism replaced Science. The momentum of the centuries has given this set of ideas great power and unthought acceptance that is prevasive in our society. The result is the rising tide of barbarism that is engulfing us. Technological progress has done great good, but has not made us better. Without wanting to summarize the author's arguments further, this is one of the seminal works in the Conservative canon, in the Southern Agrarian tradition. The book is not long, and is arranged in stand-alone chapters, which advance Prof. Weaver's argument and form a coherent whole. It is also a quick read, and is done in a superb, flowing style that does the treasurehouse of ideas contained in it justice.

Rating:
Summary: Things Fall Apart -- It's Scientific!
Review: This book is densely written and merits -- maybe requires -- multiple readings. Fortunately, it's also a compelling book, which will make you want to reread it.

The idea whose consequences Weaver entails and deplores he identifies as nominalism or relativism -- the absence of belief in any source of truth outside man, the absence of universals, the reduction of all things to formless particulars.

You might have thought that such an idea was too abstract to have any impact on your life, but Weaver argues persuasively that nominalism makes impossible the "metaphysical dream" of an organized universe, leading to social chaos, formless art, virtueless individuals suckered by newspapers, movies and radio (today I imagine he would have added television to the list) into believing that life consists only of chasing ever more creature comforts and a universal "spoiled-child psychology".

He also prescribes remedies. The ownership of property, he argues, is the sole surviving "metaphysical right" our culture recognizes, and the starting point for anyone wishing to restore other metaphysical ideas. Because language is so closely tied to thought, Weaver argues for some language-oriented educational remedies (more emphasis on poetry in education, and on foreign languages, especially Latin and Greek). He also argues the case for the dying virtue of piety, which he defines as respect for nature, respect for the substance of others, and respect for the substance of the past.

There's more than a little of the grouchy conservative in Weaver. For instance, he complains bitterly about jazz, "the clearest of all signs of our age's deep-seated predilection for barbarism." This reminds me, amusingly, of Robert Bork's similar complaints in _Slouching Towards Gomorrah_ -- except that Bork complains that rock and roll is the degenerate music of adolescence, in contrast to the serious and adult-themed music of... you guessed it... jazz.

But this is a small flaw. Weaver's diagnosis of the ills of our age is insightful and thought-provoking. I, for one, am certainly willing to take a crack at his proposed remedies.

Rating:
Summary: A prophetic voice
Review: To borrow a phrase from Ernest Becker (Denial of Death): if a few books had the power to shake the world, this one would already have have rocked it to its foundations. Weaver traces our decline to the emergence of nominalism with Duns Scotus, in medieval times. This slim book reads like it was written in fire.

Rating:
Summary: One of the 25 most important conservative books
Review: Weaver was a professor of rhetoric at the University of Chicago. Ideas Have Consequences, like Weaver's other books, is small but deep. It brilliantly diagnoses what ails modern man, tracing the illness to its root, the flight from faith.

        According to Weaver's friend Russell Kirk, the publisher imposed the title, which Weaver hated, on this book.

        My one problem with the book is that its title is used as an incantation by some conservative intellectuals who insist that being right, in the sense of being correct, is sufficient to win. To support their position, they utter the words: "Ideas have consequences," thinking that by so doing they have enlisted Richard Weaver on their side and thereby obsolved themselves of any obligation to take effective actions.

        Once you have read the book, you will know that Weaver didn't believe that ideas in and of themselves have consequences. He believed that skillful actions, when based on good ideas, have good consequences.

Rating:
Summary: Strange brew, strange bedfellows
Review: Weaver's analysis of jazz represents some of the most pre-eminent bogosity published this age. On the other hand, when he turns his gaze to the degenerate influence of journalism on the public mind, he appears no longer to be under the influence of the same hallucinogens.

For readers to apply the label conservative to such radically Socratic thoughts is odd, to say the least. Those who believe that Weaver's work has in any way shaped mainstream American conservatism should recall the "crimes" for which Socrates was put to death by the cultural conservatives of his own day: corrupting the youth, and religious heresy.

Weaver would no doubt be deeply suspicious of the ends to which his ideas are being turned. In our public discourse, the ideas Weaver promotes have become conservative buzzwords, bereft of all resemblance to the ideals he espoused.

Piety as Weaver understands it, for example, is fundamentally at odds with the prevailing concept. Those who would argue otherwise, should re-read chapter IX before trying to make the case that Weaver would approve of the current administration's foreign policy -- or any policy whatsoever of the Bush administration.

Where is the "humbler view of man's powers"? Where the "formal cognizance of the right to existence not only of inferiors but also of enemies"?

To put it bluntly, Weaver would likely say that the Bush administration's "formula of unconditional surrender" -- so wildly popular with American conservatives -- "impiously puts man in the place of God by usurping unlimited rights to dispose of the lives of others".

For that reason, "Ideas Have Consequences" should be required reading for American conservatives. It is not an endorsement, but rather an indictment of prevailing conservative values.

Rating:
Summary: As pertinent now as it was 54 years ago
Review: Without question, Ideas Have Consequences ranks among the classics of conservatism--along with such others as Kirk's The Conservative Mind and Nisbet's Quest for Community--and is required reading for modern conservatives, who owe much to the ideas of Richard Weaver and many of whom have, sadly, strayed from the path of conservatism properly understood. Weaver, writing here in the late 1940s, perceived a culture that was declining, and one can only wonder what he would have thought about modern society, in which traditional values and order have so eroded that they bear no resemblance even to the "diseased" culture of the 1940s. A restoration of piety, tradition, values, honor, and chivalry would surely serve us well today, if only modern man would heed Weaver's warnings, which resonate as loudly now as they did in 1948.