Ideas Have Consequences
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RICHARD M. WEAVER Ideas Have Consequences THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1948 by T he University of Chicago. All rights reserved Published 1948. Paperback edition 1984 Printed in the United States of America 11 10 09 08 07 20 21 22 ISB N 0 -2 2 6 -8 7 6 8 0 -2 (paper) This book is printed on acid-free paper. FOREWORD WHEN Ideas Have Consequences was published in 1948, it met a response far beyond anything anticipated by the author. The book was written in the period immediately following the second World War, and it was in a way a reaction to that war—to its immense destructiveness, to the strain it placed upon ethical principles, and to the tensions it left in place of the peace and order that were professedly sought. its rhetorical note may perhaps be explained by this, but many people have written me to say that they found their own thoughts expressed in the book. I have therefore tried to understand its appeal by asking myself whether it can really be considered a work of philosophy. It is a work of philosophy to the extent that it tries to analyze many fea tures of modern disintegration by referring them to a first cause. This was a change that overtook the dominant philo sophical thinking of the West in the fourteenth century, when the reality of transcendentais was first seriously chal lenged. To many readers this has been the most unsatisfac tory part of the reasoning; but to others it h.ns, seemingly, been the most convincing. I will merely say that something like this is necessary if one believes in the primacy of ideas. 1 was attempting a rigorous cause-and-cffect analysis of the decline of belief in standards and values, and there must be a starting point. I have come to feel increasingly, however, that it is not primarily a work of philosophy; it is rather an intuition of a situation. The intuition is of a world which has lost its Foreivord center, which desires to believe again in value and obliga tion. But this world is not willing to realize how it has lost Its belief or to face what it must accept in order to re gain faith in an order of goods. The dilemma is very widely felt, and I image this accounts for the interest of the book to many persons who would not be at all happy with the political implications of some of the conclusions. In a more general revision I would very probably change a few matters of emphasis and try to find less topical appli cations for some of the ideas. But I see no reason, after the lapse of more than a decade, to retreat from the general position of social criticism. It seems to me that the world is now more than ever dominated by the gods of mass and speed and that the worship of these can lead only to the lowering of standards, the adulteration of quality, and, in general, to the loss of those things which are essential to the life of civility and culture. The tendency to look with suspicion upon excellence, both intellectual and moral, as "undemocratic” shows no sign of diminishing. The book was intended as a challenge to forces that threaten the foundations of civilization, and I am very happy to see it appear in a more accessible edition. R i c h a r d M. W e a v e r TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................. 1 I. T h e U nsentimental S e n t im e n t 18 II. D is t in c t io n a n d H ie r a r c h y 35 III. F ragmentation a n d O bsession 52 IV, E g o t is m in W o r k a n d A r t . 70 V, T h e G r e a t S tereopticon 92 VI. T h e S p o il e d -C h il d P sy c h o l o g y 113 VII, T h e L a st M etaphysical R ig h t 129 VIII. T h e P o w e r o f t h e W o r d 148 IX. P ie t y a n d J u st ic e . 170 A cknowledgments 189 INTRODUCTION THIS is another book about the dissolution of the West. I attempt two things not commonly found in the growing literature of this subject. First, I present an account of that decline based not on analogy but on deduction. It is here the assumption that the world is intelligible and that man is free and that those consequences wc arc now expiating are the product not of biological or other necessity but of unin telligent choice. Second, I go so far as to propound, if not a whole solution, at least the beginning of one, in the belief that man should not follow a scientific analysis with a plea of moral impotence. In considering the world to which these matters arc ad dressed, I have been chiefly impressed by the difficulty of gcrtingcertain initial facts admitted. This difficulty is due in part to the widely prevailing Whig theory of history, with its belief that the most advanced point in time represents the point of highest development, aided no doubt by theories of evolution which suggest to the uncritical a kind of necessary passage from simple to complex. Yet the real trouble is found to lie deeper than this. It is the appalling problem, when one comes to actual cases, of getting men to distinguish between better and worse. Arc people today pro vided with a sufficiently rational scale of values to attach these predicates with intelligence? There is ground for de claring that modern man has become a moral idiot. So few are those who care to examine their lives, or to accept the rebuke which comes of admitting that our present state may be a fallen state, that one questions whether people now 1 Introduction understand what is meant by the superiority of an ideal. One might expect abstract reasoning to be lost upon them; but what is he to think when attestations of the most concrete kind are set before them, and they arc still powerless to mark a difference or to draw a lesson? For four centuries every man has been not only his own priest but his own professor of ethics, and the consequence is an anarchy which threatens even that minimum consensus of value necessary to the political state. Surely we are justified in saying of our time: If you seek the monument to our folly, look about you. In our own day we have seen cities obliterated and ancient faiths stricken. We may well ask, in the words of Matthew, whether we are not faced with "great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world." Wc have for many years moved with a brash confidence that man had achieved a position of independence which rendered the ancient restraints needless. Now, in the first half of the twentieth century, at the height of modern progress, we behold unprecedented outbreaks of hatred and violence; we have seen whole nations desolated by war and turned into penal camps by their conquerors; we find half of mankind looking upon the other half as criminal. Everywhere occur symptoms of mass psychosis. Most portentous of all, there appear diverging bases of value, so that our single planetary globe IS mocked by worlds of different understanding. These signs of disintegration arouse fear, and fear leads to des perate unilateral efforts toward survival, which only for ward the process. Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have wc 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 2 hitroducùon he would only abandon his belief tn the existence of tran scendentais. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universais. 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 m modern decadence. One may be accused here of oversimplifying the historical process, but I take the view that the conscious policies of men and governments are not mere rationalizations of what has been brought about by unaccountable forces. They arc rather deductions from our most basic ideas of human des tiny, and they have a great, though not unobstructed, pow er to determine our course. For this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of a change which came over man’s concep tion of reality at this historic juncture. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalhm, which denies that universais have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terras mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind.