Ah, this book. Where to start?

The author has a habit of framing options as mutually exclusive opposites when it is not necessarily the case that they are. For example, when considering human societies he offers the choice that one can have a society whose values are ontological or one can have a society whose values are progressive. Presenting these things as if they are as incompatible as matter and anti-matter is a rhetorical framing device to direct your thinking along certain lines. The easiest way to demonstrate this is by scaling his argument down to the level of a single, individual human. Suppose that you believe values are ontological, that there really is something called love and something called justice and something called compassion that exists independently of neurons firing and chemicals interacting and all of the other correlations that go along with human mental and emotional life. It doesn't follow that the exact moment you grasped this, your everyday behaviour was immediately transformed in such a way that it fell into perfect lock step with these ideal conceptions of virtue. There is the ideal (love, justice, compassion, etc.) and there is the actual (how these values are intellectually apprehended and behaviourally expressed in your everyday life). Connecting the two is a line and if the distance between the two end points on that line is decreasing, then you have...... progress! There is no contradiction there. If that is true of individuals, why can it not be true of societies also?

Progress in and off itself is not a bad thing and societies are no more static than people. Just as surely as a person can move up or down a hill, progress can be either positive or negative. If you begin with the assumption that you were at the top of the hill at some point in the past, then of course the only progress you can make is down. Your motto must necessarily be: 'It's all downhill from here.” That is precisely the position the author is arguing from. We have been on the peak of the mountain and now we are tumbling down the hill. It may be true that some societies have been closer to the top of the hill than others but I would dispute his notion that there has ever been a society that was at the top of the hill. Where was this golden age society located? In the middle east when animals and sometimes even human beings were being sacrificed? When the Roman Empire was in full swing and select men were considered deities to be worshipped? Perhaps in Victorian London when it was only illegal to beat your wife after 9 pm and only then because it might disturb neighbours who needed their sleep? Was it before or after abolition? The author places it in pre-reformation Europe. That being the case, unless the author is the recipient of a multi-generational silver spoon, he himself is a beneficiary of the gifts that progress brings. He could have been a serf digging potatoes in the fields while the lords and ladies drank their wine in their sitting rooms and discussed the finer things in life. It would be their lot in life to consider the metaphysical foundations that underlie society, it would be his to make sure dinner was on the table at the right time. My point in this: if you are going to decry progress, you need to look at the grand sweep of history and be aware of precisely what it is you are decrying. Be mindful of the fact that if you have a platform to stand on while you speak, the reason you have that platform is progress. You will have to blacklist the good as well as the bad if you want to preserve your static, unchanging society. Which brings me to my next point. Societies are complex entities – they are not like rivers where everything flows unilaterally in one direction. Some aspects of a given society may be progressing forwards while others are progressing backwards.

Reading this review thus far, you might get the impression I didn't like this book at all. There were some things the author said that I do agree with. One is his assessment that the thing that elevates humankind above the animal kingdom are the twin grounds of knowledge and virtue (though I would point out that one can make a good case that these things are present to some degree in some animals). Knowledge needs virtue if it is to be a benefit to us since knowledge, much like progress itself, is a neutral value that is equally capable of nudging us further along the road to dystopia or utopia. I recall a tweet by Richard Dawkins some time ago: 'What if human meat is grown? Could we overcome our taboo against cannibalism? An interesting test case for consequentialist morality versus “yuck reaction” absolutism.' (I sometimes wonder if Dawkins is just trolling at this point.) In any case we have knowledge - we can cultivate human meat in labs. But should we manufacture it and consume it? This is where virtue might have a say. Suppose you say what is the harm? No conscious entities had to suffer and die so you could enjoy a few slices of long pig with your daily eggs and toast. True. However, maybe after developing a taste for lab grown human meat, someone might begin to hanker for a taste of 'the real thing.' I know, I know – I'm just being an alarmist. But I would invite anyone to take this no conscious entities are being harmed ethic and consider the possibility that it could take us into some very dark places as a society. Using the format of the Dawkins tweet, here is an example: 'What if CGI child pornography is produced? Could we overcome our taboo against child pornography? An interesting test case for consequentialist morality versus “yuck reaction” absolutism.' If you think this is wrong – if you have an immediate visceral reaction to this – then you understand why knowledge needs virtue. One of the functions of virtue is to tell knowledge that there are some lines that you should not cross. It reminds us it is never a question of whether we have the ability to manufacture a bio-weapon by mixing small pox and the ebola virus, it is always a question of whether we should do that. (As an aside, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution offers some interesting discussion about the relationship of knowledge and virtue.)

I also agree with his statement that human societies need to have some form of hierarchy in place to work, though it is not immediately obvious to me what form of hierarchy would be best. Given the proclivities of the author, I must point out that I think any human movement that purports to be a theocratic state (i.e. any political movement where the power and presence of God is not blatantly and publicly manifest as being such by said Deity but nonetheless presumes to claim such an honour for itself) is no less dangerous to human well-being than any other form of political extremism. I find myself thinking of something Jordan B. Peterson stated in a lecture about applying the taoist concept of balancing chaos and order to societies. A society where there is no structure at all descends into anarchy and eventually chaos and a society where there is too much structure becomes a rigid, totalitarian system where freedom is suppressed. Too much freedom and too much control are both detrimental to human flourishing, an ideal society would be able to straddle the line between these two opposing forces.

In summary, it would be fair to say that I could be found nodding or shaking my head on any given page. The author comes off as a bit of an elitist at times and, in the spirit of the title of this book, some of his ideas would have detrimental consequences. This book is an entirely pragmatic approach to the existence of transcendental universals. It doesn't make a case for them, it assumes they exist and precedes from there.

Three stars.

Top ten.

It would be difficult to express how much impact this book had on me as I read. As numerous reviewers stated, it is not an easy read. I had to reread numerous paragraphs and sections. But his post WWII analysis of cultural decline was worth the time. Another reviewer mentioned his tight prose, which I also enjoyed. Not a wasted word. As I read, I did not just think about our cultural decline, but I thought about my family, my church, and my own life. I felt rebuked for my slovenly thinking and my own laziness of life.

The chapter on "Distinction and Hierarchy" as well as his chapter on "Spoiled Child Psychology" effectively diagnosed two of the greatest diseases of our age: egalitarianism and the victim mentality that pervades American culture.

Throughout the book he notes that moral relativism, the loss of overarching truth, is what is wrong with the death of the West. He saw all of this in 1948. The book is great reminder that the West did not start dying in the sixties, as so many conservatives would like us to believe. She was diseased long before that.

His analysis of the effects of WWII on the West was interesting. I am sure when he wrote the book it sounded a bit over the top. Sixty years later it sounds like he had a time machine that transported him to 2000.

He felt that the last place the West could still be won was in the retention of private property. He calls it "The Last Metaphysical Right." He urged his readers to take a stand at exactly this point. If private property is lost then there is no hope. If he was right we are in a lot of trouble.

Finally, the last section of his chapter "The Power of the Word" is a critique of education at the time and an apologetic for classical education and poetry as part of the remedy for our disease.

A great book!

One of the best book I recently read. The author is deeply rooted in platonic thought and flawlessly applies it to the modern world and all of its problems. His chapters on Distinction and Hierarchy, Egotism on Work and Art, the Spoiled-Child Psychology, the last metaphysical right (private property) and Piety & Justice are just full with insights. A must read work on conservatism that I will revisit from time to time.

The title could have been, Ideas Have Consequences or: How I Learned to Hate Modernism and Love the Transcendentalism of the Ancients

I listened to Weaver’s masterpiece on audio, and it was admittedly difficult to absorb that way. For that reason and because of the value I sensed in the contents the first time through, I had to go right back to the beginning and listen again. I got a lot more the second time through, but I suspect if I get my hands on a hard copy I’d get even more out of it going through with a pencil in hand.

Weaver, like few others of his time (C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man and elsewhere, excepted), saw presciently where the prevailing philosophy and culture of his day was headed. What was ahead of its time is ever relevant to the world we live in more than seventy years later.

Chapter 1: The Unsentimental Sentiment
Metaphysical principles determine the way we live, communicate, use logic, and find meaning.

Chapter 2: Distinction and Hierarchy
Equality destroys fraternity.

Chapter 3: Fragmentation and Obsession
A society led by specialists is a society led by sociopaths.

Chapter 4: Egotism in Work and Art
Self-derived value is no true value at all.

Chapter 5: The Great Stereopticon
Propaganda works.

Chapter 6: The Spoiled-Child Psychology
Comfort and ease degrade critical thinking and mental toughness.

Chapter 7: The Last Metaphysical Right
Property is the last guarantee of privacy and freedom.

Chapter 8: The Power of the Word
Words get their power by corresponding to reality.

Chapter 9: Piety and Justice
Virtue comes from above, not from within.

I am reviewing this book chapter-by-chapter on my blog, http://poiemaportfolio.blogspot.com/

This is a meaty book, definitely not a quick read. It is worthy of a little extra attention and time.

In Ideas Have Consequences, Dr. Richard Weaver sets out to define a traditionalist or reactionary worldview situated in opposition to the modern world, which he situates as a claimant if not always avatar to progressivism. The result is a cogent and elegantly written examination of the failures of the modern world and how those failures might be avoided or ameliorated by a return to a more traditional cultural or political philosophy.

Weaver opens by illustrating the ways in which, starting during the Early Modern Period and growing precipitously afterward, the notion of "progress" and "modernity" slowly displaced and then corrupted the traditional Western worldview. Weaver posits that the abandonment of the past as exemplar, religion as moral guide, and truth & knowledge as fixed & knowable led directly to the collapse of Western society, and that only by a return to these values might the West be saved. In this regard Weaver is somewhat unique among the apologists, and he illustrates not only that the Western man is fallen, but how he might get back up again.

These illustrations, drawn from the Western canon of education, philosophy, history, and even music, may or may not convince Weaver's critics. His argumentation relies, principally, on a value system which would probably be abandoned out of hand by his critics in the first place, making conversion of said critics rather difficult. Also, Weaver's assessments of modern modern and his society can very easily be turned aside as generalization and hyperbole. Weaver is at heart a philosopher and not a sociologist or anthropologist, and his approach to evidence is hardly scientific - considering Weaver's rejection of empirical argumentation, this is probably fitting.

If, however, one wishes to see a capable and enjoyable defense of tradition as political theory, one will find no more pithy nor holistic an endeavor than Ideas Have Consequences. I would consider Weaver's work to be mandatory reading for any proud reactionary, and persons of all political stripes will no doubt enjoy a peak into the rationale behind this movement, regardless of whether or not it may win any converts.

3.5 stars [Humanism]
Exact rating: 3.59
#4 of 19 in genre

A manifesto of 1940s Conservatism against Nominalism and its outpourings, written just 3 years after the Second World War in an attempt to describe the state of the world.

Writing: 4.25
Weaver writes well; his prose is dense and erudite. It breaks through to excellence in several places. The style is classic mid-century philosophical exposition.

Use: 3
I filled the book with underlining in many colors and shapes. But due to some demerits in truth, and its density, it is not a manifesto I may read again in full. It certainly could be used as an ad hoc textbook, but there are better analyses of Humanism out there.

Truth: 3.53
Wildly varying, from incredible prescience to unthinking and debunked conservatism in others. Thankfully, 52% of the book contained stunning truth [4.5] about Humanism and the numbing effect of mass media. The latter was a much more salient point in 1948, which we are seeing the full effects of in the 21st century. He gave rare truth [4] about sociology, uncommon truth [3] about duty and social piety, and a mixture of truth in linguistics [2 and 3 = 2.5] and metaphysics [2 and 3.5 = 2.25]. His digressions into music, art, and radio were marked by considerable bias, and have been shown by hindsight to be false (jazz has not, after all, been the downfall of civilization, or even of all excellent music). His treatment of semantics and religion were a catastrophe.

Take-away
Worth a read for those interested in historical philosophy, classical education, and mid-century political speculation.

Book #19 of 35... A very terse read and sometimes hard to follow, but I understand why it’s recommended reading in some of our corners of politics .

I started off on the audiobook, but I wasn't absorbing it, so I switched to ebook format. I picked this up off and on, reading one chapter at a time, to try and take it in slowly. Weaver packs a lot in here, and I'm sure half of it went over my head. This is the kind of little book you hand to college freshmen during orientation to prompt worldview discussions. It's still very relevant, and it deserves a reread someday. I couldn't believe it was originally published in 1948. I've placed some quotes below.

From the Introduction:
"The expulsion of the element of unintelligibility in nature was followed by the abandonment of the doctrine of original sin."

"He [man] struggles with the paradox that total immersion in matter unfits him to deal with the problems of matter."

"Here begins the assault upon definition: if words no longer correspond to objective realities, it seems no great wrong to take liberties with words. From this point on, faith in language as a means of arriving at truth weakens, until our own age, filled with an acute sense of doubt, looks for a remedy in the new science of semantics."

"Hysterical optimism will prevail until he world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil."

"The whole tendency of modern thought, one might say its whole moral impulse, is to keep the individual busy with endless induction. Since the time of Bacon the world has been running away from, rather than toward, first principles, so that, on the verbal level, we see 'fact' substituted for 'truth,' and on the philosophic level, we witness attack upon abstract ideas and speculative inquiry. The unexpressed assumption of empiricism is that experience will tell us what we are experiencing. In the popular arena one can tell from certain newspaper columns and radio programs that the average man has become imbued with this notion and images that an industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge. With what pathetic trust does he recite his facts! He has been told that knowledge is power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things."

From Chapter One:

"...a developed culture is a way of looking at the world through an aggregation of symbols, so that empirical facts take on significance and man feels that he is acting in a drama...There must be a source of clarification, of arrangement and hierarchy's high will provide grounds for the employment of the rational faculty. Now man first begins this clarification when he becomes mythologist, and Aristotle has noted the close relationship between myth-making and philosophy. This poetry of representation, depicting an ideal world, is a great cohesive force, finding whole peoples to the acceptance of a design and fusing their imaginative life. Afterward comes the philosopher, who points out the necessary connection between phenomena, yet who may, at the other end, leave the pedestrian level to talk about final destination."

From Chapter Three:

"Since liberalism became a kind of official party line, we have been enjoined against saying things about races, religions, or national groups, for, after all, there is no categorical statement without its implication of value, and values begin divisions among men. We must not define, subsume, or judge; we must rather rest on the periphery and display 'sensibility toward the cultural expression of all lands and peoples.' This is a process of emasculation. It should be plain from the foregoing that modern man is suffering from a severe fragmentation of his world picture. This fragmentation leads directly to an obsession with isolated parts."

From Chapter Five:

[On the media] "...For one thing, there is the technique of display, with its implied evaluations. This does more of the average man's thinking for him than he suspects. For another, there is the stereotyping of whole phrases. These are carefully chosen not to stimulate reflection but to evoke stock responses of approbation or disapprobation. Headlines and advertising teem with them, and we seem to approach a point at which failure to make the stock response is regarded as faintly treasonable, like refusal to salute the flag.... Newspapers are under strong pressure to distort in the interest of holding attention.... It is an inescapable fact that newspapers thrive on friction and conflict.... they create antagonism where none was felt to exist before.... Journalism, on the whole, is glad to see a quarrel start and sorry to see it end."

"Somewhere, moreover, the metaphysicians of publicity have absorbed the idea that the goal of life is happiness through comfort. It is a state of complacency [that is] supposed to ensure when the physical appetites have been well satisfied. Advertising fosters the concept, social democracy approves it, and the acceptance is so wide that it is virtually impossible today, except from the religious rostrum, to teach that life means discipline and sacrifice. It means, in the world picture of press agency, a job, domesticity, interest in some harmless diversion such as baseball and fishing, and a strong antipathy toward abstract ideas."

In a way, this book is a metaphysical contextualisation of the political battle between conservatism and liberalism. In Weaver’s mind, the decline of the West began when Nominalism won out over Logical Realism in the late 14th century. Having lost faith in a transcendental reality, the West abandoned intellect in favor of the empirical. As a result, people today often lack a “metaphysical dream”, or an “intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality”. People have opinions about issues, but no broader sense of ‘oughtness’ with which to guide society. Without such a scheme, politics become a dull, technocratic procedure rather than an invigorating debate about the right way to live. Lacking this debate, society has no glue because there is nothing of identity at stake in politics or society at large. But If politics is merely economics by other means, why vote? Why not just let it run its course? I disagree with almost every conclusion in this book, however so many of the arguments are incredibly insightful. This is well worth your time. In fact, I’ll probably be reading it over again sometime.

Weaver's premise is simple. There are two basic worldviews in the history of the West: one that affirms transcendent reality and one that doesn't. In the late 1300s, Weaver argues, the momentum shifted from the former to the latter, and it has remained with the materialists ever since.

We are now, Weaver claims, reaping the final fruits of the materialistic worldview. Most of these fruits take the shape of various losses: the loss of true sentiment, resulting in mere sentimentality; the loss of formality and ceremony, distinctions, and hierarchy (which are predicated on the existence of an unseen world and which seem absurd once that world is denied); the loss of liberal education in the humanities matched by the rise of specialization; and the loss of restraint and self-discipline to the "spoiled-child psychology" that seeks instant comfort and gratification. The replacement of transcendent values with ephemeral ones has been abetted by the emergence of a massive propaganda machine, the Great Stereopticon, to communicate the ideals of the materialistic worldview.

In the final three chapters, Weaver outlines a strategy for the recovery of value, using as a beachhead the one metaphysical right that has escaped destruction: the right to private property. From there, aided by the power of precisely-deployed language to defend the transcendent worldview and expose the paradoxes of its alternatives, Weaver sees the possibility of renewal for a just and pious society.