Ideas Have Consequences: a review, summary and notes

Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver is a classic in the conservative tradition. I am generally not conservative, but was sent a copy of the book by a friend who encouraged me to study it, which I did to some extent. This page is the result of that study. It consists of a partial review, a three-tiered summary, a set of questions raised by the book, and a couple of possibilities for essay topics based on the book. I originally put this page up a year or so ago, but took it down almost immediately, and before linking to it from anywhere, having decided that the almost universally critical nature of the review was inappropriate given that there was actually quite a lot that I very much appreciated in this book. I have decided to place it back up anyway with that caveat, seeing that I am unlikely to revise the review any time soon, and not wanting to waste the effort that I put into it.

Review and analysis
Summary and notes
Some questions raised by the book
Potential essay topics
- Essay topic 1: Is metaphysical certitude provided?
- Essay topic 2: Is the right to private property metaphysically self-justifying?

Review and analysis

Introduction

In Ideas Have Consequences, first published by The University of Chicago Press in 1948, the author, Richard M. Weaver ("RW" from here on) contrasts his conservative perspective of social degeneration against a liberal perspective of social progress. Many fundamental questions are raised in this book, as well as some less fundamental ones, however, in leaving some of the most fundamental questions unanswered even whilst alluding to the existence of answers, RW fails to provide a thorough enough grounding for his claims. He thus leaves himself too open to the charge that his perspective is as much a subjective matter as an objective one. This is particularly problematic given that he asserts that we have lost confidence in objective truth due to the process of social degeneration: as readers we might then have expected good reason to be confident that the book constitutes or explicates objective truth.

I do not offer in this review an assertive opinion as to the correctness or otherwise of RW's primary causal hypothesis: that the dissolution of the West began when, in the fourteenth century debate, nominalism won out over logical realism. What I do discuss is the metaphysical and socio-political outlook presented in the book, the extent to which RW justifies that outlook, the extent to which I (dis)agree with it and why, some of the questions and issues raised by it, and the extent to which RW addresses those questions and issues.

I have not attempted though even in this limited respect to make this review comprehensive: Ideas Have Consequences is a dense book packed full of ideas. It is very possible that I will revisit this essay, possibly multiple times, to address this deficiency. If so, I will indicate which additions and/or changes I have made, and when.

First principles and truth: the context of the book's metaphysic

RW makes it plain that he believes in truth in the highest sense, and also that he believes that this truth is knowable. In particular, he makes it clear that he believes in knowable first principles. A major problem in this book then is that nowhere does it tell us what these first principles are, nor how we can know them. This renders its entire case rather suspect: the correct way for RW to have constructed the book if he genuinely did know first principles would have been from those first principles upwards. Instead, their conspicuous absence, let alone any derivation from them of the other truths in the book, leaves me doubting that in fact he does know any (objective) first principles, for why else would they be so absent?

There is, in the book's preface, added a decade after the book's first publishing, an apparent acknowledgement by RW that he has been less disciplined in this respect than he might have been expected to be, where he writes: "I have come to feel increasingly, however, that [the book] 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 center, which desires to believe again in value and obligation" (pgs v-vi).

I accord with these sentiments, and I would express them only slightly differently: to the extent that this is a work of philosophy, it is neither rigorous nor grounded - it does not proceed from first principles, and its philosophical aspects function more by intuition and rhetoric than by reason and argument.

The book's metaphysic in overview

With that, I'd like to consider the overarching metaphysic expressed in the book, which, not that RW ever expresses it explicitly in the one place like this at any point, seems to be something roughly as follows: God, through the logos and the forms, created the world and humanity purposefully, in imperfect imitation of the forms. Human life is a transitory preparation for the afterlife, in which an individual's condition depends on how well and purposefully s/he lived life in a world in which both original sin and evil exist.

This metaphysic provokes many questions, some of which include:

If the world's existence is explained as a creation of God based on the logos and the forms, then how are God's, the logos' and the forms' existences explained?
For what purpose did God create the world and humanity, and why has that purpose not been made plain to every living person?
If God is good, then He must also be fair, but how is it fair that not everybody knows what the purpose of life is, given that they might suffer post-life consequences for failing according to standards of which they were incognisant?
How, too, is it fair for humans to inherit the original sin for which they were not personally responsible?
Too, if God and His creation are good, then from whence evil and sin? RW does not even acknowledge (in this book at least) the need for, let alone offer, a theodicy.
Along these lines: what in fact is "original sin"? Is it a specific historical act, a literal consumption of a literal forbidden fruit by a literal man and woman? Or is it more abstract, and if so, what does it mean in the abstract?
If the purpose of life is human-centred, then why such a vast and relatively (so far as we know) unpopulated universe?
Why, assuming both that the purpose of life is human-centred, and the rough accuracy of the scientific account, did human life appear in the universe only after such an incredibly protracted period of time, and why does it seem to have evolved from non-human ancestors?
Also, as an extension not strictly following from the above metaphysic summary: given RW's belief in the dignity of religion, and given his admiration for a generally Christian culture, how does Christianity fit in with his metaphysic - does he, for example, believe in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice, and in the salvific necessity of faith in Christ? If he does, then is there no possibility of salvation for those who lived prior to, or who have never heard of Christ? RW never broaches this subject, nor, in fact, any of these questions, let alone offer answers to any them.

Most of these questions are typical atheist talking points, not particularly original to me, however, the book's failure to address them virtually ensures that it will have little to no power of persuasion over such individuals. On the other hand, despite these difficult questions, I am sympathetic towards something like this overarching metaphysic - not necessarily because of anything in the book, but because of what I have learnt through life's experiences. That said, I am not certain of much, and I am unable to answer with any certainty the above questions. In this sense, the book is a little personally disappointing: it is not very helpful in resolving the tension between that which is pointed to by my life experiences, and the challenging questions raised by the same.

The book's specific metaphysical propositions listed

It is helpful, I think, in addition to outlining the overarching metaphysic expressed in the book, to offer in this review a listing of the various specific metaphysical propositions asserted throughout the book, so here follows that listing, with the aim (no doubt unrealised) of being comprehensive. Some of these propositions are asserted more explicitly and some more implicitly. Each is appended in square brackets with the chapter number in which it first occurs.

That the Platonic forms exist, and that they project imperfectly onto this world. [Introduction, Chapter 2]
That the world was created and has a purpose. [Introduction]
That the world is intelligible but that there also exists an element of unintelligibility/mystery in the world and its creation. [Introduction]
That original sin exists. [Introduction]
That man has free will. [Introduction]
That man is a divine creation whose soul is at stake in a great drama. [Introduction]
That theocracy is the best method of governance. [Introduction]
That religion is dignified. [Introduction]
That true knowledge is of universals, not particulars. [Introduction]
That forms, particularly those of culture, ought to be respected. [Chapter 1]
That the older generation ought to be cherished. [Chapter 1]
That heroes ought to be valued highly. [Chapter 1]
That the logos exists. [Chapter 2]
That in mirroring the logos, rational society is hierarchical. [Chapter 2]
That fraternity (brotherhood) ought to be valued highly, especially in comparison to individualism and egalitarianism. [Chapters 2, 4]
That man's soul is immortal, and passes on to the afterlife upon death. [Chapter 2]
That spiritual education and wisdom ought to be valued highly, especially in comparison to secular education. [Chapter 2]
That the highest values are timeless. [Chapter 3]
That the highest knowledge concerns the relation of men to God and of men to men. [Chapter 3]
That different races, religions, and national groups are unequal. [Chapter 3]
That self-depreciation, discipline, restraint, responsibility, devotion, the intellect and self-perfecting ought to be valued highly, especially in comparison to self-importance, laxness, impulse, irresponsibility, rebelliousness, sensual pleasure and enjoyment. [Chapter 4]
That labour, in making the potential actual, is a type of prayer. [Chapter 4]
That the authority by which both labourers and rulers act is divine. [Chapter 4]
That the best art is faithful to the enduring reality. [Chapter 4]
That evil exists. [Chapter 5]
That there is spiritual growth in developing, through life's struggles, the discipline required to overcome in those struggles. [Chapter 6]
That the right to private property is metaphysically self-justifying. [Chapter 7]
That language has a divine element. [Chapter 8]
That creation is fundamentally good. [Chapter 9]
That we should seek neither to fully accept and emulate, nor to fully repudiate and change, nature, instead cultivating a respectful nonattachment towards her. [Chapter 9]
That we have a right to be, in and of that being, as components of a good creation. [Chapter 9]
That women and men are not equals, and that for women, as custodians of the values, it is better to "be" than to "do". [Chapter 9]
That we ought to respect the past. [Chapter 9]

Roughly half of the items in that list are never justified more than by mere assertion - and that's being generous by taking some of the remainder to be so reasonable as not to require any justification. This is consistent with a view that this is as much a book of rhetoric as it is one of reason - but this observation is as much admiring as it is critical, because RW is particularly accomplished rhetorically. In RW's place, I might have attempted to demonstrate the soundness of his propositions and overarching metaphysic by drawing from the autobiographies and teachings of past spiritual luminaries, and/or from the accounts of the near-death or out-of-body experiences of "ordinary" people, although, admittedly, such accounts were relatively unknown in RW's day, and recurrence to such arguably anecdotal accounts would perhaps have broken the book's style. Incidentally, it is not surprising that RW is known to have been a Platonist, because much if not all of that list is consistent with Platonism.

The seriousness of life

In this book, RW asserts a view that life is serious, that responsibility takes precedence over entertainment, and that the intellect takes precedence over the senses. In particular, in regard to the latter, he asserts a view that intellectual abstraction takes precedence over sensory pleasure, as exemplified by his severe condemnation of jazz music as the end product of a process of sensual debasement of what started out as the architectural expression of social order that was the symphonic form.

This overall view of life as serious seems to be based in his metaphysic: life is serious because it is a purposeful creation of God, subject to the influence of evil, the reality of which RW affirms, and because one's condition in the afterlife depends upon how well one lives one's life in this world.

A problem here is that, especially given that RW does not justify or elaborate on his metaphysic, this view of life doesn't even necessarily follow from what we do know of that metaphysic. Certainly, the reality of evil lends a seriousness to life, and it is possible that God's purpose for our lives is one of intellection rather than sensual pleasure - but it is also possible that God's purpose, whatever it is (and RW does not say much on this), would be served if we were to live balanced lives in which we used our intellects as necessary, especially to combat evil, but also in which we lived pleasurably in the face of evil. It is possible that God's "serious" purpose is ultimately one of spreading maximal joy despite the existence of (or as antidote to) evil, both in this world and in the afterlife, and it is not clear why, in such a scenario, sensual pleasure (as a type of joy) would be any less valid than intellection. Indeed, it is not clear either why the afterlife would convey any more seriousness to life than life otherwise would have unless the afterlife was eternal, one's condition in the afterlife depended on how well one lived one's life, and one only lived once - yet RW does not explain why this is (or would be) the case.

RW, then, does not canvas important possibilities, nor does he explain why his preferred possibility is (or would be) the actuality over other possibilities. We have here an example of his tendency to appeal to intuition rather than to reason from first principles. He is, in a significant sense, preaching to the converted and readily convertible: those whose intuitions match, or have been tending towards, his own will find much confirmation in this book; others will have little reason to be moved.

Authoritarianism and hierarchy versus individual liberty

The clash of conservatism with liberalism rings throughout many parts of this book. RW argues that if society is to be "rational", then it must reflect that from which it proceeds, the logos, and thus it must be hierarchical (that society ought to be "rational" is an implicit and unexamined premise in his argument). He speaks admiringly of the Middle Ages, and in particular of theocracy, apparently his ultimate hierarchical society. He speaks disapprovingly of individualism, particularly in music, literature and painting, instead seeing individuals as obligated to fulfil, undeviating, their place and role in the (spiritually-authorised) social body. In his eyes, individualism "signifies a cutting-off or separation, and crimes can be committed in that name" (pg 180), and "with its connotation of irresponsibility, [it] is a direct invitation to selfishness" (pg 181).

In this way, he challenges the liberal presupposition of the primacy of individual autonomy, which could perhaps be seen as being predicated on the (roughly stated) proposition that unless a person does harm to others, or fails in the basic shared obligations of communal life (e.g. paying taxes), no other person or entity has or ought to have any right to dictate choices to that person. An individual, according to this view, ought - with the previously mentioned caveats - to be free to live his/her life on his/her own terms, rather than forced to live by the terms of supposed authorities.

It seems to me that this area is fraught and difficult to resolve. On the one hand, if we admit to God, to spiritual authority and to the possibility of revelation (and perhaps even if we don't), then it seems likely that there are humans better qualified than others, and even legitimately qualified, to lead and even to "dictate" the way in which we ought to live our lives in this mortal coil. On the other hand, the problem of how to reliably identify such people is not easily resolved, and it is not clear that legitimate spiritual authority (would) lead(s) by "dictating" to others anyway, rather than through some subtler or gentler method. Too, given the reality of evil, unchecked power is dangerous, because it can so easily fall into the wrong hands. I believe that we should take the cautionary tale of George Orwell's 1984 very seriously.

Theocracy, it seems to me, is an unacceptably unaccountable form of governance: an ostensibly divinely-ordained monarch gone wrong has essentially no checks on his/her corruption and abuse other than overthrow by a rival or revolution by the people, the latter of which, given enough power in the hands of a monarch, can be suppressed or at least severely restrained, and the former of which offers no guarantee of a change for the better. Democracy, on the other hand, is in a sense rule by popular opinion, and there is no guarantee that popular opinion is spiritually inspired - so it is no panacea either.

Perhaps, though, despite its flaws, and despite RW's somewhat weak (in my view) critique of it (which, for brevity, I haven't outlined here), democracy is the best for which we can hope: it provides systematic means for ridding us of the corrupt, and whilst there is no guarantee that it represents spiritual or even social inspiration, there is perhaps wisdom in the crowd - and regardless, there is no guarantee of spiritual or social inspiration in a monarch either.

Too, RW has not explained in any meaningful detail what the social and spiritual order are, nor to what extent we can personally verify these orders, and, as I wrote above, it is possible that God's plan is one of spreading maximal joy in the face of evil, which might, despite RW's protestations, involve a celebration of individuality rather than a condemnation of it. It is possible that God made us each "individual" in the sense of "unique" so that the experience of life might be made more interesting, and this would then be something to rejoice in rather than to condemn as "selfish" and "irresponsible".

This, in fact, makes sense: one of the main powers commonly attributed to God is creative agency, and an agent who created a bunch of identical drones would not be a particularly creative one. On the other hand, the potential influence of evil on individual traits cannot be dismissed, and so we cannot be sure whether any uniqueness in an individual is a divinely or malignly inspired one.

As a caveat, it is possible that I am being somewhat unfair to RW in this discussion, in that in his negative connotations of "individualism" he does not necessarily include "uniqueness", and that he might even be appreciative of individuality in the sense of uniqueness e.g. in that some individuals are more "uniquely" qualified to be placed higher up the social ladder than others. If I am being unfair, however, then perhaps this is due in part to RW's poor choice of definitions: his notion that "individualism" implies (negatively) "irresponsibility" and "selfishness" rather than (positively) "uniqueness" is perhaps a little narrow, or at least ideologically inspired.

Conclusion

Ideas Have Consequences is in a sense a metaphysical contextualisation of the political battle between conservatism and liberalism. It is also in a sense a rallying cry to sympathisers to act, or at least to speak out, in defence of, or at the very least to become acutely aware of, that metaphysical context. There is in this book much psychological analysis of the modern mind, and of the culture to which this mind leads, which is well worth considering, especially if one accepts this metaphysical context. I have not addressed in this review that analysis, in part because I am not convinced that Richard M. Weaver has succeeded in explicating metaphysical objective truth, or, if he has, that he has properly grounded it epistemologically. I encourage those who have not yet done so though to read Ideas Have Consequences, and to notice to what extent its psychological analysis resonates personally. To whatever extent it does (for me it was quite significant), and whether or not you agree with it, it is certainly good fodder for thought.

Summary and notes

Introduction

The summary and notes below of Ideas Have Consequences are three-tiered: the first, most abstract tier summarises each chapter in no more than two sentences each; the middle tier summarises each chapter in no more than about 360 words each; finally, the most detailed tier summarises each chapter in an extended point-by-point fashion, relying extensively on exact quotes from the book to preserve as much of the author's actual wording as is possible - this most detailed summary condenses the book to approximately one fifth of its original size.

Top tier summary: the key ideas of each chapter in no more than two sentences

Introduction. The West is disintegrating due to its loss of belief in a transcendental reality and in higher truth, and due to its coming to value the senses over the intellect. Modern man knows less and is less happy than his forebears.

Chapter 1: The Unsentimental Sentiment. Culture, stemming from an arbitrary approval of the world, and as an aggregation of symbols through which the world is viewed, dignifies man, and calibrates his decisions and the tone of his being, so that the sentiment behind a culture cannot be sentimental, however, the sentiment behind our culture is decaying, and we must (re)harmonise our vision.

Chapter 3: Fragmentation and Obsession. We have lost sight of the highest, timeless, values, which once were in the possession of the philosophic doctor of the Middle Ages, who was replaced by a secular variant, the gentleman, who gave way to politicians and entrepreneurs. These values are of universals, but modern man instead distracts and immerses himself in particulars, including the study of science, unfitting himself for leadership, and succumbing to obsession, fanaticism, emotional instability, repression, laxness and indifference.

Chapter 4: Egotism in Work and Art. Modern man is a prodigious egotist, irresponsible and defiant, the consequence of a tendency towards individualism, in which he withdraws from the spiritual community, and succumbs to the falsehood that his purpose is not to perfect himself but to enjoy himself. This egotism is evidenced in both work and art, in that men fail to see any more the idealism in work, instead commoditising and resenting it, and in the failure of art to be faithful any more to the enduring reality, instead becoming unnatural, grotesque and irresponsible.

Chapter 6: The Spoiled-Child Psychology. Modern man, having been taught that domination of nature will save him, that this salvation will be easy, that he can know and have everything, and that complaints and demands will get him what he wants, has developed a spoilt-child psychology. He is no longer capable of, nor sees the spiritual reward in, developing self-discipline in the face of adversity, and has even been encouraged by science to believe that he is exempt from labour.

Chapter 7: The Last Metaphysical Right. Our reform requires the restoration of metaphysical certitude, a rallying point around which is the right of private property, a metaphysical right based on "hisness" and the connection between private property and man's true being and his exercise of virtue, but which nevertheless can also be argued for on utilitarian grounds.

Chapter 8: The Power of the Word. The next step in our reform is to save language, which has a divine element, from the neutering of the semanticists, from looseness and exaggeration, and from shifting definitions. We can do this through a two-fold education: in literature and rhetoric, and in logic and dialectic.

Chapter 9: Piety and Justice. Finally, we must reform modern man's impiousness, and restore piety with respect to nature, to our fellow man, and to the past: to recognise the divinely bestowed goodness of the former two, and to recognise with respect to the latter the laws by which history has unfolded. If we are to reform and survive, then we must be willing to pay the costs, and it is not certain that we are so willing.

Middle tier summaries: condensed chapters

Introduction. The West is in a process of disintegration, traceable back to our abandonment of transcendentals, when, in the late 14th century, Occam's nominalism defeated logical realism, signalling our loss of belief in an independent, objective, higher truth. The negative outcomes of this process are numerous, in which the intellect has been banished in favour of the sensory, including: relativism, science, the rejection of the Platonic forms and of an element of unintelligibility in the world, rationalism-as-a-philosophy, the wane of religion and the rise of materialism, the abandonment of the doctrine of original sin in favour of that of the natural goodness of man, the superseding of the idea that the world was made for a purpose, the abolishment of the notion of free will and of man as divine creation whose soul is at stake in a great drama, in favour of man as economic agent explicable by his environment, the specialised and elective system of education, and the decline of political leadership from theocracy to populism. Modern man's condition is "abysmality". Modern man knows less than his forebears because he immerses himself in particulars whereas true knowledge is of universals. His supposed achievements are unrelated to the aims of civilisation, and despite his apparently improved material condition, his spiralling desires leave him less satisfied than his forebears, who had, but also wanted, less. Moreover, modern man is not happier than his forebears; in comparison he is neurotic, fearful, hateful and feels powerless.

Chapter 1: The Unsentimental Sentiment. The highest of the three levels of the conscious reflection of a man participating in a culture is his metaphysical dream of the world, his "intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality", which men must share in order to live together harmoniously over extended periods of time. Culture begins with an arbitrary approval of the world - arbitrary in the sense that nothing stands prior to it - and consists in an aggregation of symbols through which the world is viewed, an abstraction the adherence to which dignifies man and originates his self-control. Culture calibrates man's decisions and the tone of his being, and so the sentiment behind a culture cannot be sentimental. The man of culture has a deep respect for forms, and a sense of style. Barbarians insist on seeing a thing "as it is"; the man of culture avoids such immediacy, preferring not the thing but the idea of the thing. Tearing aside veils is a brash sacrilege, not an extension of power or knowledge. Modern society's increased tendency to immediacy has resulted in a failure to recognise obscenity, as exemplified by sensationalist journalism. The decay of sentiment leads to a deterioration in human relationships - whereas we previously cherished the elder generation, we now thrust it out of sight; friendship wastes away as friends become "pals" and use one another - and the decline of the belief in the hero, an example of which is the soldier of old whose service was to an ideal, and, conversely with this decline, the growth of commercialism - business is incompatible with sentiment. We must harmonise our vision.

Chapter 2: Distinction and Hierarchy. Rational society, as a mirror of the logos, is hierarchical, in which men are elevated to authority by knowledge and virtue, having points of reference up and down. This hierarchy, however, is being obliterated by the modern perversion that social justice entails equality of citizenry. The shift, which can be traced back to nominalism, is driven by the modern valuation of feeling over thinking, and thus of wanting over deserving, leading to the solution by the middle class, with its fondness for security and complacency, of socialism, in which knowledge becomes power in the service of appetite, and the state becomes a vast bureaucracy in the service of economic activity and consumption rather than of man's inner life. Civility, however, rests not upon equality but upon fraternity (brotherhood), which carries hierarchical obligations that equality does not: patience with little brother, and duty of big brother. Economic equality could only be enforced by a despotism. The arguments for democracy are flawed, and, logically, democratic governors should be chosen by lot, as in ancient Greece. Education should perfect a man's spiritual being and prepare him for immortality; instead, modern education prepares a man for secular success. The modern notion of progress is one of mere magnitude without a goal, nor is it a source of distinctions in value; if progress is infinite, then no point is nearer an ever-receding goal than any other. We would have no authorisation for purpose in our lives if we felt that creation did not express purpose.

Chapter 3: Fragmentation and Obsession. The highest values are timeless, and those in favour of restoring them are idealists seeking a metaphysically or theologically conceived return to centre. Modern disintegration tends instead towards the periphery, where man is lost in details. Reality was perceived more clearly in the Middle Ages, where the philosophic doctor possessed the highest learning by standing at the centre of things, having mastered principles. He was replaced by the gentleman, a secular variant whose sole deficiency was blindness to the spiritual origin of self-discipline, but who protected the Western world from disintegration. The gentleman gave way to politicians and entrepreneurs, men of cunning rather than idealism. The gentleman distrusted specialisation, which develops only part of a man, thus stunting him, and thus disqualifying him from leadership. Science is thus not a pursuit for a gentleman. The highest knowledge concerns the relation of men to God and of men to men. Scholarly science is ridiculous in its premise that the scholar contributes to civilisation merely by adding to its dominion over nature. We are coming to fear the duties involved in affirming central truths, and it would pain the modern egotist to confess to a centre of responsibility. The modern enjoinment against distinguishing between races, religions and national groups emasculates us. Modern man's obsession with isolated parts leads to fanaticism, to emotional instability and to volatility of temperament. There have been societies where a larger proportion of the people participated in aristocratic virtues, but industrialism now exploits then contemns such individuals. Under industrialism, the minute division of labour makes it impossible for the individual to grasp the ethical implications of his task, as exemplified by the atomic bomb project of the USA in WWII. Atomic energy compels the question of control, the answer to which is that wisdom, not popularity, qualifies one for rule. Modern workers surrender freedom and initiative, and thus are not whole, but repressed, which in part explains our political instability. Science and progress exalt "becoming" over "being", a type of provincialism that fails to see beyond the moment, discouraging sanity. The very possibility of timeless truth is a reproach to the laxness and indifference of modern egotism.

Chapter 4: Egotism in Work and Art. Modern man is a prodigious egotist, irresponsible and defiant, the consequence of a tendency towards individualism, in which he withdraws from the community (but not necessarily from the state). Medieval learning led to self-depreciation; the modern conception is that knowledge is power, which leads instead to self-importance. A return to selflessness requires study of essences rather than of particulars, eschewing the forbidden knowledge of techniques-over-ends. Work brings an ideal from potentiality into actuality, and labouring is praying, in that to realise an ideal is a type of fidelity. Under utilitarianism, labour becomes instead a commodity, which labouring groups use to extort self-inspired demands through withdrawal of communal effort. The authority by which both worker and ruler act is that of divine ordinance, and absent devotion to a subsuming transcendent, people become reluctant to work. The best art is faithful to the enduring reality; in our epoch, instead, due to egotism, art is unnatural, grotesque and irresponsible. Literature has begun to teach, in opposition to original sin, man's natural moral sense, sanctioning impulse over restraint, and exploring, self-pityingly, individual consciousness. Music, from its highest form - architectural - in which it expressed the aristocratic and international qualities of social order - then became thematic, and finally, textural, culminating in the barbarism and primitivism of jazz, which requires no intelligence, only feeling, and is deeply egotistical in its improvisation and in the personal idiom of its improvisers. Trends in painting reflect those in literature and music. Egotism in work and art reflect the heresy that man's destiny in the world is not to perfect himself but to enjoy himself. This is "progress" only for the directionless and those who shirk responsibility. Such a spoiled people invite despotic control.

Chapter 5: The Great Stereopticon. A progressively-improving machine that we might term "the Great Stereopticon", comprised of the three parts of press, motion picture, and radio, serves the purpose, along with the classroom, of systematic indoctrination of the public so that its members may be persuaded to communal activity despite being possessed of different fundamental ideas: it promotes the sickly metaphysical dream of materialism. Journalists have come to be falsely regarded as oracles. Discussion is minimised in favour of absorption, through display and stock phrases, which elicit stock responses. Modern man lacks the genuine education to see through these techniques. Newspapers are deliberate dramatists of friction and conflict, and we would be better off without them. The freedom of the press is threatened by the press agent and public-relations officer, essentially propagandists, serving as censors, these days employed even by the US government and its armed forces. The public desires to censor in movies only minor breaches of decorum rather than the substantial problems of egotism, selfishness and the promotion of the virtues of materialist society. The radio, insistently present, juxtaposes the serious and the trivial in a misleading tone of cheery confidence, and turns the populace into a mute recipient of authoritative edicts. The Great Stereopticon promotes the goal of happiness through comfort rather than of discipline through sacrifice, and prevents people from realising that materialist civilisation is over an abyss. It dispenses facts and vivid sensations but does not encourage people to meditation and spiritual breakthroughs, instead eroding memory, which is probably necessary for membership in a metaphysical community, and whose lack is a large factor in the low political morality of our age. Nevertheless, there are hopeful signs that people are waking up to the propaganda.

Chapter 6: The Spoiled-Child Psychology. For about four centuries, man has been developing a spoilt-child psychology due to being taught that domination of nature will save him, that this salvation will be easy to attain, that there is nothing he cannot know or have, and that complaints and demands will get him what he wants. Man no longer sees the relationship between effort and reward; he doesn't realise that there is spiritual growth in developing the discipline required to overcome in the struggle of life, and instead blames others when the world doesn't give him what he wants - this leads to the scapegoating of superior groups of persons by liberal/socialist demagogues. Urban living worsens this condition because amidst his systems of control, urban man loses sight of the mystery of creation, and replaces his sense of relatedness for a false sense of self-sufficiency, also losing sight of the virtue of subordination to communal enterprise. Science encourages man to believe that he is exempt from labour - or at least that he soon will be, but this eventuality would lead only to egregious self-pampering and self-disgust, and even illness; man is severing himself from such high goals of labour as those of the cathedral-builders. It is staggeringly difficult to get people to see let alone renounce the debauchery of comfort-worship. There is no positive correlation between degree of comfort and the achievements of a civilisation. Heroism declines as comfort increases. Socialism turns authoritarian and fascist to impose external discipline upon the masses so that they can fulfil their consumptive desires, which they are too undisciplined in themselves to otherwise fulfil. The fateful question is where society can find a source of discipline.

Chapter 7: The Last Metaphysical Right. We must reform, and the first step is to confess to our reproachable condition, then to emphasise the distinction between the material and the transcendental, and, in doing so, to restore metaphysical certitude. A plausible rallying point around metaphysical certitude is the right of private property, which does not depend on utility but on "hisness". In doing so, however, we do not support such "property" of finance capitalism as stocks and bonds - which disconnect man from substance and tend towards exploitation and state ownership - and instead opt for the distributive ownership of small properties. Private property is justified in that it helps man to express his true being, and to exercise his virtue, but there are nevertheless utilitarian arguments for private property: it protects us from the encroach of the police state by giving us personal resources by which to fight that state, it allows a person to store the rewards of their (prayerful) labour, and for an individual it can ameliorate the effects of inflation, which is caused by the dishonouring of debts. The Great Depression dethroned the notion that politics was subordinate to economic determinism, but political leaders have turned to a fanaticism that has institutionalised "massness".

Chapter 8: The Power of the Word. The next step in our reform is to save language from prostitution. Language has a divine element. The modern linguistic study of semantics is an outgrowth of nominalism. Semanticists desire to reduce language to a mere tool for conveying neutered ("scientific") particularities of the sensory world, thus stripping from language its essence - inclination - and its reflection of truth, abstraction and ideals. Semanticists falsely imply both that language is a barrier between us and the world, and that there are no real definitions, merely approximations, but language is actually a storehouse and a supporting net, and ultimate definitions exist and are a matter of intuition. Positivists attack the symbolic operations of language because symbols link to the transcendent, which (the transcendent) positivists deny. Those who use language most subtly have the greatest powers of understanding, and, in particular, the poets stand above all, communing with the mind of the superperson. In our age we are given to looseness and exaggeration in language, and communication breaks down because definitions, especially of ideational words, have been allowed to drift. The answer to our problems with language is a twofold education: in literature and rhetoric, and in logic and dialectic. The former should focus on great poetry - which teaches how to feel, to not be sentimental and brutal, history in the context of over-arching values, the evocativeness of words, and the power of symbolism - and also on foreign languages, in particular Latin and Greek. Training in reason is important so that man can deal with worldly data, and training in dialectics is important because it relates to the science of naming, and it is essential that recognition of the logical correctness of names be restored - givers of names are "lawgivers" because "stable laws require a stable vocabulary".

Chapter 9: Piety and Justice. The final stage of reform requires the restoration of piety, for modern man is impious in several ways. Piety needs to be restored with respect to three things: nature, our fellow man, and the past. Our attempts to dominate nature - "the substance of the world" - are impious because creation (and thus nature) is fundamentally good, and because ultimately, we do not understand it. Meddling with something we do not fully understand produces evil consequences. We should seek neither to fully accept and emulate, nor to fully repudiate and change, nature, instead cultivating a respectful nonattachment towards her. Piety with respect to our neighbours involves recognition that their being has a right qua being; that it is part of a fundamentally good existence. Piety with respect to the past teaches us restraint, caution and sobriety by showing us the challenge of the perfectibility of our species. Several specific modern impieties are: the notion of equality of the sexes, in that the masculinisation of women is a disrespect of their biological role, the loss of respect for personality, because personality is theomorphic, and expressions of contempt for the past. In modernity, "pious" is a term of ridicule, because whereas it signifies acceptance of some aspect of the natural order, modernity instead encourages rebellion, which stems from pride, making modern man impatient and unwilling to suffer discipline, angering when his immediate will is thwarted. We must ask whether modern civilisation wishes to survive enough to pay the price of restoration, that price being the acceptance for example that: (a) one cannot obtain more than one puts in, (b) comfort is seductive and must cede to a sterner ideal, and (c) duties must be accepted before freedoms. It is not certain whether we will all succumb or whether a great change awaits us, but we are duty bound to make our counsel known.

Lowest tier summaries: chapters point by point

Introduction

This is a book about "the dissolution of the West". [pg 1]
The book assumes "that the world is intelligible and that man is free and that those consequences we are now expiating are the product not of biological or other necessity but of unintelligent choice". [pg 1]
"There is ground for declaring that modern man has become a moral idiot". [pg 1]
"For four centuries every man has been not only his own priest but his own professor of ethics". [pg 2]
"[T]here appear diverging bases of value". [pg 2]
The cause of dissolution is our abandonment of transcendentals in the late 14th century: the defeat of logical realism by Occam's nominalism, leaving "universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man". Reality of intellect banished in favour of sensory reality. [pg 3]
The denial of universals/transcendentals leads to: [pgs 3-4]
- Denial of objective truth. [pg 4]
- Relativism. [pg 4]
- Denial of nature's imitation of a transcendental model, so that instead it contains "the principles of its own constitution and behavior". [pg 4]
- Science. [pg 4]
- Denial of "the doctrine of forms imperfectly realized" and of "an element of unintelligibility in the world". [pg 4]
- "[T]he abandonment of the doctrine of original sin" and adoption of the corollary: "the natural goodness of man". [pgs 4-5]
- The elevation of "rationalism to the rank of a philosophy". [pg 5]
- The superseding of the idea that the world was made for a purpose. "Thus it is not the mysterious fact of the world's existence which interests the new man but explanations of how the world works". [pg 5]
- "[R]eligion begin[ning] to assume an ambiguous dignity". One solution was deism, but this religion "was powerless to bind; it merely left each man to make what he could of the world open to the senses". [pg 5]
- "Materialism loom[ing] next on the horizon". [pg 5]
- Explanations of "man by his environment". [pg 5]
- Due to Darwin, "powerful support for [the social philosophers'] thesis that human beings act always out of economic incentives, and it was they who completed the abolishment of freedom of the will". "Man created in the divine image, the protagonist of a great drama in which his soul was at stake, was replaced by man the wealth-seeking and -consuming animal". [pgs 5-6]
- "[P]sychological behaviourism", which denied even instinct. [pg 6]
- "[T]he 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" leading to "the new science of semantics". [pgs 7-8]
- The specialised and elective system of education. [pg 8]
- The decline of political leadership from "royalist and learned defender of the faith", to the "popular leader and demagogue", to "the leader of the masses", but split between "sentimental humanitarians and an elite group of remorseless theorists who pride themselves on their freedom [the modern Communists]". [pgs 8-9]
'There is no term proper to describe the condition which he [man] is now left unless it be "abysmality."' [pg 7]
"He struggles with the paradox that total immersion in matter unfits him to deal with the problems of matter". [pg 7]
It's hard to "establish the fact of decadence", because "[l]oss is perceived most clearly at the beginning; after habit becomes implanted, one beholds the anomalous situation of apathy mounting as the crisis deepens". The possibility is met with "incredulity and resentment" because it asks for "a confession of guilt and an acceptance of sterner obligation", and because "a century and a half of bourgeois ascendancy has produced a type of mind highly unreceptive to unsettling thoughts", and "the egotism of modern man". [pgs 10-11]
"The apostles of modernism" respond with catalogues of modern achievement, but this is "immersion in particulars", and needs to be "related [...] to the professed aims of our civilization". [pg 12]
Need to ask whether modern man "knows more or is, on the whole, wiser than his predecessors". Knowledge "is of universals, and [...] whatever we know as a truth enables us to predict. The process of learning involves interpretation, and the fewer particulars we require in order to arrive at our generalization, the more apt pupils we are in the school of wisdom", whereas modern thought "keep[s] the individual busy with endless induction", and "has been running away from, rather than toward, first principles", and "the average man [...] imagines that an industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge". [pgs 12-13]
Increased literacy is no good thing because "they read mostly that which debauches them". Moreover, widespread literacy didn't save Germany. [pgs 13-14]
What about man's "perfect[ion of] his material estate to a point at which he is provided for"? [pg 14]
- Modern man nevertheless experiences scarcity whereas older and simpler societies felt a sense of abundance (the replacing of "an ascending spiral of desires for a stable requirement of necessities"). Also, the more man has to indulge in, the less disposed he is to toil for it. [pgs 14-15]
- Does modern man feel happier? There is an "extraordinary prevalence of neurosis" and "the fear accompanying it unlooses the great disorganizing force of hatred". Wars seem likely. Also, "[m]an is constantly being assured today that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness" e.g. wage slaves and confined city living. [pgs 15-16]
"The opening chapter [...] attempts to set forth the ultimate source of our feeling and thinking about the world, which makes our judgments of life not shifting and casual but necessary and right". [pg 17]

Chapter 1: The Unsentimental Sentiment

"Every man participating in culture has three levels of conscious reflection: his specific ideas about things, his general beliefs or convictions, and his metaphysical dream of the world". The metaphysical dream is "an intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality", by which ideas and beliefs are verified. Without the metaphysical dream, men cannot live together harmoniously over extended periods. [pg 18]
"[S]entiment is anterior to reason" because "philosophy begins with wonder". [pg 19]
"We have no authority to argue anything of a social or political nature unless we have shown by our primary volition that we approve some aspects of the existing world. The position is arbitrary in the sense that here is a proposition behind which there stands no prior. We begin our other affirmations after a categorical statement that life and the world are to be cherished". [pg 19]
"[A] developed culture is a way of looking at the world through an aggregation of symbols, so that empirical facts take on a significance and man feels that he is acting in a drama, in which the cruxes of decision sustain interest and maintain the tone of his being. For this reason a true culture cannot be content with a sentiment which is sentimental with regard to the world". [pg 19]
"[I]n the reality of his existence, man is impelled from behind by the life-affirming sentiment and drawn forward by some conception of what he should be". [pg 20]
"[L]ogic depends upon the dream, and not the dream upon it. [L]ogical processes rest ultimately on classification, [...] classification is by identification, and [...] identification is intuitive. It follows then that a waning of the dream results in confusion of counsel". [pg 21]
Following that "which is arbitrary as far as the uses of the world go" is a feat of abstraction which dignifies man, and is the beginning of self-control. [pg 22]
"Man is in the world to suffer his passion; but wisdom comes to his relief with an offer of conventions, which shape and elevate that passion". [pg 22]
The man of true culture has a "deep respect for forms " and "a sense of style" that "distinguishes him from the barbarian, on the one hand, and the degenerate, on the other". [pg 23]
Today it is said that "it does not matter what a man believes". This implies that beliefs not be taken seriously, for otherwise disagreement would cause problems. [pg 23]
The barbarian insists on seeing a thing "as it is", because "he has nothing in himself with which to spiritualize it". [pg 24]
The American frontiersman "encouraged a belief that the formal was the outmoded or at least the un-American". [pg 25]
"[F]orm should be allowed to impede the expression of honest hearts [because] unformed expression is ever tending toward ignorance". [pg 25]
"The member of a culture [...] purposely avoids the relationship of immediacy; he wants the object somehow depicted and fictionized, or, as Schopenhauer expressed it, he wants not the thing but the idea of the thing". [pgs 25-26] [c.f. Plato.]
Tearing aside veils is sacrilege even as those doing so believe that in "breaking some restraint [...] they are extending the boundaries of power or of knowledge". [pg 26]
"[W]hen these veils are stripped aside, we find no reality behind them, or, at best, we find a reality of such commonplaceness that we would willingly undo our little act of brashness. Those will realize, who are capable of reflection, that the reality which excites us is an idea, of which the indirection, the veiling, the withholding, is part". [pgs 26-27]
"[T]he world is best understood from a certain distance [and] the most elementary understanding requires a degree of abstraction". [pg 27]
An example of "the ravages of immediacy" is "the failure of the modern mind to recognise obscenity". [pg 27]
"The rise of sensational journalism everywhere testifies to man's loss of points of reference, to his determination to enjoy the forbidden in the name of freedom". [pg 29]
"The area of privacy has been abandoned because the definition of person has been lost; there is no longer a standard by which to judge what belongs to the individual man". [pg 29]
There is a counter-argument that "such material is the raw stuff of life, and that it is the duty of organs of public information to leave no one deceived about the real nature of the world", but "[t]he raw stuff of life is precisely what the civilized man desires to have refined, or presented in a humane framework, for which sentiment alone can afford the support". [pg 29]
Sensation is substituted for reflection, aided by technology: "[t]he machine cannot be a respecter of sentiment". [pg 30]
Decay of sentiment <=> deterioration of human relationships
"There was a time when the elder generation was cherished because it represented the past; now it is avoided and thrust out of sight for the same reason". [pg 30]
The counter-argument that "urban living renders relationships of the older kind impossible" is correct, but perverse, for "had our view of the world remained just, congested urban living, harmful in other ways too, would not have become the pattern". [pg 30]
"In Megalopolis the sentiment of friendship wastes away". Friends become "pals", friendship is compelled by workplace association, friends use one another. [pg 31]
As sentiments weaken, there "invariably follows a decline of belief in the hero". [pg 31]
Soldier (but not the modern "automaton" soldier) as hero. "His service is to causes which are formulated as ideals, and these he is taught to hold above both property and life". [pg 31]
Conversely, with decline of belief in hero is "the growth of commercialism" (relativism as opposed to hero's idealism). "Business and sentiment do not mix". [pg 32]
Sentiment forges coherent "metaphysical" communities, as opposed to incoherent "empirical" communities. [pgs 32-33]
"[O]ur ideas, if they are not to worsen the confusion, must be harmonized by some vision. Our task is much like finding the relationship between faith and reason for an age that does not know the meaning of faith". [pg 34]

Chapter 2: Distinction and Hierarchy

"The most portentous general event of our time is the steady obliteration of those distinctions which create society. Rational society is a mirror of the logos". [pg 35]
To do things in the name of the masses is destructive; society must have hierarchy; the notion that "in a just society there are no distinctions" is a "perversion". [pg 35]
Knowledge and virtue are two grounds of "elevation" of men to authority in the hierarchy. [pg 36]
Men have found non-arbitrary lodgement in the levels, with points of reference up and down. [pg 36]
"[H]ierarchy requires a common assumption about ends, and that is why the competing ideologies of our age produce confusion". [pg 36]
"[K]nowledge and virtue require the concept of transcendence", in opposition to those (since the 14th century) committed to material standards. [pg 37]
The consumer destroys hierarchy; the "distinctions of vocation fade out", replaced with organising around "capacities to consume". [pg 37]
Underlying the shift is "the theory of romanticism; if we attach more significance to feeling than to thinking, we shall soon, by a simple extension, attach more to wanting than to deserving". [pg 37]
"This is the grand solution of socialism, which is [...] in origin a middle-class and not a proletarian concept. The middle class owes to its social location an especial fondness for security and complacency". [pg 37]
"[T]he final degradation of the Baconian philosophy is that knowledge becomes power in the service of appetite. The state, ceasing to express man's inner qualifications, turns into a vast bureaucracy designed to promote economic activity". "[M]atter is placed over spirit or quantity placed over quality". [pg 38]
The goal of "subverters" to do away with hierarchy ("taking away degree") is "impossible in practice", and, as history shows, when they get their turn, they "merely substitute a bureaucratic hierarchy". [pg 40]
"Equalitarianism" is senseless, and harmful in that "it always presents itself as a redress of injustice, whereas in truth it is the very opposite". [pg 41]
"The comity of peoples" rests not upon equality but upon fraternity (brotherhood). Brotherhood carries obligations that equality does not: "brotherhood is status in family, and family is by nature hierarchical. It demands patience with little brother, and it may sternly exact duty of big brother". [pgs 41-42]
"No society can rightly offer less than equality before the law; but there can be no equality of condition between youth and age or between the sexes; there cannot be equality even between friends. The rule is that each shall act where he is strong". [pg 42]
Where equality is least discussed, the greatest fraternity is exhibited. [pg 43]
"[P]eople meet most easily when they know their position". [pg 43]
"Resentment [...] may well prove the dynamite which will finally wreck Western society". [pg 43]
"[R]ebellion against distinction" can be traced back to nominalism. [pg 44]
"Humanitarians" supplemented their "claim to political equality" by "the demand for economic democracy", which is "so unrealistic" that "[n]othing but a despotism could enforce [it]". [pg 44]
Proponents of "radical egalitarianism" often argue "that democratic equality allows each to develop his potentialities", however, this implies that like a seed, man has 'some immanent design of germination, so that for his flowering he needs that liberty which is "freedom from"'; this implies that "man's destiny is to be natural, to develop like a plant", which "makes impossible any thought of discipline" because discipline would constrain nature's intent. 'But all teleology rejects "freedom from" in favour of "freedom to"'. [pg 45]
"A kindred notion is that democracy means opportunity for advancement", which presumes hierarchy - thus, proponents of this notion "wish democracy not as an end but as a means. [...] [The democrat] does want order, but he wants the kind in which the best, the gifted and the industrious get ahead". In fact, democratic societies evidence a "jealous demand for conformity" because "democrats well sense that, if they allow people to divide according to abilities and preferences, soon structure will impose itself upon the mass". Democrats "are ignoring a contradiction": logically, in a democracy, governors should be chosen by lot, as in ancient Greece. [pgs 45-46]
Some argue that in periods of crisis, "the people instinctively choose a leader of more than average stature, who will guide them through". Even if it were true, this "would damage the theoretical foundation of democracy" by affirming that people will "defer to an elite group", "accept it and care not who rails against dictatorship", and "delegate authority to the extent of placing it beyond their control". [pg 47]
"The [USA] Federalist authors especially were aware that simple majority rule cannot suffice because it does everything without reference; it is an expression of feeling about the moment at the moment, restrained neither by abstract idea nor by precedent". [pgs 47-48]
The safeguards against rash changes to the USA Constitution are "galling to Jacobins" because they are "a rebuke to the romantic theory of human nature". [pg 48]
Re education: "if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being and prepare for immortality, then education of the mind and the passions will take precedence over all else. The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority. Those who maintain that education should prepare one for living successfully in this world have won a practically complete victory". [pg 49]
"The formula of popular education has failed democracy because democracy has rebelled at the thought of sacrifice, the sacrifice of time and material goods without which there is no training in intellectual discipline". [pg 50]
The average present man has a metaphysic of "progress", but it is a progress of mere magnitude without a goal; "it is not a source of distinctions in value". "The mere notion of infinite progress is destructive. If the goal recedes forever, one point is no nearer it than the last. All that we can do is compare meaninglessly yesterday, today and tomorrow". [pg 51]
"[I]f we feel that creation does not express purpose, it is impossible to find an authorization for purpose in our lives. Indeed, the assertion of purpose in a world we felt to be purposeless would be a form of sentimentality". [pg 51]

Chapter 3: Fragmentation and Obsession

The argument against restoring values, that the clock can't be turned back, fails because the highest values are timeless. [pg 52]
Those in favour of restoring values are "idealists" seeking "a return to center, which must be conceived metaphysically or theologically". [pg 52]
"[M]odern disintegration is a flight from [the center of things] toward periphery"; "from unity to individualism"; "as man approaches the outer rim, he becomes lost in details, and the more he is preoccupied with details, the less he can understand them". [pgs 52-53]
"In the Middle Ages, [...] there obtained a comparatively clear perception of reality". [pg 53]
The "possessor of highest learning was [in the Middle Ages] the philosophic doctor" who "stood at the center of things because he had mastered principles"; "knowledge of ultimate matters conferred a right to decide ultimate questions" e.g. "the faculty of theology at the Sorbonne could be appealed to on matters of financial operation". [pg 53]
The philosophic doctor (as synthesiser) was replaced by the gentleman: [pgs 53-54]
- A secular variant; a man with training "broad enough to deal with the interests of society". [pg 54]
- A man of self-restraint, of sentiment (refusing "materialism and self-aggrandizement"), of courtesy, who observed "ritual [...] toward fallen foes and the weaker". [pgs 53-54]
- Whose sole deficiency was that "he had lost sight of the spiritual origin of self-discipline". [pg 54]
- The class of whom could be maintained by inheritance or recruitment. [pg 54]
- Whose maintenance as a class by the Western world offered that world "a measure of protection" through that class's "general view of the relationship of things"; its "broad views". [pgs 54-55]
- Who was an idealist, albeit that he didn't always live up to his ideal - "but the existence of an ideal is a matter of supreme importance". [pgs 54 and 55]
In Europe, "the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs, as materialism has given its rewards to the sort of cunning incompatible with any kind of idealism". [pg 55]
The American South cherished the ideal (of the gentleman) and strengthened it, but the Civil War turned the South economically from "Ciceronian humanism" to "commerce and technology" and educationally to "the dialectic of New England and of Germany". [pg 55]
Most significantly, the gentleman distrusts specialisation. "Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed; and one deformed is the last person to be thought of as a ruler". [pg 56]
Thus, science is not a pursuit for a gentleman. [pg 57]
"For [both the philosophic doctor and the gentleman] the highest knowledge concerned, respectively, the relation of men to God and the relation of men to men", not to be found in the physical world. [pg 57]
The ridiculousness of "scholarly" science failed to be perceived in that it started to be seen that "Knowledge /was/ power": "It was soon a banality that the scholar contributes to civilization by adding to its dominion over nature". [pg 57]
"The modern knower may be compared to an inebriate who, as he sense his loss of balance, endeavors to save himself by fixing tenaciously upon certain details and thus affords the familiar exhibition of positiveness and arbitrariness". [pgs 57-58]
'Having been told by the relativists that he cannot cannot have truth, he now has "facts."' [pg 58]
"The supposition that facts will speak for themselves is of course another abdication of intellect". [pg 58]
"We are developing a phobia toward simple predication" because affirming truth "toward center" "may involve grave duties". [pg 59]
"[W]e 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". But this emasculates us. [pg 59]
"[M]odern man is suffering from a severe fragmentation of his world picture [which] leads directly to an obsession with isolated parts" - obsession occurring "when an innocuous idea is substituted for a painful one". [pg 59]
"[T]he most painful confession for the modern egotist to make is that there is a center of responsibility. He has escaped it by taking his direction with reference to the smallest points". [pgs 59-60]
"The theory of empiricism is plausible because it assumes that accuracy about small matters prepares the way for valid judgment about large ones. What happens, however, is that the judgments are never made". [pg 60]
Obsession leads to fanaticism: "[the] redoubling [of] one's effort after one's aim has been forgotten". [pg 60]
Specialisation leads to "emotional instability" and "volatility of temperament". [pg 61]
"[W]hether it is possible for everyone to be a philosopher [...] is part of the larger question of whether everyone can participate in aristocratic virtues". "[T]here have existed societies in which a larger proportion of the people had access to general responsibility". e.g. preindustrial America, e.g. a Vermont farmer of the 1850s: humble, responsible, independent, active in town meetings and at the poll, possessed of a "rational and enduring code of values", hard-working, thoughtful politically, observant of holidays and recollecting their significance, poor but capable of saying No. [pgs 63-64]
Industrialism exploits then contemns such individuals. [pg 64]
Under industrialism exists "a mass of workers below and a small group of elite, who are themselves technicians, at the top". "Division of labor may become so minute that it is impossible for the individual to grasp the ethical implications of his task". e.g. the atomic bomb project of the USA in WWII. [pg 64]
Atomic energy compels the question of control - "[t]he conclusion, so vexatious to democracy, that wisdom and not popularity qualifies for rule may be forced upon us". [pg 65]
Increasingly, the worker is "made to surrender both freedom and initiative", and lose practice in them: "a burden of responsibility is, after all, the best means of getting anyone to think straight". "[H]e is not permitted to be a whole man". He is repressed, which in part explains "[t]he highly unstable character of our political world". [pg 66]
Another way in which science/progress discourage sanity is their 'exaltation of "becoming" over "being."', which may be called "presentism". "[M]odernism is in essence a provincialism, since it declines to look beyond the horizon of the moment". [pg 67]
"The very possibility that there may exist timeless truths is a reproach to the life of laxness and indifference which modern egotism encourages". [pg 68]

Chapter 4: Egotism in Work and Art

Modern man exhibits irresponsibility and defiance in which may be discerned "a prodigious egotism", the consequence of "that fatal decision to make a separate self the measure of value". [pg 70] [by modern man making a separate self the measure of value, RW is not alluding to our contravention of some sort of Buddhist/Eastern conception that the separate self does not really exist; he is alluding to modern man's mistaken valuing of his own independence and separateness above his relation to the transcendent and to the broader (spiritual) community --Laird]
"The sin of egotism always takes the form of withdrawal. When personal advantage becomes paramount, the individual passes out of the community [the spiritual community, as opposed to the state]". This "enlightened selfishness" is "pulverizing modern society". [pgs 70-71]
Egotism/self-absorption is a type of alienation from reality, where one "view[s] things out of proportion". [pg 71]
'Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path to self-depreciation, and the philosophiae doctor was one who had at length seen a rational ground for humilitas. [...] An opposing conception comes in with Bacon's "knowledge is power." If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. [...] Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride'. [pg 72]
The forbidden knowledge of Greek/Christian fable is "knowledge of the useful rather than of the true and the good, of techniques rather than of ends". [pg 72]
Philosophically, "a return to selflessness" requires the elevation of "the study of essences above that of particulars" which will "put in their proper modest place those skills needed to manipulate the world". [pgs 72-73]
"[A]ll work is a bringing of the ideal from potentiality into actuality"; it was held before the age of adulteration that "behind each work there stood some conception of its perfect execution" - hence pride in craftsmanship: "to labor is to pray", for realising an ideal is a kind of fidelity. [pg 73]
Quality declines with utilitarianism when "the worker is taught that work is use and not worship" - quantity versus quality. [pg 73]
The working class accepted the bourgeois idea that "labor is a commodity", and "began the capitalist technique of restricting production in the interest of price". [pg 74]
The egotist "thinks not of subordinating self to end [the imperfect realisation of perfect forms] but of subordinating end to self". Thus, the self-interested profit motive wins over duty and honour, and groups of labour "extort" "self-inspired" demands by "withdrawal from communal effort". [pg 75]
The authority by which to act in both worker and ruler is that of divine ordinance; "the leader may be chosen by the people, but he is guided by the right; and, in the same way, we may say that the worker may be employed by anyone, but that he is directed by the autonomous ideal in the task". [pg 76]
Absent devotion to a subsuming transcendent, the (labouring) men of a secularised state are both competitors to and taskmasters of one another, and despise one another. [pg 77]
People become "dubious about whether work is a good thing at all". Service to "something larger than self" turns out to be only service to "a multitude of selfish selves": "Man as consuming animal is thus seen to be not enough". [pg 77]
Some argue plausibly that man surely ought to be the first thing to be considered, but "man's egotism renders impossible that kind of organization which would allow him to prosper to a degree". [pg 78]
Men are increasingly reluctant to work, which has been dealt with by "war and the fear of war" and "with military induction"; thus "the spirit of self" invites "the tyranny of force". [pgs 78-79]
"[I]n the great epochs of expression nature ['the enduring reality'] and art seem faithful to one another, so that what art creates does not fade". In our own epoch, though, "art appears unnatural, grotesque, and irresponsible", "the product of some dangerous subjectivism", and "false to the higher reality". This is due to egotism. [pg 79]
In literature, the romantic revolt ("those subterranean forces which erupted in the French Revolution") taught, in opposition to original sin and restraint, man's natural moral sense. This sanctioned impulse. [pgs 79-80]
This led to ideas that "imply that man is good, that experience is good, and that therefore the career of any individual may be worth following in the fulness of its unique detail". [pg 80]
The "Romantic deluge" involved "the impulse of revolt against conventions and institutions", "accompanied by intensive explorations of the individual consciousness, with self-laceration and self-pity". It was a "delight in disorder". [pgs 80-81]
The more perceptive realised "that raw experience, exaggerated sensibility, and large moral and political enthusiasms alone mean artistic bankruptcy", and sought salvation in: [pg 81]
- Form, attention to which became obsessive. [pg 81-82]
- Imagination, such as through Symbolism, however, the symbols were "almost private" rather than "universally accepted". "[W]riters increasingly employed the fleeting metaphor and the faintly evocative symbol". [pgs 82-83]
Music, "uniquely related to the will", declined "from the fugues of Bach to the cacophonous arrangements of modern jazz". [pg 83]
"The eighteenth century remained a strongly classical period wherein music expressed the aristocratic and international qualities of the social order", exemplified by Mozart. [pg 83]
Beethoven, sympathetic to the French Revolution, portended changes in the succeeding century "through the introduction of dynamism and of strains of individualism". [pg 83]
The thirties and forties [of the 1800s, presumably --Laird] were specifically Romantic, musically. Composers "turned to the expression of bizarre or perverse feeling". "Music was now fully secular". [pgs 83-84]
"Especially significant was the steady decay of symphonic form, which effectually mirrored the progressive dissolution of the class system". [pg 84]
"Thus three broad stages may be recognised in the decline of music in the West. In its highest form this music was architectural; it then became thematic; and, finally, before the incidence of certain present-day reactions, textural". [pgs 84-85]
Jazz indicates most clearly "our age's deep-seated predilection for barbarism". [pg 85]
- It is a music of "primitivism", with no need of intelligence, only feeling. [pg 85]
- It destroys the "harmonious equilibrium between reason and sentiment". [pg 85]
- The syncopation of jazz "indicates spiritually [...] a restlessness, a desire to get on, to realize without going through the aesthetic ritual". Reward without effort. [pg 86]
- Improvisation and its personal idiom are egotistical, opposed to "that strictness of form which had made the musician like the celebrant of a ceremony". [pg 86]
- "[I]t has helped to destroy the concept of obscenity". [pg 87]
- It is (unsurprisingly) said to be "the music of equality", contributing importantly to "the fight for freedom", but this is merely a "freedom from", unreferencing man. [pg 87]
- "It is a music not of dreams [...] but of drunkenness". [pg 87]
In modern paintings, "the theme is not adequate to the craftsmanship", as it was in e.g. Greece and in Christian art. Means over ends. [pgs 87-88]
Modernist trends in painting began with "the rise of portrait-painting in the fifteenth century" and "interest in landscape", whereas landscape was for early Renaissance painters "mere background"; man with his "attribute of divinity" was the centre of their world. [pg 88]
"Impressionism brings nominalism into painting" through a cardinal tenet "that outline does not exist in nature". Two signs of disintegration are its "repudiation of form" and its "acceptance of ephemerality". [pg 89]
The existence of Cézanne does not refute this analysis, because whilst he "consorted with and learned from the Impressionists", he was not finally one of them, but instead turned his work into, as it has been said, "a pure metaphysical monument". [pg 90]
"Egotism in work and art is the flowering, after long growth of [the] heresy about human destiny [...] that man's destiny in the world is not to perfect himself but to lean back in sensual enjoyment". This is "progress" only "for those who neither have a sense of direction nor want responsibility". [pg 91]
"An ancient axiom of politics teaches that a spoiled people invite despotic control". [pg 91]

Chapter 5: The Great Stereopticon

"The disappearance of the primordial synthesis" affects non-philosophers too, and the problem secular leaders face is how to persuade to communal activity people with different fundamental ideas. [pg 92]
"In an age of shared belief, [...] dissent is viewed not as a claim to egotistic distinction but as a sort of excommunication". This vanishes "[w]hen the goal of life becomes self-realization. [...] [W]hat reconciliation can there be between authority and [the independence-asserting ego of an] individual will?" [pg 92]
Secular leaders "adopted the liberal's solution": replace religion with education, which is "but an extension of the separation of knowledge from metaphysics". [pg 93]
This education provides "their kind of indoctrination". [pg 93]
Education is not just by classroom but through "the Great Stereopticon": "a [progressively improving and added to] machine of [at the time] three parts: the press, the motion picture, and the radio", presenting channels of information and entertainment for systematic indoctrination "as controlled as that taught by medieval religionists". [pgs 93-94]
The press "multiplies stereotypes". [pg 94]
"Has the art of writing proved an unmixed blessing?" Plato says not - "his conclusion was that philosophy exists best in discourse between persons". Writing, according to Plato, doesn't distinguish between "different classes of persons" and "always gives one unvarying answer": no intelligent man will ever write down his reason's contemplations. (Acknowledging the paradox of this being written down by both Plato and RW) [pgs 94-95]
Too much faith is placed in the written word, and journalists are falsely regarded as oracles. [pg 96]
"[M]odern publication wishes to minimize discussion", instead hoping for absorption, through "the technique of display" and through stereotyped/stock phrases, which "evoke stock responses of approbation or disapprobation". [pg 96]
Searching for assumptions, and being conscious of rhetoric would ameliorate this, but this presupposes education, which modern man lacks. [pg 97]
Newspapers distort to hold attention, in particular by starting, prolonging and exaggerating friction and conflict, and by dramatising fights. [pg 97]
"[W]e would live in greater peace and enjoy sounder moral health if the institution of the newspaper were abolished entirely". [pg 98]
"In limited areas [...] there are now signs that the day of [freedom of the press] is over", as it is in Russia, where the press is under state control. [pg 99]
Decreasing freedom of press is evident "in the appearance of the press agent and the public-relations officer", which are propagandists, and serve as censors, "de-emphasizing, or withholding entirely, news which would be damaging to prestige". Even the US government and its armed forces host their own PR agencies. [pgs 99-100]
The public wishes to censor in movies "just the little breaches of decorum which fret bourgeois respectability and sense of security", whereas it should be concerned about substantial problems such as "the egotistic, selfish, and self-flaunting hero", "the flippant, vacuous-minded, and also egotistic heroine" and the whole story's "complacent assertion of the virtues of materialist society". [pg 101]
The radio is "insistently present", and weirdly juxtaposes "the serious and the trivial, the comic and the tragic" e.g. ads for laxatives between announcements of bombings. [pg 102]
The tone of radio announcers "is one of cheery confidence" dictated by "[t]he metaphysical dream of progress" - often even when announcing a tragedy. The radio is "the cheerful liar". [pg 103]
The radio discourages thought of participation, "turning whole populations into mute recipients of authoritative edicts". [pg 103]
Since we need "unity of mind" and "some degree of subjective determination", the Stereopticon, as an interpreter of data, might seem heaven-sent, except that it interprets from "a sickly metaphysical dream". [pg 104]
The Stereopticon is also maintained by would-be higher idealist advocates of progress, but "there is no law of perfection where there are no standards of measure", and measuring by progress is "shallow evaluation". [pg 105]
The Stereopticon promotes the goal of life as "happiness through comfort" rather than "discipline and sacrifice". [pg 105]
The Stereopticon's operators "have an interest in keeping people from breaking through to deeper significances". They are protecting a materialist civilization from awareness "that it is over an abyss". [pgs 105-106]
"[S]ociety does not mind an individual's being wise; only when he begins to make others wise does it become apprehensive". Journalism and brilliant social critics threaten one another. [pg 106]
The [US] North is, as opposed to the South, more bourgeois and less aware of the primal reality, such as that evil exists. Northerners have, according to Walter Hines Page, "minds of logical simplicity". [pg 107]
The Great Stereopticon is like Plato's cave: it is the wall on which the shadows play. Disseminating wisdom is thus more difficult than in Plato's day; never have the denizens of the cave "been so firmly enchained as in this age". [pg 108]
There are hopeful signs: there is "among ordinary people a deep suspicion of propaganda since the first World War"; signs too in serious writing e.g. modern poets reacting against clichés, in other types of literature indications "that the middle-class world picture is being abandoned". [pg 109]
The physical drama only touches us when its spiritual sense is pointed out, similar to how the medieval mystics who caught vision through suffering broke through falsity and achieved genuine freedom. European fascism may have been "just this impulse vulgarized and perverted" - rebellion against bourgeois complacency. [pgs 109-110]
Whilst the Stereopticon keeps people informed of facts and vivid sensations, it does not encourage people to meditation. Instead, it encourages fragmentation and "the successive perception of successive events" - empiricism - rather than the simultaneous perception of successive events - idealism. It is unconducive to memory; it "discourages the pulling-together of events from past time into a whole for contemplation", and "keeps the individual from being aware of his former selves", unfitting him for membership in a metaphysical community. [pgs 110-111]
Our thus-shortened memories are a large factor in the low political morality of our age, witness the barbarous epithet "ancient history". [pgs 111-112]

Chapter 6: The Spoiled-Child Psychology

For about four centuries, man has been taught "that his redemption lies through the conquest of nature", and that it will be easy to attain, hence his spoilt-child psychology - false propagandists have taught him that there is nothing he cannot know or have, and, through their appeasement, have taught him "that he may obtain what he wishes through complaints and demands". This is "the rule of desire". [pg 113]
He sees not the relationship between effort and reward. He sees payment as imposition or expression of malice; his solution "is to abuse those who do not gratify him". [pg 113]
He sees the world as a fairly simple machine, which can be intelligently tinkered with to turn out comforts he believes himself entitled to, and when it doesn't (when "the mysteries" intrude), he blames others, not realising that man is "the product of discipline and forging"; not realising the spiritual growth in "the pulling and tugging"; instead he is pampered and "unfitted for struggle of any kind". [pgs 114-115]
"The spoiling of man seems always to begin when urban living predominates over rural", because "he becomes forgetful of the overriding mystery of creation" amidst his systems of control. [pg 115]
Urban man substitutes for a feeling of relatedness a false self-sufficiency, but could remain unspoilt '[i]f he could continue to realize the presence of something greater than self and see the virtue of subordinating self to communal enterprise - that is, see the virtue and not simply respond to coercion [...] But, when competition to be considered "equal" sets in, there ensues the severance which is individualism'. [pg 115]
Science encourages man to believe that he is exempt from labour - in effect, that the world owes him a living; that eventually work will be eliminated by science, but this divorce from the translation of the potential into the actual through high goals of labour like those of the cathedral-builders will lead to "the most egregious self-pampering and self-disgust, probably followed by real illness". [pg 116]
According to medical science (because religion has been emasculated), labour is therapeutic. [pg 116]
Comfort is actually impossible in the tension of the polarity between actual and potential, hence mass man's impatience with ideals. [pg 116]
The difficulty of getting people to see let alone renounce the debauchery of comfort-worship is staggering. [pg 116]
"[T]here is no correlation between the degree of comfort enjoyed and the achievements of a civilization". e.g. Greeks sat on stone, slept on benches, ate spare diets. [pgs 116-117]
For man to "live wholly in this world" - which comfort-worship entails - "turns one's attention wholly to the temporary and so actually impairs his effectiveness" and "unfits us for survival". [pgs 117-118]
In ages of faith, people form long-range goals and learn by degree to repress passing desires to achieve those goals. [pg 118]
With the rise of comfort comes the decline of heroism, including in war, which becomes "a job"; the terms "soldier" and "sailor" are displaced by the term "servicemen". [pgs 118, 120 and 121]
"The way was prepared for the criteria of comfort and mediocrity when the Middle Ages abandoned the ethic of Plato for that of Aristotle". Aristotle's rational prudence entailed rule by the middle class, with virtue as an avoidance of extremes, but "there are some virtues which do not become defective through increase", such as courage and generosity, which "may be pursued to an end at which man effaces himself". [pg 119]
The Bolsheviks "never lost sight of the fact that life is a struggle", are committed to expansion, have no "good-neighbour policy", and have no "respect for abstract rights", which "go down before irresistible [evolutionary] processes". In contrast, Western liberals cannot demonstrate the "inalienable rights" which entitle them to happiness. Western liberalism is thus deprived of the power to propagate. [pgs 121-122]
The challenge for the West in the face of the Bolsheviks is "how to overcome the spoiled-child psychology sufficiently to discipline for struggle". [pg 124]
The common man believes in greater entitlement, but this must come from greater productivity (or expropriation, which is only temporary). This requires discipline, but the more man is spoiled, the more he resents discipline, and thus cannot have what he believes he is entitled to. [pgs 124-125]
Strikes are conspiracies. [pg 125]
Socialism turns authoritarian/fascist "in order to raise living standards and not disappoint the consumptive soul". [pg 125]
The programs of "self-advertised leaders of the masses today" "all had scapegoats; they were against something" - this is due to the aggrievement of the spoiled child who wants redress. Villains include aristocrats, intellectuals, millionaires, members of racial minorities, and, in the US: "economic royalists", managers of industry, "bourbons". "The spoiled children perceive correctly that the superior person is certain, sooner or later, to demand superior things of them, and this interferes with consumption and, above all, with thoughtlessness". [pgs 125-126]
Capital is not necessarily inequitable because it may "be the fruit of industry and foresight, of self-denial, or of some superiority of gifts" as much as "the result of unproductive activity" ("theft", to left-wingers). [pg 126]
Like a spoiled child, this society cannot think properly, because its people have not been forced to think properly by threat of failure to survive. [pg 127]
Private enterprise ensures "certain pressures not related to mass aspiration". [pg 128]
The fateful question is where society can find a source of discipline. [pg 128]

Chapter 7: The Last Metaphysical Right

Before proposing reform, we must presume that man both can know and can will. [pg 129]
Before reform is possible, sinners must repent over their sin of "hysterical optimism" stemming from "a falsified picture of the world"; man must "confess that ideals have been dishonored and that his condition is a reproach". [pgs 129-130]
Reform is impossible by direct teaching of virtue; instead it requires sophistication. [pg 130]
The first step in reform is emphasising the dualism between the material and the transcendental; that truth and justice are not merely what "is", but that they entail conformance to a conceptual ideal. Through this, we can restore "metaphysical certitude". [pgs 130-131]
In searching for a rallying point, we discover that "the right of private property" is "the last metaphysical right remaining to us", made "absolute" by the middle-class French Revolution. [pg 131]
"We say that the right of private property is metaphysical because it does not depend on any test of social usefulness", but instead on "the hisness of his: proprietas, Eigentum", which is "dogma", where "discussion ends", it is "self-justifying", unanswerable to "the tide of opinion" or serviceability. [pg 132]
This right is antithetical to the "property" of finance capitalism, such as stocks and bonds - these destroy the connection between man and his substance, are "useful for exploitation", and tend towards state ownership - business bureaucracies can easily be merged with that of government. [pgs 132-133]
"The moral solution is the distributive ownership of small properties". "[O]ur present concern is to find one ultimate protection for what is done in the name of the private person". [pgs 133-134]
Private property is "the last domain of privacy", and rests on "prerational sentiments" in that it is justified not by utilitarianism but because it helps man express "his true or personal being". [pg 134]
There is nevertheless a utilitarian argument for private property: it protects us from the encroach of "the monolithic police state" / the "omnipotent state" by giving us personal resources by which to fight that entity, especially by making us not all dependents of the state. [pgs 134-136]
"[W]hatever has to court public favor for its support will sooner or later be prostituted to utilitarian ends" e.g. liberal education has fared best "in those institutions which draw their income from private sources". [pg 136]
Private property allows man to exercise his virtue (in his use of that private property). [pg 137]
When transcendentalism is shunned, man can only be governed by ego, not reason, and the state, realising this, "cannot permit individual centers of control", leading to "the attack upon private property" and "the current determination to diminish the area of inviolable freedom". [pgs 137-138]
An advantage of property is that it allows a person to "cultivate providence". "A conviction that those who perform the prayer of labor may store up a compensation which cannot be appropriated by the improvident is the soundest incentive to virtuous industry". [pgs 138-139]
Adulteration (inflation) of money is due to dishonouring of debts, and "productive private property represents a kind of sanctuary against robbery through adulteration". [pgs 139-140]
Under finance capitalisation, products themselves are adulterated, and no longer sold under the names of reputable individuals, but under generic names ("Standard", "International"). [pg 141]
Thus, "it is by no means clear whether the world is growing richer or poorer" (because quality is scarcer). [pg 142]
Economic determinism (and "the enthronement of economic man") is a scandal of the last [at time of RW writing] century, leading to the notion that "politics was a mere handmaiden of economics". [pgs 143-144]
The Great Depression proved that in fact political authority is above "supposedly unchangeable economic law". The truth of "world picture as final determinant was partially re-established". [pg 144]
But: "We have escaped one form of irrational domination [by the theory of economic determinism] only to be threatened by another which may prove more irresponsible - domination by the propertyless bureaucrat". [pg 145]
Europeans turned to unrestricted political control, but "[t]he question of what to do after the power of political control had been sensed found no reasonable answer. The leaders cultivated a political fanaticism, which had the result [...] of institutionalizing massness". [pg 145]
The right to property is one we can start from "with moral certitude", and "bears comparison with the a priori principles which we cannot doubt when we do our thinking". [pgs 146-147]

Chapter 8: The Power of the Word

The fight for restoration next requires that we save language from prostitution. [pg 148]
We should examine "in all seriousness that ancient belief that a divine element is present in language". [numerous examples are presented] [pgs 148-149]
"The most notable development of our time in the province of language study is the heightened interest in semantics". Broadly, "ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations"; thus, semantics may be treated as "an extreme outgrowth of nominalism", inspired by "a feeling that language does not take into account the infinite particularity of the world and a phobia in the face of the autonomous power of words". [pgs 150-151]
"The semanticists are impressed with the world as process" and "[t]hey desire language to reflect not conceptions of verities but qualities of perceptions", seeing ideals as "hallucinations", and seeking "to remove all barriers to immediate apprehension of the sensory world". [pgs 151-152]
"They are trying to strip words of all meaning that shows tendency". "The aim of semantics is to dissolve form and thereby destroy inclination in the belief that the result will enable a scientific manipulation. Our argument is that the removal of inclination destroys the essence of language". [pgs 152-153]
Arguments over intensional meaning can only be resolved by ignoring contradictions or by referring to first principles. "If truth exists and is attainable by man, it is not to be expected that there will be unison among those who have different degrees of it. This is one of the painful conditions of existence which the bourgeoisie like to shut from their sight". [pg 154]
The semanticists "wish to accept patterns only from external reality". Implicit is the notion "that language is an illusion or a barrier between us and what we must cope with". [pgs 154-155]
"[T]he true implication [of various quotes from semanticists] is that there are no real definitions; there are only the general pictures one arrives at after more or less induction". [pg 155]
Semanticists desire to descend the ladder of abstraction, but "we can never break out of the circle of language and seize the object bare-handed, as it were, or without some ideational operation". "Definition then must depend on some kind of analogical relationship of a thing with other things, and this can mean only that definition is ultimately circular"; "all conventional definitions are but reminders of what we already, in a way, possess"; "ultimate definition is, as Aristotle affirmed, a matter of intuition". [pgs 155-157]
Thus, language is not, as the semanticists would have it, an obstruction, but rather "a great storehouse of universal memory, or it may be said to serve as a net, not imprisoning us but supporting us". [pg 158]
The insistence "on lowering the level of abstraction [...] is only an attempt to substitute things for words, and, if words stand, in fact, for ideas, here is but the broader aspect of our entire social disintegration". [pg 159]
Positivists attack the symbolic operations of language: 'since the symbol is a bridge to the other, the "ideational" world, those who wish to confine themselves to experience must oppose symbolism'. [pg 160]
The attacks on symbolism include that "of Jacobins upon crowns, cassocks, and flags", and those on superfluities of dress and on honorifics, which (honorifics), whilst often mere flummery, when not abused recognise distinction and hierarchy. [pg 160]
Language is a wonderful gift, and "it is true historically those who have shown the greatest subtlety with language have shown the greatest power to understand". [pg 161]
The poet is "the greatest teacher of cause and effect in human affairs", is "the quickest to apprehend necessary truth" and "communes with the mind of the superperson". [pg 162]
This age's fear of certitude leads to divorce between words and the conceptual realities for which they stand, which takes the form especially of looseness and exaggeration. e.g. in war we describe the same action by our side as "courageous" and by the enemy as "desperate"; 'strikingly different significations [are] given to "democracy" and "freedom"'. [pg 163]
The "one world of meaning [...] has been lost for want of definers. Teachers of the present order have not enough courage to be definers; lawmakers have not enough insight". [pg 164]
Communication has broken down not just between nations and groups within them, but also between successive generations, because "[d]rift and circumstance have been permitted to change language", especially words indicating certain ideals, the most important being Justice, Mercy and Truth, and the least important being Freedom. [pg 164]
"If empirical community avails nothing without the metaphysical community of language, the next step obviously is a rehabilitation of the word. That is a task for education". [pg 165]
This education must occur in two parts: literature and rhetoric, and logic and dialectic. [pg 165]
Great poetry teaches young people how to feel - which objects to apply feeling to, and which measures - and is antidote to the vices of sentimentality and brutality, and "relate[s] the events of history to a pure or noble metaphysical dream" which gives students over-arching values. [pg 165]
Poetry teaches "the evocative power of words", "the mighty power of symbolism", and universal ways of feeling about things. [pg 166]
Foreign languages should be studied, in particular Latin and Greek. One advantage of this is the practice of translation, which "compels one to look and to think before he commits himself to any expression". It is antidote to looseness and exaggeration. [pg 167]
Poetry establishes man's primary feeling to the world, reason is man's "means of coping with the datum of the world". [pg 167]
The most important aspect of dialectic is the science of naming. In the modern world, "[n]ecessity for the logical correctness of names ceases to be recognized". Givers of names are "lawgivers", because "stable laws require a stable vocabulary". [pgs 167-168]

Chapter 9: Piety and Justice

The final stage of reform regards "a crowning concept which governs [man's] attitude toward the totality of the world" (justice). [pg 170]
Modern man is impious, firstly as a parricide, destroying "filial veneration". [pg 170]
Science and technology are like a patricidal son; the order of nature like his father. [pg 171]
"Somehow the notion has been loosed that nature is hostile to man or that her ways are offensive or slovenly, so that every step of progress is measured by how far we have altered these". [pg 171]
Man should neither seek to emulate nor to change nature, "the desideratum being a sort of respectful nonattachment". [pg 171]
The seeking of "an unconditional victory over nature" is egotistical, and impious because "it violates the belief that creation or nature is fundamentally good, that the ultimate reason for its laws is a mystery". [pgs 171-172]
"Piety is a discipline of the will through respect". [pg 172]
To restore harmony, "we shall have to regard with the spirit of piety three things: nature, our neighbors - by which I [RW] mean all other people - and the past". [pg 172]
"Nature" means "the substance of the world", and it reflects an order independent of us. It defies our full understanding. It is not inherently evil. [pg 172]
"We get increasing evidence under the regime of science that to meddle with small parts of a machine of whose total design and purpose we are ignorant produces evil consequences". [pg 172]
Religious-minded people, cultivating a "deadness to the world", are most successful at dominating nature. [pg 173]
"The complete acceptance of nature and the complete repudiation of her turn out to be equally pernicious; we should seek a way of life which does not merge with her by responding to her every impulse, or become fatally entangled with her by attempting a complete violation". [pg 174-175]
Piety w.r.t. our neighbours is recognition that "[the] being [of others] has a right qua being"; "to have enough imagination to see into other lives and enough piety to realize that their existence is a part of beneficent creation is the very foundation of human community". [pg 175]
"The third form of piety credits the past with substance": "the chief trouble with the contemporary generation is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting". [pg 176]
"Awareness of the past [...] restrains optimism because it teaches us to be cautious about man's perfectibility and to put a sober estimate on schemes to renovate the species". [pg 177]
The notion of equality of the sexes is a "foolish and destructive" "impiety toward nature". [pgs 177-178]
Women are being masculinised, out of disrespect for their biological role - this, including their admission to the work force, is "more truly a degradation than an elevation". [pg 178]
In the work force, the majority of women labour "without heart and without incentive"; "the men responsible for this seduction have been the white-slavers of business who traffic in the low wages of these creatures". [pgs 178-179]
"The anomalous phase of the situation is that women themselves have not been more concerned to retrieve the mistake". [pg 179]
'Women have been misled by the philosophy of activism into forgetting that for them, as custodians of the values, it is better to "be" than to "do." Maternity, after all, as Walt Whitman noted, is "an emblematical attribute."' [pg 180]
"[W]oman will regain her superiority when again she finds privacy in the home and becomes, as it were, a priestess radiating the power of proper sentiment". [pg 180]
Another impiety is "loss of respect for individuality", although, because "individuality" signifies (sometimes criminal) separation, a better word is "personality". [pg 180]
Personality is theomorphic. "There is piety in the belief that personality, like the earth we tread on, is something given to us". [pg 181]
"[R]ationalism and the machine are overwhelmingly against personality. The first is suspicious of its transcendental origin, and the second finds that personality and mechanism positively do not mix". [pg 181]
"The most vocal part of modern impiety is the freely expressed contempt for the past". We see history as we see nature, "struggling to free ourselves of each". A proper view "acknowledges that past events have not happened without law". [pg 182]
The term "pious" is "always applied to persons who have accepted a dispensation", but modernism encourages rebelliousness, which stems from pride - hence, in modernity, "pious" is a term of ridicule. [pg 182]
In his pride, modern man is impatient, unwilling to suffer discipline. He angers when his immediate will is thwarted. [pg 183]
"[W]e must put the question of whether modern civilisation wishes to survive", because there are signs of suicidal impulse. [pg 185]
"Restoration comes at a price": "to grant that the law of reward is inflexible and that one cannot, by cunning or through complaints, obtain more than he puts in", "to see that comfort may be a seduction and that the fetish of material prosperity will have to be pushed aside in favor of some sterner ideal", to "see the necessity of accepting duties before you begin to talk of freedoms". [pgs 186-187]
It is not certain whether we will all succumb or whether a great change awaits us, but we are duty bound to make our counsel known. [pg 187]

Some questions raised by the book

Some of the questions this book raises, either explicitly or implicitly, are:

Does timeless, objective truth exist? If so, can we know it, and, if so, how can we know it, and what is it?
Do philosophical (metaphysical) first principles exist, and if so, what are they?
Is knowledge of universals to be privileged over that of particulars? Why or why not?
Does a transcendent reality, and in particular a transcendent God, exist? If so, what is our relationship with it? How can we know? If it exists, then what are the implications of its existence on our behaviour and choices, and, generally, on the way in which we live our lives?
Is nature perfect and perfectly intelligible, or is it an imperfect mimic of perfect forms, containing elements of unintelligibility?
What is the purpose of life? How should it be lived? In particular:
- How much emphasis should we give to responsibility, and how much to enjoyment; how much emphasis to recognising and obeying hierarchical authority, and how much to fostering individuality - and to what extent are these two even opposed?
- Is it better, especially in terms of spirituality / spiritual growth, for humans to get what they want without effort, or to struggle and work hard for what they want?
Are humans inherently good, or fallen inheritors of original sin, or something else?
If we are fallen, then is salvation possible, and if so, how?
Is human potential innate or can a person make of him/herself what s/he will?
What is the purpose of human society? How should human society be organised?
What level of technology should we strive for?
What is the basis of the authority of human leaders, and how should they be elevated to leadership?
Are all humans equal? Are all genders, races, cultures and religions equal? In what sense(s) are they / are they not? How can we assess this? What are the implications of the answers to these questions?
What is culture, and what, if any, are its advantages?
What is the correct purpose of education? What purpose is it currently serving?
What is the correct purpose of, the correct way to distribute, and the correct attitude to take towards, work? Is work therapeutic? Is it avoidable? If so, is it wise to avoid it? What are the effects of avoiding it?
What is the correct purpose of art? How has its expression changed over the years? Has this been for the better or the worse?
Can we distinguish between intellectual and sensual music, and if so, ought we to prefer the former? Why or why not?
What purpose do the press, the radio and the movies serve? Are they, on the whole, worth preserving?
Are things generally getting better or worse? How do we justify our judgement? If things are getting worse, why is that, and how can we fix them?
Do we have a right to private property, and, if so, what justifies that right?
Is language (partially) divine? If so, in which sense(s)?
What attitude and approach should we take towards nature?

Potential essay topics

If you attempt either of these essays, then I would be interested to know what you've come up with: feel free to send it through to me.

Essay topic 1: Is metaphysical certitude provided?

In Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver (RW) provides metaphysical certitude. Discuss.

You may wish to reference the following in your discussion:

The final sentence of the introduction reads: "The opening chapter, therefore, attempts to set forth the ultimate source of our feeling and thinking about the world, which makes our judgments of life not shifting and casual but necessary and right". To what extent does the opening chapter succeed in this attempt? What, if it succeeds, does it offer to make our judgements of life necessary and right? What are those judgements?

In chapter three, Fragmentation and Obsession, RW writes on page 53: "In the Middle Ages, when there obtained a comparatively clear perception of reality, the possessor of highest learning was the philosophic doctor. [...] It was the abandonment of metaphysics and theology which undermined the position of the philosophic doctor. [...] [The philosophic doctor's] knowledge of ultimate matters conferred a right to decide ultimate questions". Does RW offer sufficient detail and justification of the highest learning, metaphysics and theology, and ultimate matters to which he here alludes?

In chapter seven, The Last Metaphysical Right, RW writes on page 131: "The prospect of living again in a world of metaphysical certitude - what relief will this not bring to those made seasick by the truth-denying doctrines of the relativists!". Does RW offer sufficient detail and justification of this world of metaphysical certitude to which he here alludes?

In chapter eight, The Power of the Word, RW writes on page 154: "[T]hose who differ over tendency can remain at harmony only [by ignoring contradictions or] by referring to first principles, which will finally remove the difference at the expense of one side". Does RW give us here or anywhere else sufficient explanation of how we might refer to first principles to resolve a difference of tendency, and sufficient guidance as to what those first principles are?

Essay topic 2: Is the right to private property metaphysically self-justifying?

In Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver provides cogent reason to believe that the right to private property is metaphysically self-justifying. Discuss.

You may wish to consider the following quote in your discussion, from chapter seven, The Last Metaphysical Right, on page 132:

We say that the right of private property is metaphysical because it does not depend on any test of social usefulness. Property rests upon the idea of the hisness of his: proprietas, Eigentum, the very words assert an identification of owner and owned. Now the great value of this is that the fact of something's being private property removes it from the area of contention. In the hisness of property we have dogma; there discussion ends. Relativists from the social sciences, who wish to bring everyone under secular group control, find this an annoying impediment. But is it not, in truth, quite comforting to feel that we can enjoy one right which does not have to answer the sophistries of the world or rise and fall with the tide of opinion? The right to use property as something private is, as I shall show more fully later, a sanctuary. It is a self-justifying right, which until lately was not called upon to show in the forum how its "services" warranted its continuance in a state dedicated to collective well-being.

Ideas Have Consequences: a review, summary and notes

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