Richard M. Weaver

This is an article on Richard M. Weaver. He is not to be confused with Richard C. Weaver the Handshake Man..

Who was Richard Malcolm Weaver? He was a man suspicious of science and technological progress; he was earnest and dedicated. In a nutshell, he was an American, a recluse, a philosopher, a literary and cultural critic, a rhetorician, a conservative, a writer, a Platonist, a professor, and a socialist. Described as “a radical and original thinker” (Young 4), Weaver wrote books and essays on rhetoric, the teaching of composition, the culture of America's south, and the problem of universals. Such writings have endured and made considerable impact, particularly on the South and conservative theorists.

Biography: The Life of a Socialist

A Short Summary

Richard Weaver grew up and was schooled in Lexington, Kentucky. Having to deal with his father’s death at the age of five, Weaver and his three siblings struggled to maintain their middle class standing (Young 2). By the end of Weaver’s college years, 1932, he was an enthusiastic socialist. Largely affected by the Great Depression, Weaver strongly believed that socialism provided the solution the industrialist culture in which he lived (Young 3). Despite failed efforts to elect the Socialist Party of America to presidency, Weaver maintained his socialist beliefs throughout his lifetime (Young 3). After graduating, Weaver moved to Nashville, Tennessee for a master’s degree in English and he eventually became an instructor. Highly self-sufficient and independent, Weaver was often described as “solitary and remote” (Young 1). Unsatisfied, Weaver resigned two years later and pursued a Ph.D. at the age of thirty (Young 3). Biographer Scotchie describes Weaver as “one of the most well-educated intellectuals of his era” (4). Finishing his doctoral in 1944, Weaver joined the English faculty at the University of Chicago, where he carried out the rest of his professional career (Young 3-4). In 1962, Weaver was honoured with an award from the "Young Americans for Freedom” in New York (Scotchie 84).

The Effect

Growing up in the South, Weaver felt strongly about maintaining, what he considered to be, traditional southern principles (Young 8). These principles, such as non-consumerism and chivalry, were the basis of Weaver’s teaching, writing, and speaking. Also, without close friends, Weaver was able to focus a great deal on his studies and concerns with a morally-corroded human nature. Fittingly, Weaver has been refered to as a “shy little bulldog of a man” (Nash 84). Being raised with strong moral values, Weaver saw religion as the foundation for family and civilization (Young 21). His appreciation for religion is evident in speeches he gave early in his life at the Christian Endeavour Society, as well as in his later writings (Young 22). Apart from his traditional Southern upbringing and turn to socialism, Weaver’s intellectual writing was also influenced by a group called “the Agrarians” (Young 69). Agrarians, essentially, spoke passionately about the traditional values of community and the Old South. In 1930, this group of students and faculty from Vanderbilt University wrote I’ll Take My Stand, with John Crow Ransom (Weaver’s thesis advisor) as the group’s mentor (Young 38). Weaver agreed with the group’s appeal against too much industrialization in the South due to war and reconstruction (Young 47). Also, Agrarianism’s focus on traditionalism and regional cultures was more appealing to Weaver than socialism’s egalitarian “romanticizing” of the welfare state (Scotchie 12). Weaver did not completely abandon socialism, however, given his belief that the Agrarianism’s sometimes-radical ideals were invalid alternatives when put into practice (Young 58).

Weaver's Old South

A passionate advocate of Southern traditions, Weaver identified four fundamentally Southern characteristics: “a feudal theory of society, the code of chivalry, the ancient concept of the gentleman, and a noncreedal faith” (Young 78). The Southern feudal system, according to Weaver, focused a good deal on the pride families associated with linking their name to a piece of land (Young 81). For Weaver, land ownership gave the individual a much needed “stability, responsibility, dignity, and sentiment” (Scotchie 25). In Ideas Have Consequences, Weaver downplayed the materialistic notion of ownership, asserting that private property was “the last metaphysical right” of the individual (Nash 100). Southern chivalry and gentlemen’s behavior, on the other hand, emphasized a paternalistic personal honor and decorum over competition and cleverness (Young 83). Women, claimed Weaver, preferred the romanticized soldier to the materialist businessman (Scotchie 36). The noncreedal faith Weaver spoke of concerned the South’s “older religiousness” (Young 84). This ‘religion’ focused on respect for tradition and nature, as well as the established Anglican/Episcopal church (Young 84-85). Weaver agreed with the old religion notion that external science and technology could not save man, a born sinner who must redeem himself internally (Scotchie 21). Though a non-practicing Protestant himself, Weaver showed admiration for religious tradition through his reverence for the written word as a grounding force in a morally unstable society (Young 86). Weaver felt strongly that industrial capitalism resulted in the moral, economic, and intellectual failure of America in general. In theory, a revival of southern traditions would combat the social degradation Weaver grew witness to in his years in Chicago. Weaver claimed that the South was the “last non-materialist civilization in the Western World” (Scotchie 17). Whether that statement was true or not, Weaver believed that non-materialism was the only cure for commodity-based capitalism.

The Beginnings of a Theory

Weaver admired and modeled himself after Agrarian teacher and “doctor of culture” John Crowe Ransom (Young 5). According to researcher Young, Weaver began to see himself as the cultural doctor of the South, despite his career in Chicago (5). More specifically, Weaver attempted to expel America’s growing barbarism by enlightening his students to the correct way to write, use, and understand language. Politically, Weaver was a conservative of sorts. In believing that a misuse of language to lead to social corruption, Weaver even criticized Jazz as a medium that promoted “barbaric impulses” in its lack of form and rules (Scotchie 46). Throughout his literary studies, Weaver rarely focused on contemporary issues. Instead, Weaver emphasized the literary workings of the past, such as the nineteenth century culture of New England and the South, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates (Young 6). Attempting to truly understand language, Weaver concentrated on a culture’s fundamental beliefs; that is, beliefs that strengthened and educated citizens into a course of action (Young 9). By teaching and studying language, Weaver endeavored to generate a healthier culture that would no longer use language as a tool of lies and persuasion in a “prostitution of words” (Young 9). Moreover, in a capitalist society, applied science was the “sterile opposite” of what Weaver saw as redemption -- the “poetic and ethical vision of life” (Young 62). Weaver condemned media and modern journalism as tools to exploit a passive viewer. Convinced that ideas, not machines, compelled mankind towards a better future, Weaver gave words precedence over technology (Nash 96). Weaver, influenced by the Agrarians’ focus on poetry, turned to poetic writing as a means of exercising humanity (Young 76). In a civilized society, poetry allowed one to express personal beliefs that science and technology could not overrule. In Weaver’s words, “We can will our world” (Nash 97). That is, we, not mechanical or social forces, can make positive decisions through language that will change existence as we know it.

Weaver's Individualism

Weaver was very concerned with the fact that, in his own words, “the more closely people are crowded together, the less they know one another” (“Address” 114). In a comparative study of Randolph of Roanoke and Thoreau, Weaver sought to understand the word “individualism” (Young 11). The rhetorician came up with two categories to apply to American individualism: 1) “studied withdrawal from society” (i.e. Thoreau) and 2) “political action at the social level” (i.e. Randolph) (Young 11). In other words, one individualist rejected society, while the other embraced social-bonds through politics. Personally opposed to America’s centralized political power, Weaver, like Randolph, emphasized the importance of an individualism that still included community (Young 12). Community, in this situation, refers to a shared identity of values that are tied to a geographical and spatial location -- in Weaver’s case, the Old South. Weaver concluded that individualism that is founded in community enabled a citizen “to know who he was and what he was about” (Young 12). Without this intimate foundation, citizens seeking individualism will be unable to reach a true, personal identity. More importantly, Weaver believed that individual fulfillment should not be man’s priority, but the living community and its well-being (Scotchie 3).

Anti-Nominalism

In Ideas Have Consequences, Weaver analyzed William of Occam’s 14th century notions of nominalist philosophy. In broad terms, nominalism is the idea that “universals are not real, only particulars” (Young 107). Under the terms of nominalism, people no longer have a measure of universal truths; man, according to Weaver, is now his own “priest and ethics professor” (Scotchie 5). Weaver considered this relativism undesirable, given his belief that modern men were ‘moral idiots,’ “incapable of distinguishing ‘between better and worse’” (Nash 89). Weaver argued that America’s moral degradation and turn to commodity culture was a direct result of nominalism. That is, a civilization that no longer believed in universal, “transcendental values” had no moral ambition to understand a higher truth outside of man (Nash 89). The result was a “shattered world” (Young 113), with unreachable truths and only the illusion of freedom. Moreover, without a focus on the sort of higher truth that can be found in organized religions, people turned to the more tangible idols of science and materialism. Weaver’s ideal society was that of Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages, before nominalism, when religion supposedly gave people a more accurate picture of reality and truth (Nash 94). Generally, Weaver felt that the shift from universal truth and transcendental order to individual opinion and technological industrialism negatively impacted America’s moral health.

Weaver's Influence

Weaver is the subject of a biography by Fred Douglas Young, published in 1995.