Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

in 1932, the Great Depression had swept the country and Weaver, like many others, had evolved into a full-fledged Socialist.

The Renaissance increasingly adapted its course of study to produce a successful man of the world, though it did not leave him without philosophy and the graces, for it was still, by heritage, at least, an ideational world and was therefore near enough transcendental conceptions to perceive the dehumanizing effects of specialization.

in 1932, the Great Depression had swept the country and Weaver, like many others, had evolved into a full-fledged Socialist.

In an autobiographical essay called “Up From Liberalism” (1958), Weaver recalls that in his undergraduate years at the University of Kentucky earnest professors had him “persuaded entirely that the future was with science, liberalism, and equalitarianism.”

He has found less and less ground for authority at the same time he thought he was setting himself up as the center of authority in the universe; indeed, there seems to exist here a dialectic process which takes away his power in proportion as he demonstrates that his independence entitles him to power.

This story is eloquently reflected in changes that have come over education. The shift from the truth of the intellect to the facts of experience followed hard upon the meeting with the witches. A little sign appears, “a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand,” in a change that came over the study of logic in the fourteenth century—the century of Occam.

Weaver was “a

Media culture—Weaver cites newspapers, the movies, and radio (imagine what he would have said about television!)—is a primary instrument employed by the Great Stereopticon for keeping the populace on the surface of life and not “breaking through to deeper significances.”

Weaver was a professor of rhetoric.