THE POLITICS OF RHETORIC

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 THE POLITICS OF
RHETORIC
Richard M. Weaver and the
Conservative Tradition
Bernard K. Duffy
&
Martin Jacobi

Contributions in Philosophy,
Number 51

GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Duffy, Bernard K.
The politics of rhetoric : Richard M. Weaver and the conservative
tradition / Bernard K. Duffy and Martin Jacobi.
p. cm.—(Contributions in philosophy, ISSN 0084-926X ; no.
51)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-25713-2 (alk. paper)
1. Weaver, Richard M., 1910-1963. 2. American literature—
Southern States—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 3. Politics
and literature—Southern States—History—20th century. 4. English
language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—Southern States.
5. Conservatism—Southern States—History—20th century.
6. Southern States—Historiography. 7. Rhetoric—Philosophy.
I. Jacobi, Martin James, 1949- . II. Title. III. Series.
PS261.D83 1993
814'.54-^dc20 92-36514

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright © 1993 by Bernard K. Duffy and Martin Jacobi
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-36514
ISBN: 0-313-25713-2
ISSN: 0084-926X
First published in 1993
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
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P

In order to keep this title in print and available to the academic community, this edition
was produced using digital reprint technology in a relatively short print run. This would
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from its original appearance, the text remains the same and all materials and methods
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Copyright Acknowledgments

The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following copy-
righted material:
Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Times. Baton Rouge: Lou-
isiana State University Press, 1964.
Richard M. Weaver, Language Is Sermonic: Richard M. Weaver on the Nature of Rhetoric,
edited by Richard L. Johannesen, Rennard Strickland, and Ralph T. Eubanks. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1970.
Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.
© 1948 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 1948. Paperback edition
1984.
From Life Without Prejudice and Other Essays by Richard M. Weaver, used by permission
of the publisher: Liberty Fund, Inc., 7440 North Shadeland, Indianapolis, IN 46250.
Richard M. Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953. Used by per-
mission of Hermagoras Press.
Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Postbellum Thought, edited
by George Core and M. E. Bradford. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington, 1968. Used by permis-
sion of Regnery Gateway, Inc.
The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, edited by George M. Curtis and James J.
Thompson, Jr., 1987, used by permission of the publisher: Liberty Fund, Inc., 7440 North
Shadeland, Indianapolis, IN 46250.
Quotations from personal letters, speeches, college termpapers, and other material included
in the Richard M. Weaver Papers at the Heard Library at Vanderbilt University and the
Henry Regnery Papers at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California, and quotations of
unpublished material collected in a dissertation on Richard M. Weaver by Thomas Goodnight,
were used by permission of Polly Weaver Beaton.
This page intentionally left blank
 To Elizabeth and Susan Dufiy,
and Sasha, Evan, and Andrew Jacobi
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Preface xi
List of Abbreviations xi xix
1. Introduction 1
2. Cultural Theory, Part 1 19
3. Cultural Theory, Part 2 41
4. Literary Theory 67
5. Rhetorical and Composition Theory 93
6. Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 125
7. The Rhetoric of Social Science: Brute Facts and Created Realities 143
8. General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 159
9. Rhetorical Genres 175
10. Conclusion 197
Works Cited 205
Index 213
This page intentionally left blank
Preface

Richard M. Weaver was fundamentally an essayist and the themes of his

individual essays cross and recross one another, creating a web of ideas and
opinions not easily disentangled. Most of his books are comprised of essays,
many of which were published earlier in journals; the two that are not
collections of essays, Ideas Have Consequences and Visions of Order, have
something of the same character. The essay collections are loosely thematic
and cross-referential, though Weaver does not often remind us that he has
discussed a matter previously. As a consequence it made less sense to us
to study Weaver's books individually or to express how Weaver's ideas de-
veloped over time.
His essays cross several disciplines, including our own, and also politics,
philosophy, and, to some extent, sociology, anthropology, and education.
We do not attempt to treat Weaver's work comprehensively or pretend to
speak from the perspectives of all these disciplines or from all perspectives
within our own disciplines. Nor do we represent this book as Weaver's
literary biography, although we recognize the influence of his life and cul-
tural experiences upon his canon. Instead, we have focused on those con-
cerns of Weaver's that seem representative of his thinking and most ger-
mane to our two disciplines of English and communication, and to what we
teach and study—rhetorical theory, composition theory, literature, and public
address. Our interest, therefore, has been primarily in Weaver's rhetorical
theory, his critique of modern rhetoric, his composition pedagogy and as-
sessment of education, his theory of the "cultural role of rhetoric," and
examples of his own argumentation concerning a number of social issues
that are of as much concern today as when he first discussed them in the
late 1940s and early 1950s. We are particularly interested in assessing the
x/7 Preface

degree to which Weaver's conservatism led him to enduringly useful in-

sights into rhetoric and culture, and from this interest the book derives its
title.
His conservatism also led him to use his rhetorical talents to p r o m o t e
cultural and political positions; that is, he offers us both a rhetorica docens,
a rhetorical theory, and a rhetorica utens, a body of rhetorical discourse.
By theorizing that rhetorical discourse includes moral promptings to think
and act prudently, Weaver establishes a presumption that his own use of
rhetoric will do just that. Specifically, he places rhetoric into the service of
a transcendent, p r e s u m e d truth of a decidedly conservative cast.
Part of the reason why his rhetorical theory has not received the atten-
tion it deserves concerns his readers' not clearly distinguishing b e t w e e n
rhetorica docens and rhetorica utens. Looked at as rhetorica utens, some
of Weaver's strategies are partial, even "sophistic." H e does argue that a
neomedieval Judeo-Christian world view is the closest to the ideal w e can
get on the earth, and that it is most beneficial to human action and most
suited to the nature and function of rhetoric. Also, he argues for the exis-
tence of stable truth, the maintenance of cultural traditions, and the im-
portance of ethical responsibility. It is no surprise that American conserva-
tive politicians have thought him worth reading, nor is it surprising that
most modernists and postmodernists find a great deal with which to dis-
agree. While Weaver can be charged with using rhetorical theory for the
purpose of political propaganda, such a charge could b e made against any
rhetorical theorist. As Weaver supports a conservative political agenda,
Kenneth Burke supports a neo-Marxist one, although to be fair, Burke's
political leanings must be inferred while Weaver seems rarely to miss an
opportunity to show how his rhetorical theory supports his political and
cultural assessments. Even looked at as rhetorica docens, Weaver's work
inevitably indicates a political orientation through the description of its key
elements, although from this perspective his theory does seem much more
powerful and persuasive.
Much of his rhetorical theory is the product of his rhetorical and cultural
criticism. H e does not unfold a rhetorical theory, such as Aristotle's, that
discusses rhetorical proofs, style, and organization and that elaborates the
potential premises of arguments founded upon cultural assumptions. (His
composition textbook represents his closest approximation to this format.)
More customarily, Weaver positions himself as a philosopher of rhetoric
and a rhetorical critic whose theory concerns the relationship of rhetoric to
dialectic, metaphysics, and culture. His approach to the subject is much
like Plato's, who criticized existing rhetorical theories and practice, sug-
gested a b e t t e r version of the art, and placed the study of rhetoric in rela-
tion to its cognates, particularly philosophy. However, Weaver's affection
for rhetoric is, ultimately, far greater than Plato's. Weaver, therefore, pro-
vides a more positive assessment of rhetoric than that which Plato allows.
 Preface xiii

Weavers essays themselves seem often to be comprised of correlated but

disparate elements and use digression to give relief from the main argu-
ment while subtly supporting it in ways that might not at first be apparent.
His essays are rich in the variety of support, both illustrative and logical,
and bespeak the erudition and expansiveness of the classical lecturer, es-
sayist, and orator. Many of his essays follow the epideictic genre for they
are clearly demonstrative, not only of the praiseworthy and blameworthy,
but of Weaver's virtuosity as a rhetorician and of the virtues of rhetoric as
a medium of expression. His essays, which frequently argue paradoxical
positions, link Weaver with sophistic display speeches, such as Gorgias's
Encomium of Helen. Like Paganini's violin concerti, they celebrate the vir-
tuoso performer and reveal the possibilities of the instrument. Some of his
essays dealing with paradoxical themes, however, are more than opportu-
nities to display his skill. As Paganini has serious motives regarding his
music, so Weaver's motives at times allow him to be a forensic rhetorician
who appeals dimly remembered historical verdicts, arguing for the reval-
uation of people and ideas he identifies with conservatism. In this role, he
frequently impresses us with his acute grasp of rhetorical principles and
techniques, drawing us into the game but failing to win our assent for po-
sitions that are ultimately indefensible.
Although we examine Weaver's own rhetorica utens, it is fundamentally
to understand and criticize his arguments, rather than to characterize, ex-
cept incidentally, his invention or style. It should not be left unsaid, how-
ever, that no matter what conclusions may be reached concerning the dia-
lectical positions he argues, his vivid and engaging style is admirable. (We
believe it is admirable, although we can imagine a position based on Ci-
cero's belief that true eloquence always requires wisdom; we can also im-
age a position maintaining that a full appreciation of Weaver's rhetorica
utens would rely upon an acceptance of the philosophical underpinnings of
his rhetorica docens.) One of the few hostile comments about Weaver's
style, in a review written by George Geiger for the Antioch Review, is
clearly prejudicial: "Mr. Weaver's pretentious style—combining the most
obnoxious features of Milton Mayer and Mortimer Adler—must be held
responsible" for Geiger's "violent reaction" to Ideas Have Consequences
(251). Contrary to Geiger, we believe that Weaver's eloquence is itself a
reason to read his works, though the disjunction between form and sub-
stance implied in this comment would doubtless concern Weaver greatly.
Indeed, the reasons to read Weaver are many and, although it has been
said that his primary audience was like-thinking conservatives, there is evi-
dence that he hoped his cultural critique would produce among liberals
precisely the "violent reaction" admitted by Geiger. It is not ultimately
satisfying, after all, to wound one's academic enemies—or one's political
enemies—unless they know it. That Weaver's books elicit such responses
make him a unique figure in modern rhetorical theory, a figure similar to
xiv Preface

Plato, who roundly attacked the Sophists, or Protagoras, who some say was
banished for refusing to recant his treatise on the nonexistence of the gods.
How one interprets Weaver depends upon what one believes his major
emphasis to have been—whether rhetoric, conservative philosophy, or cul-
tural criticism, to name the three most reasonable possibilities. From one
perspective, he was a conservative who used rhetorical theory as a way to
study the arguments and persuasive claims for both conservatism and lib-
eralism, with the hope of establishing grounds for conservative argumen-
tation. To the extent that Weaver's rhetorical theory supports his conserva-
tism, one could recall both his own argument that "language is sermonic"
and his view that discourse suppressing a point of view in a falsely objective
interest fails on humanistic grounds if on no other. That is, rhetorical trea-
tises have been written with political viewpoints in mind, and, like Ma-
chiavelli's The Prince, Weaver's writing is intellectually interesting to stu-
dents of rhetoric even if its inspiration is political. Further, Weaver's notion
that language is sermonic provides a circular rejoinder to claims that he is
not objective; in this sense, his theory is self-sealing. On the other hand,
to the extent that his conservatism informs his rhetorical theory, some would
argue that his rhetorical theory is impure or suspect, despite the insights
it provides. We take no final stand on either position, although we try to
point out not only the extent to which his theory supports his politics but
also the extent to which his conservatism seems to inform, and even some-
times distort, his rhetorical theory.
Looking at this issue from another perspective, one can say that theoriz-
ing about rhetoric cannot be done in a vacuum. As it is developed, a theory
of rhetoric shows not just its theoretical lineaments but also the nature and
method of its application. One might imagine a continuum, at one end of
which is the belief that truth exists prior to rhetorical acts, and that rhetors
are responsible for discerning and presenting that truth effectively, and at
the other end is the belief that truth is what is created through collabora-
tive rhetorical acts, and that rhetors are responsible for using discourse to
foster these creative contexts. It is our opinion that many people, whether
or not they are rhetorical theorists and whether or not they are aware of
what they are doing, approach the former pole in their rhetorical acts.
They approach a discussion or argument believing that they have the an-
swers, and that their purpose in the situation is to bring their interlocutors
into alignment with their own predetermined positions. In fact, perhaps
most people find it difficult always to maintain an open-minded toleration
of other ideas and an acceptance of the possibility that they will be altered
through discourse with others—hallmarks, as Robert Scott maintains, of
the rhetorical theory implicit in the continuum's latter pole. A study of
Weaver's works not only illuminates his rhetorical theory, placing him at
the pole in which truth precedes rhetorical presentation; it also indicates
how rhetoric is used by a person who believes as Weaver does about the
 Preface xv

relationship of rhetoric to truth. In brief, it shows that such a theory as

Weaver develops can induce a rhetor to see ends justifying means. Like
Plato, who states in The Republic that rhetoric is available for educational
and political seduction when the facts of the case may not be persuasive
(Book 3, 389B; Book 5, 459C), Weaver occasionally, at least, uses some
suspect rhetorical strategies in an attempt to persuade his audience to a
position that he apparently feels we would otherwise not accept.
Weaver's theory is oftentimes interesting and sometimes profound.
However, as he employs his rhetorical knowledge in the analysis and sub-
sequent discussion of real-life events, he occasionally wavers as regards his
principal points* and as he uses rhetoric to pursue his own practical and
real-world issues—such as the justifiable extent of academic freedom, or
the social attitudes of and toward the South, or the responsibilities of the
censor to the maintenance of discourse whose end is the health of society—
he sometimes gives short shrift to positions laid out in his theory. That is,
in practice Weaver occasionally operates as if the "truth" he is to present
is not what has been dialectically secured with his intended audience but
rather something he has developed in vacuo to set them right; and he
tends to see as "artful" any means that will allow him to get his audience
to accept his truth.
Weaver wrote at a time when the menace of international communism
was perceived to be very real and very great, and when the civil rights and
feminist movements had not yet made Americans as sensitive to race and
gender issues as we are now. Therefore, to fault Weaver for what might
now look like political paranoia or to fault him for attitudes we would now
call racist and sexist might be seen as unkind or even unfair. Yet we feel
that these criticisms of Weaver are fair. In his discussion of the sexism in
Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, Wayne Booth has an imaginary critic
complain that Booth is unfair "in [his] failure to see him [Rabelais] in his
own time and to recognize just how far his imagination ranged beyond that
of most of his contemporaries" (Company We Keep, 408). As part of his
defense against this charge, Booth states that, despite Rabelais's relative
feminist tendencies when he is compared with his contemporaries, we do
not read Rabelais in his time but in our own. He says: "For me, here and
now, the power of any 'past' text to work on me and to reshape me, for
good or ill, is thus in this one sense ahistorical. All works that I re-work
speak to me, bless me or threaten me, where I am" (412). That is, the
mark of great literature has always been that it speaks to all people about
the human condition, no matter their particular personal, social, and cul-
tural orientations. Such standards should also apply to the writing Weaver
does. If his work is important to us not merely as a historical artifact but
as a body of thought that speaks to us today, we must look at all that it is
telling us; as readers of our book will see, we believe that Weaver offers
us a great deal that is useful and thought-provoking, but he also offers us
xv/ Preface

opinions that a doctor of culture in the late twentieth century would find
flawed. His flaws cannot be ignored.
Weaver is most interesting when he is most abstract and most concerned
with rhetorical theory, and he is most prone to antagonize when he is most
specific and most interested in social and political issues. His theories, then,
are more likely to command the admiration of the community of academic
rhetoricians than are the specific conservative positions they are used to
support. Weaver's oeuvre is an interesting study of a person who does not
distinguish clearly enough between theoretical constructs and the real world;
as a result, his applications of his own theories, while interesting, lead him
oftentimes to ideological excesses. Despite such problems, Weaver has en-
joyed a great deal of prominence in the discipline of rhetorical theory—as
it exists in departments of English and, even more, as it exists in depart-
ments of speech communication. His prominence reflects the valuable in-
sights he offers into the nature and function of rhetoric as a human activity;
into the relationship of rhetoric to ethics, to society, and to the cultural
underpinnings of society; into the role of rhetoric in discerning "truth"; and
into the responsibilities of the rhetor to his or her audience as regards the
presentation of that truth. These insights ought to be understood and fully
considered.

Our collaboration on this book began some years ago when we were
colleagues in the English department at Clemson University. During our
time at that institution we discovered that we had a mutual interest in
Richard Weaver; specifically, we found through numerous discussions that
we agreed on our understanding and evaluation of his rhetorical theory.
We talked to each other about various aspects of his theory and its impli-
cations, and we shared drafts and final versions of conference papers. While
collaboration is beneficial in many ways, we came to understand, shortly
after we began work on this book, that there can also be drawbacks, be-
cause one of us took a position at an institution some three thousand miles
away. Nevertheless, we have managed to continue an active, critical, and
productive collaboration on Weaver despite the geographical distance. While
we have been able to continue our collaboration, each of us has taken pri-
mary responsibility for several chapters, with the other serving as the crit-
ical reader suggesting expansions, deletions, and other changes. Thus, Ber-
nard Duffy is the primary author of Chapters 1, 6, 7, and 8, and Martin
Jacobi the primary author of Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5. The preface, the
conclusion, and Chapter 9 have been jointly written.
Our book tries to consider the insights Weaver offers in a fairly system-
atic fashion. Chapter 1 introduces Weaver the man, the cultural critic, and
the rhetorician. The final division of the chapter preliminarily considers his
vision of the cultural role of rhetoric and questions one of his core con-
cepts, the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric. Chapters 2 and 3
 Preface xvii

analyze Weaver's general and specific cultural theory, respectively, in or-

der to provide what Weaver would see as a necessary basis for his rhetori-
cal theory. Chapter 2 looks at the origins and nature of culture and at the
effects that the rise in the importance of science have had on Western
culture; it closes with an analysis of how Weaver's ideas on truth compare
with such concepts as the social construction of knowledge and rhetoric as
epistemic, and with how these theories' rhetorical components compare
with his rhetorical theory. Chapter 3 describes and evaluates Weaver's
thoughts on the antebellum southern society as an approximation of the
"ideal culture"; the chapter ends with the implications of this cultural view
for feminist, economic, and military considerations. Chapter 4 looks at how
Weaver's literary theory relates to his cultural theory and offers insights
into his rhetorical theory. Starting with the similarities and differences be-
tween Weaver's and Plato's thoughts on literature, this chapter addresses
the status of literature as cultural artifact, its creators, and its effects on
audiences and on cultural development and maintenance. Chapter 5 dis-
cusses how Weaver's rhetorical theory applies to the teaching and practice
of speaking and writing, with a focus on professional communication. This
discussion not only shows the benefits Weaver offers to the teacher and
practitioner of rhetoric but also indicates the pitfalls into which his partic-
ular theory can, or even must, lead the unwary student of his work.
Chapter 6 explains Weaver's analysis of the Scopes trial. Ostensibly,
Weaver's analysis is meant to illustrate the relationship between dialectic
and rhetoric, but his chapter also pleads the case of the prosecution and
illustrates Weaver's desire to promote the metaphysical interests of the
South while denouncing the presumptions of scientific and modernist cul-
ture. Chapter 7 concerns Weaver's critique of social scientific rhetoric, which
hinges upon a distinction between "dialectical" and "positive" terms. Al-
though the distinction is problematic, we find much to commend in Weav-
er's overall analysis of this rhetoric. The chapter elucidates the intellectual
sources, substance, justification, and political basis of Weaver's critique.
Chapter 8 takes up Weaver's views on language by examining his assault
on General Semantics and contrasting it with his praise of spacious rheto-
ric. Chapter 9 explores the possibility that Weaver expresses himself in two
rhetorical genres, the epideictic and the forensic. At his best he is an epi-
deictic rhetor, engaged in a celebration of abstract values; at his worst, he
is a forensic rhetor, pleading conservative causes with no more than the
pretence of impartiality. Our conclusion offers a summary of Weaver's sig-
nificance for the discipline of rhetorical theory.

We would like to thank Marilyn Brownstein, senior humanities editor at

Greenwood Press, for her help and patience. The gestation period for the
book was longer than we anticipated, in part because of the geographical
distance separating the authors. We are also grateful for the work of Pamela
xv/// Preface

Chergotis, who copyedited the manuscript and Catherine Lyons, our pro-
duction editor, who guided it into print.
We would also like to thank California Polytechnic State University-San
Luis Obispo and Clemson University for providing sabbatical leaves to as-
sist in the completion of this project. We gratefully acknowledge the South-
ern Humanities Commission for a travel grant to visit the Vanderbilt Ar-
chives. We appreciate the assistance of the archivists at Vanderbilt University
Archives in Nashville, Tennessee, and the Hoover Institution Archives in
Palo Alto, California. We also thank Professor Daniel Young of Vanderbilt
University, and Polly Weaver Beaton, Richard Weaver's sister, for provid-
ing useful information about Weaver's life.
We would like to thank Richard Johannesen for the helpful comments
and encouragement he generously gave in response to conference papers
and articles, as well as for his development of an excellent body of scholarly
work on Weaver. Several people read portions of the manuscript and of-
fered useful suggestions, including professors Stephen Ball, Susan Duffy,
Richard Johannesen, Robert P. Newman, Edward P. Willey, Mark Win-
chell, and Mary DeShazer. Of course, any errors in the book are entirely
our own.
Finally, we would like to thank our families, Susan and Elizabeth Dufiy,
and Sasha, Evan, and Andrew Jacobi.
List of Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used for in-text citations. For complete
citations, see the Works Cited.

Papers
DDP Donald Davidson Papers
HRP Henry Regnery Papers
RMWP Richard M. Weaver Papers

Weaver's Work
AF Academic Freedom: The Principle and the Problems
DC "The Division of the Churches over Slavery (General)" [in Good-
night]
EC "English Composition in the Classroom" [in Goodnight]
ER The Ethics of Rhetoric
HH "Hawthorne: What Was He?" [in Goodnight]
IHC Ideas Have Consequences
LIS Language Is Sermonic
LP Life without Prejudice
PEM "The People of the Excluded Middle" [in Goodnight]
PL "The Place of Logic in the English Curriculum" [in Goodnight]
RC Relativism and the Crisis of Our Times
RCWR Rhetoric and Composition: A Course in Writing and Reading
xx List of Abbreviations

RE "The Role of Education in Shaping Our Society" [in Goodnight]

RL "The Roots of the Liberal Complacency" [in Goodnight]
RR "A Responsible Rhetoric"
SE The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver
STB The Southern Tradition at Bay
SW "The Strategy of Words" [in Goodnight]
TW "Making the Most of Two Worlds" [in Goodnight]
UTC "Uncle Tom's Cabin" [in Goodnight]
VO Visions of Order

Also used is the following abbreviation:

WMFCT World's Most Famous Court Trial

 1

Introduction

What most distinguishes Richard Weaver as a rhetorician is his philosoph-

ical conservativism. As dramatism defines Kenneth Burke's rhetorical the-
ory, philosophical conservatism defines Richard Weaver's. On the other
hand, it is difficult to understand his conservatism without acknowledging
that his explanation of what it means to be a conservative is informed by
his perspective on "the cultural role of rhetoric." The relationship between
Weaver's conservatism and his rhetorical theory harkens back to the philo-
sophical controversy between the ancient Sophists and their antagonist,
Plato. Plato disparages rhetoric in the Gorgias as a method by which au-
diences are gratified so that politicians can achieve power, and he subor-
dinates rhetoric to his idealistic philosophy in the Phaedrus. Weaver simi-
larly criticizes rhetoric in the service of what he dislikes in modern culture,
while granting it an essential role in the preservation of the traditional
culture he prefers. For Weaver it is not all rhetoric that is evil, but rhetoric
in the interest of liberal, socialistic, and scientistic causes, rhetoric that
does not bow to a preceding dialectic or whose dialectic is marred. Yet he
finds equally objectionable dialectic without rhetoric, which he sees as a
false ideal promoted by interest in scientific objectivity and nurtured by
General Semanticists intent upon eliminating linguistic ambiguity and rhe-
torical evocation. Conservative rhetoric, "right reason," attempts to achieve
persuasion and cultural coherence by expressing intuitive and imaginative
truths, preferably in arguments from definition, analogy, and genuine au-
thority, rather than from false authority or from vexing arguments from
circumstance, which assume that things as they are create imperatives for
belief and action. Weaver's preferred rhetoric finds support in the judg-
ments of those who possess philosophical insights, not in the calculations
2 The Politics of Rhetor

of social engineers and social scientists who profess the importance of sta-
tistical data even as they advance highly subjective programs of social change.
The richness of Weaver's literary legacy subsists in the interrelationships
among his conservative philosophy, his cultural criticism, and his rhetorical
theory and criticism. For Weaver, modern culture is a reflection of the
rhetoric that has shaped and sustains it. Therefore, to speak of rhetoric is
to speak of its historical and potential influences on culture. His rhetorical
theory is an accretion of his cultural criticism, which is disdainful of mod-
ern mass society with its scientistic and mediocriticizing tendencies. Weaver
casts himself in the role of the cultural critic who uses his understanding
of rhetoric to explain modern culture's deflection from the socially integra-
tive force of an older rhetoric that appealed to staid values and philosoph-
ical constants. He detects in the degeneration of public discourse a renun-
ciation of the principles that unified the more conservative polity of the
past and sees in the right use of rhetoric the opportunity to restore the
habits of moral thought and expression essential to a society founded upon
cultural truths.

WEAVER'S BACKGROUND AND CAREER

Weaver's autobiographical essay "Up from Liberalism"; the reflective
opening essay of his Visions of Order, his last book; and reminiscences of
him by his intellectual allies, such as Russell Kirk and Eliseo Vivas, and
his publisher and friend Henry Regnery, provide a reflection of who Weaver
was. Although he apparently kept up a massive correspondence, unfortu-
nately very little of it has survived, perhaps, as Professor Daniel Young of
Vanderbilt University conjectured, because Weaver, an antimaterialist, was
not prone to accumulate possessions of any kind (RMWP Box 2; Young).
Weaver was a child of the South at a time when the rural South appeared
to be comprised of pockets of material deprivation, largely untouched by
northern industrialism and the twin beacons of scientific and technological
progress. During his early childhood the Scopes trial fixed an impression
of southern society as backward, religiously fundamentalist, anti-intellec-
tual, and opposed to the enlightenments of science or the material im-
provements of northern industrialism.
Weaver was born in 1910 in Asheville, North Carolina, and spent most
of his youth in the adjoining community of Weaverville. A town of 1,111
at the time of his death, it has grown together with and is now indistin-
guishable from Asheville itself. After his sudden death on April 3, 1963, of
a heart attack at the age of 53, the University of Chicago, where Weaver
taught from 1944 until his death, flew its flag at half-mast (news release,
HRP Box 68). However, despite the university's homage to Weaver, he
was in some sense a southern expatriate. One of the great incongruities in
his life was that he chose to live in just such an urban hub of the modernist
 Introduction 3

culture that he spent his academic career opposing. In a speech written for
a family gathering in 1950 Weaver declared: "I have been condemned for
the past six years to earn my living in that most brutal of cities, a place
where all the vices of urban and industrial society break forth in a kind of
evil flower." His speech expanded upon the reasons he disliked the "me-
tropolis," including the anonymity it imposed upon its residents, its mech-
anistic outlook, and its dehumanization of its residents, compared with the
provincialism of southern communities, which, by resisting the "urban ideal,"
had conserved the individuality and humanity of its people. Chicago, in all
ways inimical to what Weaver held dear, was, nevertheless, the "vantage
point" from which he considered the cultural decay of the northern city,
while the model of the small southern community provided its "indispens-
able conservative counterpoise" ("Address of RMW," RMWP Box 3).
Weaver's familial and cultural roots were in Weaverville, precisely the sort
of rural southern community he had in mind. A half-serious saying, familiar
in the South, which Weaver relates in one of his essays, is pertinent here:
"In the South, it has been said, a man from another country is a stranger
and one from another state is a foreigner" (SE 17). For Weaver, Weaver-
ville, which bore his family's name, and was so small that the point of a
map pin might exceed its boundaries, was a locus of culture and tradition,
while the brutal northern megapolis, which treated humans as interchange-
able parts, represented an altogether alien world (RMWP Box 3). Weaver,
who was given to thinking in terms of dialectical opposites, could not have
found two more representative poles of tradition and modernity, agrarian-
ism and industrialism, religiosity and relativism, than Weaverville and Chi-
cago. Kenneth Burke would say, no doubt, that these two places were the
materializations of Weaver's deepest yearnings and anxieties.
According to Henry Regnery, Weaver was, despite his feelings about
Chicago, proud of his association with the University of Chicago, where he
served as professor of English in its undergraduate college. Nevertheless,
Regnery acknowledges, Weaver was not happy there, and though a com-
mitted teacher who in 1949 won a college prize for his teaching, he was
isolated and excluded, where possible, by the faculty (Henry Regnery to
Buckley, 4 April 1963, HRP Box 10; Regnery Memoirs 192). Wilma Ebbitt,
who headed Chicago's English department, reports, however, that the fac-
ulty felt "a sense of desolation" at the prospect of Weaver's leaving to ac-
cept an appointment at Vanderbilt and comments that he was the institu-
tion's "most distinguished teacher of writing . . . in the last twenty years"
(Ebbitt 415-16). An article in the University of Chicago's newspaper spoke
of him as an austere man who kept to his schedule and routine, and who
was dedicated to his students and his scholarship. Some people, observed
the author, "were kept at a distance by his reticence, his sense of decorum,
his rather formal courtesy, and by a calm stability which seemed to invite
neither offers of aid nor the exchange of confidences" (5 April 1963, p. 5;
4 The Politics of Rhetoric

HRP Box 68). Eliseo Vivas, who knew Weaver for twenty years, expresses
a similar response to Weaver in his introduction to Weaver's posthumous
Life without Prejudice: "You sensed in him a man of great depths, of depths
with which he seemed familiar, but into which you were not able to pen-
etrate" (Vivas ix). Daniel Young of Vanderbilt's English department, where
Weaver had planned to take the post of visiting professor, remembers him
as a man who "spoke southern," and whose conversation was distinguished
by polite answers to questions and an unfailing agreeableness (Young inter-
view). Russell Kirk comments that the stoical Weaver lived in a single hotel
room, braved the winters in Chicago wearing two overcoats at a time, and
allowed as much as a year to elapse between meetings with even his best
friends in Chicago (Kirk 308). Yet Willmoore Kendall, a friend who often
visited him in Chicago, disputes Kirk's characterization of Weaver as a re-
cluse, noting that he "took part in the day-to-day life of the university,"
respected his colleagues, ate lunch in the cafeteria where students could
speak with him, but who, like other scholars, also enjoyed the sanctuary of
his study (80-81, ftnt. 20). Ralph Eubanks reports that Weaver took plea-
sure in the company of others and in being what he called "a practicing
humanist" (Eubanks 414). Weaver was perceived differently by different
people, but in general seemed a private though congenial person who with
great discipline had dedicated himself to the exploration and articulation of
his social and philosophical convictions. He was a throwback to a more
genteel era, the gentleman of broad learning who, Weaver laments, is re-
garded by modern society as "an impecunious eccentric, protected by a
certain sentimentality, but no longer understood" (IHC 55).
He had endured many hardships as a child and attended high school and
college during the Great Depression. His father died when Weaver was
five, and he helped his mother care for his brother and two sisters. He
attended a public high school in Lexington, Kentucky, and a private school
in Harrogate, Tennessee, intended for students who needed to work to
support themselves through school. Kendall Beaton, the husband of Weav-
er's sister Polly, and the literary executor of Weaver's estate, disclosed a
remarkable insight into the formation of Weaver's character in a testimonial
Beaton delivered at a family reunion in 1963. When only fifteen years of
age Weaver had organized a society at his boarding school and written a
constitution that expressed the following purpose: "To promote the ex-
change of ideas, investigate theories, propagate principles, follow an argu-
ment wherever it goes, and develop ourselves." Contained in the consti-
tution's first article is the solemn declaration: "No member shall cherish
society above solitude or engage promiscuously in social activities." Fore-
shadowing his later accomplishments the precocious Weaver had at a tender
age devoted himself to a humanistic life of scholarship, inquiry, and reflec-
tion, preferring solitude and meditation to the enticements and temporal
 Introduction 5

satisfactions of social intercourse ("A Clear Voice," HRP Box 18). Polly
Weaver Beaton described her brilliant brother as a "strange guy" and a
"lonely fellow." He was, she recalled, the brightest of the Weaver chil-
dren, so bright that he had a difficult time understanding his more conven-
tional siblings. "We were," she said, "a nuisance to him" (Beaton inter-
view).
As often is the case with the most committed, Weaver was a convert to
the conservatism that subsequently steered the course of his intellectual
career. He was, to be sure, no ordinary student at the University of Ken-
tucky, as his induction into Phi Beta Kappa attests. The few essays Weaver
saved reveal a writer of prodigious ability. One of his papers considered
John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and commented on the prospects of modern
liberalism. Weaver perceives that true liberalism is unaggressive and tol-
erant, but for this reason potentially ineffectual, whereas intolerant liber-
alism gives up its creed in its struggle to survive. For this reason, con-
cludes the young Weaver, the "liberal commonwealth" must wait until man
renounces aggression. Indeed, as a student Weaver wrote an article for the
Intercollegian in 1929 on the subject of world peace in which he complains
of the "garish and superficial things" that might keep students from consid-
ering the subject of his brief report (RMWP Box 2). Weaver's earliest writ-
ings show an intellectual maturity, vocabulary, style, and rhetorical tech-
nique that belie his youth.
In 1932, the year of his graduation from the University of Kentucky,
Weaver joined the American Socialist party and became secretary of its
local chapter. Finding nothing congenial in the personalities of the other
members of the party cell into whose company he was cast, Weaver began
to doubt his commitment to what had first appeared a solution to the prob-
lems of the Great Depression. Throughout the Depression era and partic-
ularly in its first years, socialism and other alternative political ideologies
attracted the interest of intellectuals like Weaver. He attributed his asso-
ciation with socialism to his youth and fascination with a fashionable idea,
and his eventual embrace of conservativism to his contact with John Crowe
Ransom and the teachings of the other Southern Agrarians, who resolutely
defended the cultural traditions of the South against the encroachments of
northern, scientistic culture. M. E. Bradford reports that Weaver spoke of
himself in Chicago as an "agrarian in exile" ("Richard M. Weaver" 309). It
was the cultural climate of Texas A&M University, where Weaver taught
after taking his master's degree at Vanderbilt, that led him finally to discard
his socialistic notions in preference to the conservativism he had discovered
at Vanderbilt (LIS 131-34). Texas A&M, one of many southern technolog-
ical institutions created to serve the practical needs of the economically
backward South, promulgated a set of values Weaver found repugnant:
"rampant philistinism, abbetted by technology, large-scale organization and
6 The Politics of Rhetoric

a complacent acceptance of success as the goal of life. . . . I feel," said

Weaver, "that my conversion to the poetic and ethical vision of life dates
from this contact with its sterile opposite" (LP 135).
He emerged from this fortress of technological education dedicated to
finding himself in the roots of his southern past and, like many southern-
ers, immersed himself in the history of the Civil War. His interest was not
merely a historical one. In these studies he learned the significance of de-
fending the lost cause. Many of his essays begin with positions that have
been left behind in the wake of history, such as his paradoxical approval of
prejudice as culturally conserving "prejudgment," or his incisive rebuttal
to the scientifically presumptuous position of the defense in the Scopes
trial. In examining arguments of liberals and conservatives and in finding
support for unpopular positions, Weaver explored the potential of both di-
alectic and rhetoric. Although many rhetoricians do not agree with Weav-
er's philosophical conservativism, or his argumentation on its behalf, few
of his detractors would deny the eloquence of his essays.
Writing at a time of a well-entrenched and accepted social liberalism,
Weaver's rhetorical regrounding of conservative conclusions was iconoclas-
tic, incisive, and trenchant in its criticisms of contemporary society. In a
letter to his publisher, Henry Regnery, Weaver speaks of "New Dealism"
as the enemy and the need to combat it with an alternative "set of princi-
ples" (HRP Box 68). In challenging the political status quo, Weaver's own
reliance on rhetoric to find ways of justifying his views merged with his
equally passionate interest in rhetorical theory. As Clarence Darrow was
"the attorney for the damned," Weaver was an apologist for positions that
contradicted settled presumptions of modern society; for example, that sci-
ence and social science would provide the means for limitless improve-
ments in life, or that Henry David Thoreau was a laudable model of Amer-
ican individualism. One of his critics, however, argues that in broad terms
Weaver's Platonic idealism is not the abandoned one he claims it to be,
because, despite the influences of science on society, the Western philo-
sophical and religious tradition still dominates (Geiger 53-54).
Tracing his own intellectual development, Weaver says his explorations
of the Civil War led him to understand "why certain actions which in the
light of retrospect appear madly irrational appeared at the time the indis-
putable mandate of reason" (LP 138). In his historical research Weaver
came to appreciate that arguments secure their force from deeply embed-
ded systems of belief. By itself this is a relativistic insight, but Weaver not
only consistently rejects relativism, he denies that notions long ago dis-
carded in the name of progress are perforce wrong. Chief among these old
notions is the belief in the reality of ideas overturned in the Middle Ages
by nominalism. To rediscover the philosophical basis of seemingly atavistic
ideas, one needs, he remarks, only "to look at the 'progress' of history
through the eyes of those who were left behind" (LP 138). Weaver is a
 Introduction 7

critic who reconstructed abandoned conservative positions not simply to

revise history, but to provide an alternative to what he perceived to be a
regnant and presumptive liberalism. In his essays, such as his comparison
of the political philosophies and distinctive individualism of John Randolph
and Henry David Thoreau, Weaver looks for the internally consistent di-
alectic that supported conservative ideals while attempting to reinstate those
that coincided with his intuitions. Similarly, in his analysis of the Webster-
Hayne debate, Weaver opposes the received opinion that Webster's "Re-
ply to Hayne" was a rhetorical and doctrinal triumph. As Weaver sees the
matter, Hayne, an advocate of states' rights, argues from historical fact and
from a concept of individual liberty anathema to Webster's wrongheaded
notion that the Union's power should be expanded (SE 104-33).
As a historian and rhetorical critic, Weaver attempts to locate abstract,
underlying principles that, when considered with only muted reference to
the policies they were used to support, appear more defensible. In the
abstract, states' rights is not objectionable; in situ it is, for it supported the
policy of slavery in the antebellum South and, in the 1950s, the policy of
segregation. Weaver seems to ask, let us look at principles and definitions,
independently, suspending our judgments concerning their material con-
sequences. How then does Weaver believe these principles are to be judged?
The answer seems to be in terms of other still more abstract principles, in
what Weaver refers to as "an aristocracy of notions" (ER 23). Therefore,
Weaver argues that the state of Tennessee, by a right of cultural and polit-
ical sovereignty, was amply justified in its passage and enforcement of a
law preventing the teaching of evolution (ER 47, 50; SE 143). Weaver con-
sistently leads one down a maze of interlocking principles that in the end
turn back upon one another, although he would characterize his arguments
as leading the reader upward toward loftier principles. Many of his essays
take the tack of constructing a defensible rhetorical position where none
was thought to exist. "I have," says Weaver, "a strong tendency to side
with the bottom dog, or to champion the potential against the actual if the
former seems to have some reason behind it. . . . To this extent I am a
reformer or even a subverter" (LP 140).
This is an apt self-appraisal, for Weaver was only peripherally involved
in partisan political causes. He was an intellectual, a critic, and a writer,
not a political activist. This is not to say that his work was not influential
or that his ideas were not political. Weaver's regular contributions to the
conservative publications, Modern Age and National Review, evidence his
interest in shaping political opinion. Fellow conservative Frank Meyer as-
serts that Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences, a testament of his conserva-
tive beliefs, published in 1948, is the origin of the neoconservative move-
ment (Meyer 243). Weaver was not simply a theorist; his positions have
deep political implications and one must agree with Russell Kirk that his
"teachings were instruments for action" (VO viii). Weaver confirms this
8 The Politics of Rhetoric

assessment when, in analyzing the practical purposes of rhetoric as com-

pared to the intellectual purposes of dialectic, he declares: "But we are
reminded that the end of living is activity and not mere cognition" (VO
64). It is for this reason that his essays and books, no matter how intellec-
tual in outlook, invariably find their goal in the denegration of modernist
assumptions and practices and in the praise of lost virtues.

THE ROLE OF THE CULTURAL CRITIC

In the first chapter in Visions of Order, Weaver offers greater insight
into how he understands the process of cultural criticism as he undertook
it. He sees himself battling modernist cultural presumptions hardened and
protected by a language that has attained social sanction. He had articu-
lated this position most clearly in his well-known essay "Ultimate Terms in
Contemporary Rhetoric" in The Ethics of Rhetoric. In Visions of Order he
tells us: "To describe these [modern] tendencies in the language that is
used most widely is to endorse them, whereas to oppose them is to bring
in words that connote half-forgotten beliefs and carry disturbing reso-
nances" (VO 8). The "pessimists," the critics of modern culture, have the
"proof," he argues, while the optimists have the rhetorical advantage. The
task Weaver lays out for himself is to "bring a rhetoric along with a proof
to show that the present course of our culture is not occasion for compla-
cency but for criticism and for possible reconstruction" (VO 6). Thus Weaver
establishes that the illnesses of modern culture are also necessarily rhetor-
ical ones that can be treated with the antibodies of an opposing rhetoric
advancing the truth. Weaver refers to the cultural critic as a "doctor of
culture" who might restore it to health.
In describing the role of the critic Weaver speaks of one who, though
nominally accepting membership in the culture, "has to some degree es-
tranged himself from [it] through study and reflection." Culture becomes
objectified and critics "who have in a way mutilated themselves by with-
drawal, by a special kind of mental discipline," render the culture as an
object and, though part of the culture, see what those who live in and
speak its language fail to see (VO 8). As a critic Weaver says he attempts
to achieve a detachment from culture akin to Schopenhauer's "looking upon
the world as if it were a pageant" (LP 140). Weaver, who spent much of
his adult life in a city that glorified the very aspects of culture he disdained,
surely describes himself when he reflects upon one who is "learned in it
[culture], but not exactly of it" (VO 8). Weaver's life bears witness to this
dictum. The editor of Modern Age, for which Weaver was an associate
editor, spoke of Weaver shortly after his death as one who had refused to
accept the conveniences of technological society. He flew in an airplane
once and only of necessity; he used the train to return to Weaverville in
the summers, where he plowed his field behind a horse; and he wrote with
 Introduction 9

pen and paper, converting the manuscript to typescript on an antiquated

portable (Davidson 227). Although he saw his beloved South as a bastion
against industrialism, even of it he admitted innumerable disappointments
(LP 144). Despite Weaver's asceticism, and his recognition that the critic
must in some way be removed from culture, he did not believe in cultural
isolation; quite the contrary. In "Humanism in an Age of Science," a speech
delivered to the Newman Society, Weaver warns against detachment. "The
man who is self-consciously perched above the fray comes to have a sort of
disdain for those who are wrestling with the world's intractibility, and that
too tends to be inhumane in the way that it divides us off. We are all here
to be proved, and its seems that a man should not try to save himself by
individual withdrawal" ("Humanism" 11, RMWP Box 3). In an enlarged
expression of this notion, Weaver remarks in Ideas Have Consequences
that "the sin of egotism always takes the form of withdrawal." It is a with-
drawal from the "spiritual community," and a consciousness of "oneness."
As Ralph Eubanks has observed, Weaver "was acutely aware of the danger
in letting one's dialectic get separated from the real world" (Eubanks 415).

INTRODUCTION TO WEAVER'S CULTURAL CRITICISM

Weaver's cultural theory might well be considered romantic, if not in its
spiritualism, then certainly in its portrayal of the antebellum South as rep-
resenting certain admirable qualities of traditional culture, but Russell Kirk
recalls that no one was less romantic in his personal life than Weaver (VO
viii). As Weaver expresses disdain for a culture dominated by the brute
facts of science; he posits an alternative, admittedly theological perspec-
tive, that emphasizes the tragic nature of man, the existence of evil, and
the need for piety and grace. We are, he says, "inhabitants of a fruitful and
well-ordered island surrounded by an ocean of ontological mystery" (LP
141). The individual's most splendid achievements, Weaver maintains, de-
rive from "projections that include the natural environment and whatever
is suggested by his spirit regarding the mystery that broods over creation"
(VO 10). "The more man is impressed with the tragic nature of his lot, the
more he dramatizes his relations with the world" (VO 10). Weaver speaks
of his own rediscovery of the importance of piety as a kind of rebirth, a
"recovery of lost power" that is "repressed by dogmatic, utilitarian, essen-
tially contumacious doctrines of liberalism and scientism" (LP 144).
He sees contemporary culture's embrace of scientific values as moving it
away from a sense of purpose and value emanating from the contemplation
of humanity's relationship to creation. From such contemplation comes an
apprehension of the ideal, which provides order and harmony. Weaver cel-
ebrates the spiritual yearning that, through imagination, shapes a world of
ideas beyond nature and empirical experience. Modernism's focus upon
the empirical world impels culture centrifugally away from a unifying core
W The Politics of Rhetoric

of ideals and toward individualism (IHC 52-53). Cultures, he maintains,

are centripetally organized through the "tyrannizing image," which may
take the form of anything from scripture to warfare. The tyrannizing image
provides a locus of "identification and assimilation" and produces hierarchy
and order (VO 12). Elsewhere Weaver talks of the importance of myth in
coalescing society and of the "metaphysical dream. . . . which is the bond
of spiritual community" and the basis for civilization (VO 37; IHC 18). These
musings are consistent with Kenneth Burke's dramatistic view of rhetoric,
for Burke similarly sees the world as consisting of both identification and
division and perceives that the purpose of rhetoric is to create "consubstan-
tiality," a unity of substance that does not exist in nature but must be
brought forth in a conception of the ideal. Burke recognizes the unique
potency of the "mythic image." The mythic image, such as the winged
charioteer in the Phaedrus, transcends the concrete conceptual image and
thus provides a new basis for motivation (Rhetoric of Motives 202). As Weaver
perceives the tyrannizing image as a culturally potent "ideal of perfection
and goodness," in a different vein Burke completes his definition of man
with the ironic notation that he is "rotten with perfection." Terminologies,
Burke explains, invite one to fulfill, to "perfect," their implications (Lan-
guage 19). One notices immediately the difference in critical stance. Burke's
exposition of the linguistic and symbolic causes of human motivation seems
detached, but in a different way than Weaver expects cultural criticism to
be detached, for Weaver's own exposition carries a strong undercurrent of
reverence. It is obvious that Weaver does not intend that the critical dis-
tance required of the cultural critic will result in an exposition that betrays
no inclination. In fact, Weaver piously stands in awe of the cultural conse-
quences of the tyrannizing image. It is, one might say, a powerful potion
in the bag of the doctor of culture. In response to such images, true cul-
ture, he observes, provides "form," "coherence," "style," and "discrimina-
tions," whereas a false notion of democracy attempts to destroy culture to
the extent that it undermines distinctions among people and ideas (VO 14).
Sounding much like Friedrich Nietzsche, who is no less polemical con-
cerning the evils of democracy and false egalitarianism, Weaver insists that
"when democracy is taken from its proper place and is allowed to fill the
entire horizon, it produces an envious hatred not only of all distinction but
even of all difference" (VO 15). It might be argued that democracy has
itself become a tyrannizing image through what Nietzsche would regard a
profound transvaluation of values from those of the "hardness" and individ-
ualism of the master to the meekness and collectivism of the slave (IHC
120). Weaver anticipates and attempts to refute this notion. He maintains
that the democratic nature of religious societies is sustained in some higher
interest and tends to mute, rather than to eliminate, distinctions of role
among their members. According to Weaver, it is the "propaganda of egal-
itarianism," not social distinctions themselves, that leads to jealousy and
 Introduction 11

unrest. For Weaver false egalitarianism, misapplied democracy, is but a

step on the way to socialism and communism, the ultimate direction of any
such perversions of nature. Writing in the early 1960s, Weaver criticizes
court-ordered integration as one among several steps on the path away
from the natural segregation created by the tyrannizing image that had
shaped the feudal culture of the South (VO 21).
Weaver's criticisms are of the world of technological and social progress,
wherein change is wrought by material circumstances rather than philo-
sophical imagination. Philosophy, Weaver says, "begins with wonder. . . .
We begin our other affirmations after a categorical statement that life and
the world are to be cherished" (IHC 19). Without an imaginative concep-
tion of life, "the metaphysical dream," and the "unsentimental sentiment,"
chaos ensues. Weaver warns of a world of competing ideas lacking all ref-
erence to metaphysical truth. What moderns call freedom, Weaver be-
lieves to be no more than license, a freedom from the constraints of au-
thority or principle that leads to moral depravity. Real freedom rests upon
an ordered existence in which consensual beliefs form a basis for the
expression of individuality (ER 171). "The decline" prophesies Weaver, with
evocations of Milton's "Paradise Lost," "is to confusion; we are agitated by
sensation and look with wonder upon the serene somnambulistic creations
of souls which had the metaphysical anchorage" (IHC 21). Weaver fears
that the individual, without philosophical constructs as guides, will fail to
transcend the raw data of sensory experience that provides humanity nei-
ther a direction nor a moral compass. Weaver's answer to this danger is
quintessentially Platonic: "the reality which excites us is an idea, of which
the indirection, the veiling, the withholding, is part" (IHC 26-27). In the
descent from metaphysics to a brutal materialism and "the endless induc-
tion of empiricism," Weaver discerns the cause for the pathogenic prob-
lems of the culture. Among these problems are sensationalistic journalism,
loss of respect for parents, decreased concern about children, replacement
of true friendships with self-serving business associations, lack of distinction
between old and young and between genders, the diminution of the hero,
the enlargement of a business culture and of the relativism it engenders,
and the disappearance of chivalry in modern wars waged indiscriminately
upon civilians (IHC 30-33, 64). Particularly durable is Weaver's discussion
of journalistic sensationalism and the pervasiveness of the media in shaping
an attitude toward life oriented to the immediate present, exterior reality,
and sensation rather than to memory, inward contemplation, and meta-
physical conception (IHC 92-112). Although Weaver's focus is on journal-
ism, radio, and film, the influential media of his day, his critique is also
pertinent to television, which he merely mentions. He argues that the mass
media fragment reality, depicting it in successive moments and creating a
"decomposed eternity." Moreover, they promote values he associates with
cultural disintegration, such as materialism, "happiness through comfort,"
12 The Politics of Rhetoric

and a commitment to the false "dogma of progress" (IHC 101-2, 104-5,

111; see also ER 178-79).
The counterweight to the destructive tendencies in society is piety, for
piety expresses one's inwardness and one's denial of the importance of the
external world. This is Weaver's solution to the cultural ills he describes,
and it might be conjectured that it is a solution deriving from Weaver's
own spiritual and philosophic rebirth. Weaver's view of piety also informs
his critical stance. He speaks of the "deadness to the world" affected by
the Puritans as beneficial and liberating, as he speaks of the need for the
critic to achieve distance from the world. Weaver's antihero is the pessi-
mist with strong moral convictions rather than the modern optimist who
has lost all conviction (IHC 173-74). In discussing piety, Weaver pleads
the case for a proper philosophical relationship to nature, tolerance toward
others, and a respect for history (IHC 171-82). His discussion of piety does
not devolve into religious pronouncements, but any discussion of piety can-
not entirely avoid the theological. Weaver seems to understand, however,
that his influence as a social critic would be undermined by a theological
treatment of issues that can also be discussed philosophically, without the
baggage of sectarian religion (IHC 185). Rather, he speaks of metaphysical
notions that in the last century could have been the themes of edifying and
morally uplifting Chautauqua lectures. Coming closest to pure religious
sentiment is Weaver's idea that personality is a gift that makes the individ-
ual conscious that he is a "vessel" carrying the "universal mind." Weaver
is critical of the view that man is to be deified, a doctrine modern religious
fundamentalist leaders have demagogically attributed to all humanists in
every century, but which Weaver attributes to modernism in general and
incidentally to "literary humanism," by which he means presumably the
revival of Greek humanism espoused in the 1920s by Irving Babbit and
Paul Elmer Moore (IHC 181-83; see Duffy, "Anti-Humanist"). Weaver is
a humanist, but he is decidedly a Christian rather than a pagan humanist,
whose views are rooted in Platonic realism turned toward the sensibilities
of orthodox Christianity. (See Johannesen, "A Reconsideration.")

THE CULTURAL ROLE OF RHETORIC

Plato, writing at a time of rhetoric's prominence, does not explictly ac-
count for rhetoric's significance as an agency of preserving culture, while
Weaver, who is acutely aware of the modern degeneration of rhetoric,
forcefully expresses the importance of traditional rhetoric as a means of
restoring culture to its belief in transcendent ideas. He interprets the cur-
rent low status of rhetoric as a corollary to modern culture's abandonment
of philosophical realism, which requires the imaginative and suasory force
of rhetorical expression, in favor of logical positivism, which holds figura-
tive and evocative rhetorical discourse to be defective communication. Ac-
 Introduction 13

cording to Weaver: "The current favor which rational and soulless dis-
course enjoys over rhetoric is a mask for the triumph of dialectic. This
triumph is directly owing to the great prestige of modern science" (VO 56).
No modern cultural critic has championed the art of rhetoric as has Richard
Weaver, and no adequate account of the major currents of Weaver's canon
could ignore his notion of "the cultural role of rhetoric," which we take up
again in succeeding chapters. Rhetoric was Weaver's profession, and his
idealized vision of rhetoric became a standard against which he measured
social and political discourse and thereby society itself. To his conception
of rhetoric he refers most of his lines of cultural criticism. As it did for
Isocrates, the contemplation of rhetorical theory produced for Weaver a
theory of ethical culture. He understands rhetoric not merely as a body of
techniques but as the means of preserving culture. In delineating the to-
poi, the places to find arguments, rhetorical theory assimilates the corpo-
rate beliefs constituting society (VO 64). Weaver, a neo-Platonist, speaks
with far greater fondness and enthusiasm for rhetoric than could have been
possible for Plato, who witnessed the evil results of political rhetoric in the
prosecution and execution of Socrates (see Vickers 84-88). Both Plato and
Weaver see immoral examples of rhetoric as manifestations of cultural de-
generacy, but Weaver wishes to restore rhetoric to its former cultural
prominence, while Plato emphasizes the prospects for a rhetoric suited to
the philosophic enterprise and, as in the Phaedrus, to the instruction of
the single interlocutor (Duffy, "Platonic Functions" 87-92). Weaver rec-
ognizes Plato's ambivalence toward rhetoric, due in part to Plato's convic-
tion that rhetoric was the instrument of Socrates's death and, though his
point of view is Platonic, he surpasses Plato in his commitment to rhetoric
as a means to achieve social order and harmony (VO 59-62). While Plato
is cynical of rhetoric addressed to popular audiences, Weaver holds that
popular opinion ought not to be regarded as insignificant; indeed it is the
stuff of humanity (VO 71).
Weaver departs from the path of pure rationalism that he believes the
Hellenic tradition establishes (VO 66). Dialectic, understood as the realm
of "pure speculation," requires, he insists, the actualizing power of rhetoric
to bring it into the world, just as Hellenic rationalism required the "music"
of Christian rhetoric and poetry. Weaver unites himself with Cicero in re-
flecting "that the orator is a teacher and a moral teacher at that" (VO 67).
Effectively, Weaver sees the declension of modern society as concomitant
with the disenthronement of the orator. The world of nineteenth-century
America, in which the orator served as a moral authority who eloquently
rehearsed society in its most deeply felt commitments, has passed away.
In the new reign of the logical positivist, the scepter of rhetoric and orb of
communal belief that gave authority to the orator and rhetorician have been
lost in a new emphasis on "mere dialectic" and objective discourse, what
he calls "semantically purified speech" (ER 7). Weaver boldly claims that
14 The Politics of Rhetoric

the "upholders of mere dialectic . . . are among the most subversive e n e -

mies of society and culture." In his estimate, objectivity in discourse is
applauded because it comports with a scientific ideal, while rhetorical dis-
course is viewed as just so much propaganda (VO 70). So, the art of rhet-
oric as Weaver would define it is essential to culture itself. More than an
art with limited practical application, rhetoric expresses the culture's meta-
physical dream and integrates society by celebrating the historic beliefs of
the people.
Both in discussing the cultural role of rhetoric and in his exegesis of the
Phaedrus in The Ethics of Rhetoric, Weaver develops the idea that dialec-
tic explores logical possibilities while rhetoric brings dialectical proposi-
tions into existence, or "actualizes" them (ER 20-28). H e speaks of dialec-
tic as "abstract reasoning on the basis of propositions," and as "high
speculation about nature" (VO 56, ER 17). One senses immediately that
the strict dichotomy of dialectic and rhetoric is false in practical terms, and
Weaver admits that the actualized dialectical position inheres in its rhetor-
ical expression without being its equivalent (VO 64). A related question,
however, is the extent to which rhetoric is involved in the operation of
dialectic itself and the extent to which dialectic is already related to the real
world. Even in its purely speculative form, dialectic requires discourse,
if only an inward discourse. To the extent that dialectic is pursued through
language, it is affected by the figurations that Weaver attributes to rheto-
ric, for all language, as I. A. Richards has argued, is metaphoric (ER 18).
It is interesting to consider in this regard G. B. Kerferd's discussion of
the difference between the sophistic method of antilogic and that of Pla-
tonic dialectic. Antilogic, which Plato sees as something less than dialectic,
opposes two logoi and operates at the level of verbal contradictions. Ac-
cording to Kerferd: "While it is possible for people without being aware of
it to mistake antilogic for dialectic, . . . it lacks the essential feature of
dialectic, namely the power to discuss on the basis of Division of things by
Kinds, and instead it proceeds on the basis of (merely) verbal contradic-
tions." In other words, Platonic dialectic is distinguished from antilogic by
its involvement in what Plato describes in the Phaedrus as the definitional
processes of division and collection, in its reference to the forms, and thereby
in its transcendence of the phenomenal world (Phaedrus 263, 265-66; Ker-
ferd 64-65). When Weaver discusses dialectic he frequently describes the
features of antilogic, but generally also the distinctive Platonic process of
"discriminating into categories and knowing definitions" (Kerferd 64; ER
23). Thus Weaver speaks of dialectic establishing essences by "logical ex-
clusion and inclusion" (ER 18). Yet there are times when he speaks about
dialectic more as a logical wrangle wherein a proposition is pitted against
its opposite and a logical position is verbally dissected. For example, h e
explicitly scrutinizes the position of the defense in the Scopes trial in the
m a n n e r of the "dialecticians" (ER 49-50). At these moments he is unwit-
 Introduction 15

tingly describing or illustrating antilogic rather than Platonic dialectic. Thus

Weaver sometimes renders dialectic as a mode of speculation that has a
greater relationship to a shifting phenomenal world than Plato would wish
dialectic to have. In this relationship the distinction between rhetoric and
dialectic that Weaver observes becomes muddled. In fact, Plato must ac-
cept antilogic too, since, as Kerferd argues, "antilogic is the first step on
the path that leads to dialectic" (67).
Thus, Weaver's dichotomy between a nonrhetorical, purely speculative
realm of dialectic and an actualizing realm of rhetoric is conceptually prob-
lematic. More perplexing and startling is Weaver's explicit rejection of the
Socratic assumption that popular opinion should be distrusted. Effectively,
he asks that we move from the Platonic forms to "affections and opinions
that are part of the settlement of any culture" (VO 70-71). In drawing this
conclusion, Weaver establishes a much more important place for rhetoric
than Plato was willing to give it. Weaver claims that Phaedrus effectively
makes the rhetorician a dialectician (VO 62). Also, Weaver appears to con-
tradict his own commitment to Platonic realism. The transcendent beliefs
to which the speaker should appeal are, he says, the beliefs of humankind,
a part of creation, rather than of some sphere of truth remote from human-
ity itself. In his dedication to rhetoric, Weaver must distance himself from
the strict philosophical realism that Plato espoused and give greater cre-
dence to the real world. Weaver, a Platonist in some sense, is also a rhet-
orician and conservative who feels compelled to stipulate traditional culture
as the agency for the preservation of transcendent belief. Like Plato, he
trusted in recollection, not of the previous experiences of a reincarnated
soul described by Socrates, but rather of the beliefs that unify culture and
are carried forward in memory and called to mind by literature and rheto-
ric. In this formulation, the rhetor, "as the moral artist" Plato speaks of in
the Gorgias, joins with the poet to remind the individual of "primordial
conception" (Gorgias 504; IHC 165, 157).
Weaver speaks of possessing knowledge that "comes from immediate ap-
prehension," the possession of which makes one a "participant in the com-
munal mind" (IHC 157). H e does not mean the mind of a generation, or
of a particular society, but some d e e p e r and more mystical consciousness:
"Primordial conception is somehow in u s " (IHC 157). In this statement
Weaver reasserts the cardinal doctrine of his philosophic faith, namely, the
notion that essential meanings, buried d e e p within the well of conscious-
ness, reside in us all, impervious to time and place, and abstractly pre-
served in the artistic, the literary, and the rhetorical productions of cul-
ture. "What has h a p p e n e d , " Weaver inquires ruefully, "to the one world
of meaning? It has b e e n lost for want of definers" (IHC 164). As Weaver
insists throughout his writings, modern culture has substituted relativism
for philosophic realism, temporality for eternity, and the empirical for the
universal. In this benighted condition of culture, modern literature and
16 The Politics of Rhetoric

rhetoric are predictably not fulfilling their philosophic and cultural function
to remind the people "of what they already thought" (ER 172; cf. Phaedrus
278).
Those responsible for creating culture, he observes, must "furnish the
molds and the frames" that keep one from "accepting raw experience" and
thus "sinking in upon the moral being." The metaphysician, the mytholo-
gist, the poet, and the orator provide the images that allow one to be reu-
nited with the forms, with essences and true knowledge (IHC 22-24). The
orator joins in this philosophic enterprise when he speaks epideictically,
that is, when the orator attempts to represent the essential values of the
society that are rooted in history and memory. Such rhetoric brings "the
past into a meditative relationship with the present" (ER 178). Culturally
integrative epideictic rhetoric such as the ancient funeral oration, which
spoke of the heroism of Greeks fallen in battle, is instructive to the young
and stimulating to those who are already conversant in the abiding truths
of the culture.
Weaver even attempts to establish the distinction between dialectic and
rhetoric as contributing to the cultural differences between the industrial
North and the antebellum South. The antebellum South, he says, held to
the importance of sentiment and to the "Ciceronian tradition of eloquent
wisdom," while the North and, after the Civil War, the South as well,
embraced not only science, industry, and business, but also the tendency
toward New England rationalism and dialectic exhibited in the influential
writings of Emerson and the Transcendentalists (IHC 55; SE 51, 136).
Rhetoric as "eloquent wisdom" preserved and synthesized the sentiments
of culture in the antebellum South, while dialectic in the form of New
England rationalism compromised traditional beliefs by establishing them
on an intellectual basis and thus making them available for logical dissec-
tion (SE 136-37). Religious beliefs accepted by southerners as "inscruta-
ble" were in the North evaluated in the cool light of scientific develop-
ments, particularly evolutionary doctrine (SE 138). The "defeat of Ciceronian
humanism" in the South ushered in a new illiberality in which the facts of
science and business enterprise became more important than general prop-
ositions (IHC 55, 58-59). Such thinking is mirrored in the social order by
the increased role of the specialist at the expense of the liberally educated
gentleman, specifically the southern gentleman of the last century, whose
knowledge of the world was shaped by sentiment and rhetoric rather than
by reason and logic alone (IHC 54-59). It is no accident that when Weaver
speaks of the propositional and stylistic "spaciousness of old rhetoric," he
uses as examples the deliberative and epideictic oratory of southerners in
the antebellum period, while he attributes to northern intellectuals the
spritually deadening hand of mere logic (ER 164-85). There is, one might
say, a deliberate cultivation of the southern gentleman that led him to con-
sider the relationships among broad matters of concern rather than to focus
 Introduction 17

on the narrow-gauge interests promoted by a technological culture. The

southern gentleman, the humanist, and Cicero's ideal orator are distinctive
in their capacity to speak more expansively on a wider range of topics than
people schooled in the primary importance of information, logic, and the
scientific method.
Although it seems paradoxical, Weaver believes that one of the chief
consequences of an older, spacious, and socially integrative rhetoric is that
it fosters individual liberty. Weaver responds to an anticipated objection
that the individual is now freer, perhaps in the very proportion to which
he or she is unmoved by the old orator's paeans of democracy, agrarianism,
and Christianity, which appealed to a more harmonious culture. He argues
that, to the contrary, the modern individual is less free to make important
decisions because there are too many to make. Social anomie has deprived
humanity of its anchorage in communal belief and has set the individual
adrift among competing currents of opinion and ideology. Jacques Ellul,
whose social critique is often complementary to Weaver's, argues that com-
peting propagandas within a democracy do not mitigate against the men-
tally short-circuiting consequences of propaganda. On the contrary, the cit-
izen of a democratic society infused with propaganda is left confused,
neurotic, and certainly not freer (Ellul 254-56).
One of Weaver's guiding assumptions, then, is that rhetoric and other
modes of suasory communication shape the individual and the culture for
better or worse. If, as Weaver maintains, the day of the epideictic orator
is over, perhaps it is because the core of communal belief to which the
orator can appeal has diminished. The cause of the relative decline of ora-
tory rests with the culture rather than with the orator or oratory. In a
revealing hyperbole, Michael Grant, a translator of Cicero's orations, says
that in ancient Rome the orator was "several thousand times" more impor-
tant than he is today (Grant 15). The same judgment might also apply to
the role of oratory in nineteenth-century America. The decline of the ora-
tor and of traditional rhetoric is but one manifestation, though an important
one, of vast differences in culture, which Weaver interprets as a symptom
of the decline of culture. One might argue that, although Weaver provides
an interesting, if tendentious, description of why "spacious" rhetoric is no
longer of the same cultural significance, he cannot restore it to its former
importance. It is difficult not to regard Weaver as an antiquarian, an atav-
ist, or a reactionary. But he is plainly more than a subjective historian; he
pleads the case for a society held together by a shared comprehension of
ideals, wherein an older rhetoric, which gave voice to enduring values,
would not be embarrassing to the sensibilities of modern audiences. He
believes there is a path toward this restoration. Society must return to a
core of belief, but first it must acknowledge that ideals, which would form
this core, have an ontological status (IHC 52-53).
Concerning the prospects of this restoration, it must be said that Weaver
18 The Politics of Rhetoric

is one of the pessimists with strong conviction whom he approvingly de-

scribes. He claims to have faith in the regenerative powers of culture and
in the potentially salutary influence of rhetoric and the other expressive
arts, although there is little in his cultural theory or criticism to give evi-
dence that there is much hope for a reverse in the downward spiral of
culture he perceives. His cultural theory, as we shall see,, is almost by
definition inhospitable to the policies of social liberalism that have been
pursued since his death. His literary and rhetorical theory stand up better
than his cultural notions, which is to say that they are consistently useful
and insightful despite their tendentiousness. In his defense it must be said
that Weaver never adopts a pose of ideological neutrality, although as a
critic he tacitly claims to be removed from culture. His persona, when not
that of the polemicist, is that of the "philosophic doctor," the none-too-
gentle critic who would heal culture by reuniting it with its lost ideals and
by restoring it to its philosophical bearings.
 2

Cultural Theory, Part 1

INTRODUCTION
Weaver believes that it is important to know the origins and strength of
one's culture, since a coherent and consistent culture provides the support
for a stable society, and since social stability is necessary not only for hap-
piness but also for the ability to be ethical and productive. Stability, he
holds, depends upon a consensus regarding the values and laws of the group,
which is to say that a society's stability depends upon the degree to which
its members accept the society's cultural basis. Our society, Weaver con-
tends, has lost its cultural consensus and, therefore, its ability to provide
us with the good life. The causes of this loss are for Weaver clear. In his
view, the "defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the
crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts
which issue now in modern decadence" (IHC 3). The medieval debate to
which Weaver refers was between those supporting realism and those sup-
porting the nominalist philosophy articulated by William of Occam. With
the victory of nominalism comes a series of developments concluding with
the cultural conditions Weaver terms modernism. Modernism contains nearly
everything with which he disagrees, everything that contradicts his notion
of the ideal culture founded on logical realism.
This chapter and the next are linked through their analyses of Weaver's
cultural theory. This chapter discusses first the origins and nature of cul-
ture and then the effects modernism has had on traditional Western cul-
ture. It is important to investigate Weaver's statements about reality and
truth, not only because they lay out the conflict between traditional and
modern cultures but also because they indicate his perception of an ideal
20 The Politics of Rhetoric

culture. The next chapter describes Weaver's view that antebellum south-
ern society approaches his conception of the ideal and concludes with a
critique of his ideal culture. This critique focuses on his conception of the
role hierarchy plays in culture and its effects on culturally disadvantaged
people; it also considers his statements about the role of business and war
in the maintenance of a culture.

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF CULTURE

In an expression of his breezy anthropology, Weaver says that a culture
mysteriously emerges out of "climatic, geographical, ecological, racial, re-
ligious, and linguistic soils," and precedes the formation of a nation-state
or the development of nationalism both in history and in importance (LP
19; see also SE 132-33). At the core of a culture, giving it its impetus and
its coherence, is a center of authority. This center Weaver calls a "tyran-
nizing image," an ideal of excellence embodied in religious rituals, a body
of literature, a code of conduct, or some other central body of belief (VO
11). This is not to say that a culture is developed out of any particular ritual
or epic poem or book of religious teachings, but rather that each of these
artifacts of the culture articulates and, through repeated presentation,
maintains some or a good deal of the essence of the culture's guiding beliefs
about its origins, its mores, and its ethical code. This body of belief gen-
erates the "metaphysical dream" of the culture (IHC 18), which unifies the
cultural members by compelling belief in a certain set of values and ac-
ceptable actions.1 The belief provides a way of looking at the world; it is
"man's response to the various manifestations of this world as they impinge
upon his mundane life. He alters these to forms that reflect meaning; he
fills interstices which appear unbearable when left void; he dresses with
significance things which in their brute empirical reality are an affront to
the spirit" (LP 15-16). To use Kenneth Burke's term from Permanence and
Change, a culture provides an orientation by and through which we under-
stand experience as well as generate and order our ideas. It creates a way
of seeing in addition to—or, perhaps better, by means of—denying other
ways of seeing; as Burke puts it, "A way of seeing is also a way of not
seeing—a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B" (Permanence
and Change 49). Such a characteristic gives a culture its principle of exclu-
sivity. Further, a cultural orientation does not provide absolute meanings
but rather makes meanings that comport with the metaphysical dream. To
quote again from Burke, "Even a set of signs indicating the likelihood of
death by torture has another meaning in the orientation of a comfort-loving
skeptic than it would for the ascetic whose world-view promised eternal
reward for martyrdom" (Permanence and Change 35).
The set of cultural beliefs is not logically grounded. Rather, cultural
members hold them as "sentiments" or "prejudices," what the ancient
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 21

Sophists called nomoi; they are held as true even though they cannot be
proven by logical means. The sentiments or prejudices of a metaphysical
dream of a culture have charisma, gained from their relation to the meta-
physical dream, and they exert over the cultural group a pious adherence,
an attitude of reverence or acceptance with which a mere individual is not
to tamper (SE 196; see also STB 32 and LP 143). While a prejudice or
sentiment may be unreasoned, it is not illogical: it does not take a merely
"sentimental" stance with regard to the world; it does not contradict itself
in immediate ways nor is it contradicted by other elements of the meta-
physical dream. In fact, Weaver asserts, the sentiments that inform a cul-
ture's metaphysical dream of the world allow for the practice of deductive
logic rather than the converse, insofar as logic rests on definitions and as-
sumptions, which are themselves finally intuitive (IHC 19-21), and which
are part of the metaphysical dream that informs the culture.
Rather than denying these beliefs because they have no empirical veri-
fication, we should admit "the right of an individual or a society to hold a
belief which, though unreasoned, is uncontradicted" (LP 13)—uncontra-
dicted by reasons that themselves hold as much or more weight in the
culture. 2 Weaver offers as support for this position our belief in judgments
whose verification has simply been forgotten, or that have been vouched
for by experts, or that have subconscious origins (LP 8). It is this last group
that informs the greater part of the metaphysical dream. One of them, for
Weaver, is the "categorical statement that life and the world are to be
cherished" (IHC 19); any deliberation or action that a culture will logically
articulate, then, must not contradict this assumption. How that assumption
is to be understood is, of course, a problem with which the culture must
struggle, and a problem we will address shortly.
Generally speaking, a culture's orientation is continually reinforced in
each person by life within the culture, from an individual's earliest inter-
action with other cultural members, through schooling, and through the
constant and thereby self-sustaining and self-reinforcing application of the
orientation to explain physical phenomena and experiences. This inculca-
tion is necessary to maintain cultural integrity. A culture that does not
develop adherence among its members and that does not exclude alien
influences must wither (VO 11, 21; LP 16-17; IHC 33; RE 615). Further,
not only the culture suffers, but, Weaver asserts, so do its people. A loss
of cultural integrity upsets people's "psychic composure" and threatens their
ability even to exist (DC 339).
Consequently, it is difficult for one person to criticize his or her culture,
even if that person believes that the culture has developed problems. And
it is possible for a culture to go awry: Weaver does not hold with those
cultural anthropologists who argue that, since each culture is based on non-
logical prejudices, each culture is acceptable on its own terms. As he ar-
gues, a culture may at some point encounter "something comparable to
22 The Politics of Rhetoric

'natural law* . . . a law that derives sanction from a universal consideration

of justice. . . . [N]ot all phases of a single culture have been equally happy
for m a n " (VO 73-74). F u r t h e r m o r e , cultures must not b e absolutely static,
although they must possess stability. A culture that attributes an imma-
nence to its forms and institutions, that makes divine its prejudices, "be-
gins to levy an excessive tribute upon the human beings for whom these
things exist" (VO 78-79). Yet societal m e m b e r s who most enjoy its benefits
will see anything that threatens them as a menace, even though the threat
is a refinement and an advancement of virtuous and productive life. T h e r e -
fore, a balance must be struck between this conservatory nature and a will-
ingness for "adding to the sum total of knowledge" (AF 7).
And, as we have intimated, a balance must be struck between implicit
cultural dictates and explicit societal laws. Sometimes the legal guidelines
do not adequately reflect or support the tyrannizing image, and sometimes
the elements of the tyrannizing image cannot be precisely determined.
However, just as the culture takes precedence over the political unit, so
the cultural laws take precedence over the laws of the state. W h e n people
talk about the hierarchical relationship of the state's laws to "natural law,"
they mean something like this necessary precedence. Thus, for instance,
S u p r e m e Court Justice Clarence Thomas was asked repeatedly during his
confirmation hearings in 1991 about his beliefs regarding the right of women
to have abortions, and many of the questioners referenced his earlier, writ-
ten statements about natural law: Did he think there might be a law differ-
ent in kind from and greater in importance than laws made by states or the
federal government? In response Thomas noted that for some time slavery
was legal in our country but was still profoundly wrong and immoral be-
cause it offended against natural law, and he suggested that every senator
and American citizen could accept the accuracy of his observation.
Although occasionally coming close to denying that slavery in the ante-
bellum South did offend against natural law (STB 266, for one instance),
Weaver nonetheless makes the same sort of distinction that Justice Thomas
makes between natural law and the laws of the land. A useful distinction
b e t w e e n the two can be approached through the Greeks' concept of nomos,
which translates roughly as a society's custom-laws and which compares
with Weaver's notion of the metaphysical dream of the culture, insofar as
it provides a social construct with ethical dimensions. Similarly, as natural
law transcends the laws of the land, so do nomoi transcend the explicit laws
of the state. For instance, we have explicit laws against taking the life of a
fellow citizen except in cases of self-defense, and our nomoi concur with
and in fact underpin these laws. However, in certain instances these laws
are ignored or their punishments reduced to a vanishing point. Examples
include cases in which an elderly person has taken the life of a terminally
ill spouse because he or she felt the spouse was suffering too much, and
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 23

the courts have responded with verdicts of innocence or with sentences in

keeping with far less serious crimes than murder.
Of course, as our aside about Weaver's attitude toward slavery indicates,
the specific form of natural law or of nomos is unknown; thus, conflicts
between either and the laws of the state often prove thorny, and the prob-
lems our society has trying to resolve such confusions underline the occa-
sional difficulty we have in deciphering the lineaments of our culture's
metaphysical dream. Again, the nomination hearings for Justice Thomas
provide an illustration, in the form of questions about abortion's status in
his conception of natural law. It is reasonable to say that those who favor
the right of women to have abortions and those who do not favor such a
right both agree that the premeditated taking of another human being's life
for monetary gain constitutes a particularly heinous crime of murder; prob-
ably both would also agree that paying another person to kill a human
being is also heinous. The two sides differ, of course, on the definition of
a human being and so on the attribution of m u r d e r to the act of abortion.
Should the S u p r e m e Court overturn Roe v. Wade, it seems possible that
the justices will have agreed that a legal right not to be m u r d e r e d accrues
to the fetus, that birth is not a requirement for membership in the human
race. Abortion in effect would constitute murder and on these grounds
must be banned. F u r t h e r m o r e , since contract murders are a crime not only
against the laws of the land but also against the cultural nomoi, perhaps
the justices would have considered, if they overturn Roe v. Wade, what
society should do about the tremendous increase in first-degree murders
certain to follow in short time. While such means as living wills exist to
help with our elderly couple's problem discussed above, and while a judge
can learn something about a surviving spouse's knowledge of the late spouse's
wishes, there seems to be no parallel mechanism in place as regards the
wishes of a fetus. 3
This extended example is meant to indicate that enormous difficulties
can exist in identifying nomoi and their relationship to the legal system; it
also suggests that nomoi may change—slowly and slightly, perhaps, but
change nonetheless. And such change is necessary, as we have already
mentioned, if the culture is not to rigidify and ultimately die. Yet despite
the difficulties in determining the relationship between nomoi and state
law, to understand the nature of a culture we must realize the existence of
these differences. This is, then, also to say that the culture must have some
means of self-adjustment, that there must exist people who are able to get
outside their culture's orientation, who are able to awaken from the meta-
physical dream and gain the objectivity necessary to criticize it. This escape
from the culture's way of seeing the world, while necessary for the culture's
continued health, is difficult. Through study and reflection, one can es-
trange oneself to a degree to which she or he can "become sufficiently
24 The Politics of Rhetoric

aware of what is outside it to see it as a system" and to determine what is

worthy of adherence and what is in need of adjustment. Such a person
Weaver calls a "doctor of culture." The role of a doctor of culture, a role
that Weaver takes for himself, is crucial if a culture is to stay viable and
virtuous (VO 7, 75).
To stay viable and virtuous, a culture must have a clear and fairly stable
sense of itself. Thus, a culture must be conservative, maintaining a stable
appreciation of its nomoi, refining them only slowly and with clear and
compelling reasons. This conservative presumption, as we will show mo-
mentarily, denies power to a notion of "progress" defined as conquest over
nature, as technological development, as the evolutionary perfectibility of
the species. Stability requires a structural hierarchy, since, as Weaver con-
tends, a society must have a structure to be understood, and a structure
requires some form of hierarchy (IHC 35). Weaver continues by arguing
that the hierarchy for people in a society must recognize two grounds for
elevation—knowledge and virtue. If people agree on the common ends of
their culture—that is, agree on the outlines and goals of their culture's
metaphysical dream—then they will believe in this hierarchy, find their
just place in it, and work toward a common social end in harmony rather
than in competition with one another (IHC 36-43). Equalitarianism would
therefore make no sense because it provides no hierarchy for a unifying
structure, in addition to the obvious argument that people are physically
and intellectually and morally (this last as regards their practice rather than
their innate attributes) unequal. In an argument that mirrors that between
Socrates and Callicles in the latter half of Plato's Gorgias, Weaver says
that, without a social hierarchy in which the wise and the good bear the
responsibility and enjoy the prestige, the society must either be leaderless
or else be led by those who gain power through brute force or through
appeal to mass appetite. 4
To be viable and virtuous a culture also must have a clear sense of hu-
man nature, since we are the generators of culture and the recipients of its
benefits. According to Weaver, we have four separate faculties. In each
person's daily decisions and actions, as well as in the large, mysteriously
produced corporate decisions made on behalf of cultural development and
maintenance, all the faculties must be considered. These faculties are the
cognitive, the inquiring faculty that produces knowledge; the aesthetic,
the contemplative faculty that provides enjoyment of beauty; the ethical,
the evaluative faculty that determines right and wrong; and the religious,
the intuitive faculty that provides a glimpse of the transcendental world
and of our destiny. Weaver sees a hierarchy among these faculties that
helps to maintain the culture. The cognitive faculty, while extremely im-
portant in its manifestation as dialectic and logic, and in its manifestation
as the abductive and inductive procedures of the scientific method, is in
fact merely a tool to be directed by the other faculties. Specifically and
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 25

immediately, the cognitive faculty is controlled by the ethical faculty, in

ways and for reasons that Weaver elaborates in his statements on the rela-
tionship between dialectic and rhetoric. (This relationship is addressed in
detail in Chapter 5.) The ethical faculty also controls the aesthetic faculty;
for instance, Weaver contends that literature is not merely aesthetic but
sermonic, its aesthetic power delightful in itself but also a means by which
the work's "truth" is to be artfully presented.
All three of these faculties—the cognitive, the aesthetic, the ethical—
Weaver concludes, are controlled by the religious faculty, the faculty that
allows us our ability to create and to be aware of the metaphysical dream
(VO 84-86; see also LIS 204). To summarize, we might say that the reli-
gious faculty makes possible a cultural orientation—a context that allows us
to think coherently, to appreciate beauty, to create value systems; as such,
it transcends the other faculties. One might consider how Homer's Iliad or
Odyssey, for instance, engaged the Greeks' cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical
faculties as it taught, delighted, and persuaded them, respectively, or one
might consider how the Bible has done much the same for Western culture
over the last two millennia. Insofar as the teaching was coherent and un-
derstandable; insofar as the form and style and treatment of subject matter
were aesthetically pleasing; insofar as the persuasion was effective rather
than ineffective or simply ethically incoherent: so did these works present
to their readers important statements about their culture.
At this point in our analysis of Weaver's cultural theory, we should com-
plete his definition of human nature, begun with his attribution of the four
faculties. According to Weaver, we are a mixture of good and evil, unable
to perfect ourselves in this world: neither our faculties nor our existence as
physical, mortal beings in nature are such that we can arrive individually
or as a species at a state of blissful contentment in perfection. We are
imperfect beings, possessing a tendency to physical conflict, and our laws
as well as our nomoi serve to protect ourselves from ourselves.
A healthy culture must have this understanding of human nature and it
must have a conservatory emphasis as regards its fundamental beliefs. Un-
fortunately for Western civilization, Weaver maintains, this understanding
and emphasis was lost, and cultural stability was weakened.

MODERNISM AND ITS EFFECTS ON CULTURE

The weakening began, as mentioned in the beginning of this chapter,
with the exchange of logical realism for nominalism as the abiding philoso-
phy of Western culture. The next section elaborates on the distinctions
between these two world views as regards their visions of reality. Of im-
portance at this stage of the discussion is to say that a nominalist philoso-
phy, with its denial of universals, leads in Weaver's mind through a series
26 The Politics of Rhetoric

of logical, devolutionary steps to the modernist world view that is the hall-
mark of the twentieth century.
The medieval world view ordered the way its scholars, teachers, politi-
cians, and so forth looked at the world, but after the fourteenth century an
orientation based on the nominalist philosophy arose to replace it. As Weaver
says: "It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of
nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. . . . The
issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than,
and independent of, man. . . . The practical result of nominalist philoso-
phy is to banish the reality which is perceived in the intellect and to posit
as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change . . . we
are on the road to modern empiricism" (IHC 3). The road is described in
this way. Nature is no longer perceived as possessing an "unintelligible"
aspect, something partaking of the mystery of God, forever beyond human
understanding and approachable only through our religious faculty. Rather,
nature is a "rational mechanism" that, with study, offers up its secrets.
With the intellect focused upon the sensory world rather than upon what
the mind can apprehend independently, nature becomes something which,
when carefully observed and analyzed, rewards the researcher with re-
peated successes in the accumulation of new knowledge and inventions.
The refinement of the scientific method and the development of scientific
disciplines produce even more successes, and the scientific perspective de-
velops into "logical positivism."
The "road," however, does not end at modern empiricism. The early
successes of science were stunning not only to scientists but to the popu-
lace, and it is small wonder that more science would be done. Scientists
explained much that was previously unexplained by the current orienta-
tion, and the material benefits accruing from their work were appealing.
However, because of the pieties accorded to cultural orientations, the en-
trenched orientation was not easily replaced, and the prophets of the new
orientation, such as Galileo or Copernicus or, from the realm of literature,
Faust, had their difficulties. Weaver describes piety as "an attitude of rev-
erence or acceptance toward some overruling order or some deeply founded
institution which the mere individual is not to tamper with" (SE 196); it is
"an attitude toward things which are immeasurably larger and greater than
oneself, . . . the habit of veneration [that] supplies the whole force of so-
cial and political cohesion" (LP 143); it is "a warning voice that we must
think as mortals, that it is not for us either to know all or to control all. It
is a recognition of our own limitations and a cheerful acceptance of the
contingency of nature, which gives us the protective virtue of humility"
(STB 32). And piety also has in its favor the undeniable fact that the ori-
entation that it supports has been able to keep its adherents alive and func-
tioning in a hostile world (Burke, Permanence and Change 76-77).
However, the power and benefits of the new science proved so compel-
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 27

ling that they overcame the pieties supporting the old order; the scientistic
orientation came to be accepted and even preferred. Given the glittering
successes of science in its own field, society came to see even nonscientific
matters from within the frame of science and to imagine that even non-
scientific problems could be solved by science. Thus, useful methods or
attitudes found their way into areas for which they were not designed, and
the utility of science qua science was so pronounced that its method was
adapted for purposes far removed from the laboratory; in the realm of hu-
man affairs, "to think validly is to think scientifically" (LIS 203), and the
scientist's ways of thinking came to replace the Scholastic's in areas con-
cerning the goal of human life, the right course of human action, and the
right use of language.
Some results of the scientistic orientation's gaining validity as the domi-
nant cultural attitude are provided in the introduction to Ideas Have Con-
sequences. One result is that rationalism becomes the predominant philos-
ophy. Rationalism, in giving up a transcendent realm and relying on
empiricism, sees nature as a self-operating mechanism and human beings
as rational animals. This need to apply reason to evidence from nature
assumes materialism, which holds that we are explained totally by our en-
vironment. Materialism then gives a basis for such concepts as biological
necessity and psychological behaviorism, as well as for evolutionary theory.
In sum, the human race becomes totally immersed in matter and so, par-
adoxically, unfit to deal with the problems of matter. Seeing the world as
object rather than subject, as quantifiable mass rather than as qualitative
particulars, reduces human beings' actions to biochemical and other deter-
mined responses; and when human actions are reduced to a deterministic
level, human choice and ethical systems are rendered impossible: we are
abolished as beings who are qualitatively different from the rest of the ma-
terial world. Those familiar with C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man know
that this paradox is at the heart of his argument against modernism as well.5
The rise of the scientistic orientation caused problems also because it
weakened elements that make for social cohesion, specifically traditional
beliefs and the utility of reasoned discourse about these matters. In Mod-
ern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Wayne Booth remarks that mod-
ernism differentiates between "scientific" and "irrational" beliefs, between
those that can be proven empirically and those that cannot; the former take
on a force akin to natural law, while the latter are relegated to the realm
of pure motivism, where everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. As
Booth describes the society built upon the "modern dogma" of the primacy
of the scientific method, that which is concerned only with "mere" proba-
bility and the emotions loses favor; there is no middle ground between
irrationalist opinion and determined truth. The very hallmark of the sci-
entific method being systematic doubt, the loss of this middle ground
threatens cultural assumptions, since they have no basis in empirical veri-
28 The Politics of Rhetoric

fication. They can be ignored because of their lack of empirical verification,

and whereas residual piety as well as common sense offer some protection,
traditional values tend to be replaced with modernist ones.
Cultural assumptions are further threatened by science's contribution to
our definition of ourselves. The scientistic theory "denies in effect that there
is a nature of man," because we are still evolving; we were one thing be-
fore, something else now, and something different to come. We cannot
know either what we are intended to be or the nature of the Intender, if
there be one at all. The traditional theory, on the other hand, does not
depend upon science but upon "an image . . . a product of our total
awareness of what man has been, is now, and—the indispensable compo-
nent of the picture—what man ought to be" (LP 102-3). That is, distinct
from classical and Christian "tragic" views of our mixed nature and our
inevitable errors of thought and action, the modern view, informed by evo-
lutionary theory, scientific success, and certain tenets of social science, sees
us evolving toward mastery over physical nature as well as ultimately a
mastery over human nature. 6
The operative concept as regards this complex of threats might be "prog-
ress." Progress, Weaver contends, is not an end but only a means to a
stable, predefined end. Thus, putting forward modern achievements as evi-
dence of good in a culture requires first that we have determined what we
mean by progress and by good. Weaver asks society to consider whether
the progress it touts has strengthened or weakened cultural and social sta-
bility, our mental and emotional strength, our physical health, and the
health of our physical environment, as well as the health of our immortal
souls. If it has rather caused harm, then it is not "progress" in any mean-
ingful sense. As an example of this confusion, Weaver points out that in
1960 thirty-eight thousand Americans lost their lives in highway accidents
and many others were injured, sometimes severely. He points out that
these figures do not include deaths and injuries from other modes of me-
chanical transportation or the deaths and injuries caused by the automobile
in other modern Western countries. Thus: "A society . . . willing to sac-
rifice 40,000 lives a year and take care of several hundred thousand wounded
. . . certainly does not regard human life as infinitely precious. . . . It
would seem . . . that comfort and convenience, to which we should add a
love of mobility, have made themselves a new Moloch; and the idol de-
mands of his worshipers not only the annual toll of life but also a restless-
ness and superficiality of spirit" (VO 83-84).
Weaver thereby points out the lack of correlation between the amount
of comfort societal members enjoy and the achievements of that society's
civilization. The Golden Age of Greece, he maintains, brought into being
great philosophy, great literature and art, and a model of democratic gov-
ernment still powerful today, yet they "sat outdoors on stone to behold
their tragedies" and when "the Greek retired for the night it was not to a
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 29

beauty rest mattress; he wrapped himself up in his cloak and lay down on
the bench like a third-class railway passenger" (IHC 117). A worship of
comfort manifests only that the worshipers desire to live entirely in the
material world, not that the prosperity and subsequent comfort are to be
used for ends that are valuable in a Judeo-Christian ethical system. Leaving
aside that many people in our society often set aside comfort for what they
perceive to be more important—for instance, their responsibilities in times
of war—Weaver means to emphasize our need to consider whether a long
life span, free from illness and travail, is the only or even the primary goal
of life, or whether one might find it more important to live, for instance,
with honor and grace than with creature comforts. Certainly, says Weaver,
modernism's case is not made "until it has been proved that the substitu-
tion of covetousness for wantlessness, of an ascending spiral of desires for
a stable requirement of necessities, leads to the happier condition" (IHC
15). That is, progress can only be good if it produces good. Outside of some
vague sense of eternal physical comfort—itself an impossibility—identifying
any goal of life puts us into the realm of transcendentals once again, thereby
undermining the logic of the rationalist and materialist thrusts of modern-
ism.
According to Weaver, then, modernism's contention that we, our physi-
cal environment, and our society are continually progressing, continually
improving, is in error. Far from maintaining stability, far from a conserva-
tory approach, this modernist approach causes continual upheaval in the
political and social realms that threaten culture because it creates continual
change. Thus:

By the very nature of things, freedom depends upon an establishment of law and
custom. To be free a man has to know where things are to be found and in what
form, for these are the very instrumentalities of his choice. An order which derives
its impetus from a dynamism and which moves along on a collective urge cannot
present the alternative choices which a conservative order holds out. The responses
which are to be made are willed in advance, and progression keeps things in a
perpetual unsettlement. This state of affairs is most inimical to freedom where the
compelling force is a political one (SE 127).

The culture is also threatened in other ways. The increased emphasis on

technology produces occupational specialization, which means that people
have less in common with one another as regards their daily business. Hav-
ing little in common includes, of course, having little shared knowledge of,
belief in, and concern for the cultural traditions that bind society. Further,
since people in a technological society are more mobile, due not only to
improved transportation but also to transfers by their employers and their
searches for better jobs, they are less likely now than in the nineteenth
century to have much in common with their neighbors, because they are
30 The Politics of Rhetoric

urban planners or cardiologists while their neighbors are factory workers

or insurance salespersons, and because they grew up in the rural South
and their neighbors in urban New England or the Pacific Northwest. As
Weaver puts it, "this terrible mobility is fatal to mythical constructs. Myths
have always developed among a people occupying one region for a long
period of time and developing a strong provincial consciousness. . . . To
take away place is to take away the locus of myth" (VO 37-38).
In addition to such weakening of shared knowledge brought about by
increasing specialization and mobility, modernism undermines the tradi-
tional beliefs people and their neighbors might otherwise share. In "The
Spaciousness of Old Rhetoric," Weaver discusses how the "homogeneity of
belief" obtained in nineteenth-century American political address has dis-
appeared; because of the modern assumption that we do not accept what
we cannot empirically verify, we have moved "from the position that only
propositions are interesting because they alone make judgments . . . to a
position in which only evidence is interesting because it alone is uncontam-
inated by propositions" (ER 172). This distinction is an important one in
analyzing culture, for when a culture replaces a focus on propositions with
a focus on evidence, it has lost its direction. There exists in modernism a
lack of concern for the religious faculty as Weaver defines it, which means
that while "evidence" can be used to teach, delight, and persuade, t h e r e
is no social consensus regarding what evidence ought to b e considered and
what ends for the use of that evidence ought to be thought worthwhile. "It
is a dangerous thing," Weaver says, "to develop means without reference
to rational ends, because if you do, the means may condition the e n d s . "
H e concludes aphoristically: "A great flowering of means may even be a
cover-up for a failure of purpose" (TW 514). Once a culture's spiritual re-
sources are gone, there remains no power of self-restraint for the drive for
technological progress.
As the religious faculty is the guarantor for the metaphysical dream, the
importance of "revealed" knowledge, of religion, of a cultural dream, is
distinct from and superior to what is learned through investigation and
reasoning. People cannot have a peaceful and productive life if the postu-
lates for their daily acts are continually revised to fit the most recent ad-
vancements in scientific knowledge (SE 142). Furthermore, while examin-
ing religio-cultural beliefs may result in a valuable ethical philosophy, relying
on the cognitive faculty separated from the religious cannot produce the
binding power of the old creed (SE 136-37). 7 More often, discarding the
old my thos in the pursuit of modernism leaves society without the coherent
philosophy or ethical structure Weaver requires. To illustrate the problem
that develops when the unifying cultural code is discarded, we offer an
anecdote concerning modernism's effect on journalism.
While driving to a professional conference a while ago, one of us was
listening to the news on a commercial radio station. As with most such
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 31

newscasts, the time allotted was minimal and the reporting was superficial.
Listeners learned that the Pentagon was paying exorbitant prices for coffee
makers to go on air force jets and had paid $229 for otherwise unremarka-
ble rubber washers. The whole report took no more than fifteen seconds,
and no explanation or evaluation was offered; it was followed by a report of
a fire in a city some one thousand miles distant in which a number of
people were killed, but again there was no explanation of the data, no
evaluation of its importance to the lives of listeners or society, no reason at
all for why it was reported other than it happened. The last item of news
provided listeners with information "just in from the Nepal News Agency,"
a report on "marauding pachyderms" who killed a number of people and
trampled two houses. The newscaster sounded bemused, and as he came
to the end of the report the disc jockey broke in, laughing, and asked if
the news bureau would be receiving more such stories. Apparently this
information, although factual, was so foreign to their presuppositions about
the world that it seemed like a slapstick sketch in a Hollywood comedy. As
the news show ended, the two men were still chuckling.
Such "news" items are the stuff of newscasts because each "contributes
to that informing of the public which journalists] acknowledge as their
duty" (ER 178). Generally, the news consists of material from all over the
world, presented according to the standard journalistic convention of "ob-
jective reporting," and providing vivid illustrations and details about actual
events. If a producer was asked why a particular illustration was given air
time, the questioner would most likely be met with incomprehension. T. S.
Eliot notes that "many people act upon the assumption that the mere ac-
cumulation of 'experiences' . . . is—like the accumulation of money—valu-
able in itself" (After Strange Gods 37). And, as Weaver notes, "the lavish
use of detail" is seen as "a visual aid to education, and therefore an in-
creased illustration contributes to that informing of the public which [news-
people] acknowledge as their duty." But, by and large, the "illustrations
are vivid rather than meaningful or communicative" (ER 179), with their
principle of selection being not education but shock value.
That is, the material of journalism is oftentimes profoundly unimportant
to those who hear it. After all, a resident of rural South Carolina, Manhat-
tan, or anyplace else in the United States has little immediate and practical
need to know that Nepalese villagers have been crushed by elephants. De-
scriptions of mayhem can be vivid, but the educative function contained in
the grisly details of disconnected events from around the world is limited
in the extreme. The information is further irrelevant because it includes no
ethical valuations. The modernist injunction for journalistic objectivity ex-
plicitly rules out of court not only editorializing but also any legitimatizing
principle for selecting which pieces of news are reported and which are
not. It rules out, in fact, even the educative function itself, since an objec-
tive reporter, by definition as well as by the principles of the profession,
32 The Politics of Rhetoric

can have no particular agenda by which he or she would teach. It means,

then, that while there may be a good deal of vivid particulars to report, no
good reason is offered to report any of them. 8
The vivid particulars consist of intrusive detail, but the details are of
ideas that are never taken up and that "the average man does not care to
reflect upon, especially under the conditions of newspaper reporting" (ER
178-79). To argue, as Weaver says journalists sometimes do, that sensa-
tionalist journalism presents the raw stuff of life and that journalists have
the responsibility to leave nobody undeceived about the real nature of the
world, simply begs the question; it is the "raw stuff of life" that is exactly
what civilized people want and need to have refined (IHC 29). Since our
society's philosophy is revealed by what our public discourse shows to be
pertinent, modern journalism reveals that our society has adopted a philos-
ophy of instrumentalism and materialism (ER 182). Thus, to the extent that
journalism takes its purpose to be merely the objective reporting of shock-
ing events from around the world, it exhibits the deleterious effects of our
modern loss of a central core of beliefs and values; it illustrates that "sickly
metaphysical dream" that has replaced traditional culture, sickly enough to
enable people to expend news time on pathetic stories of people far away
and to laugh at their misfortunes, and to expend this time to no educative
end.
In an argument supporting Weaver's position, Jacques Ellul asserts that
popular media provide the basis for our communal identifications. Because
of specialization and other fragmenting aspects of modernism, we need a
sense of commonality all the more, which advertisers and the mass media
are happy to provide. Thus, as Weaver also states in "The Great Stereop-
ticon," the social consequences of deindividuation are the creation of de-
pendencies on the media for information that forms our ever-changing at-
titudes, and the creation of "mass man" and a society with homogeneous
opinions, predilections, consumptive habits, and the like (IHC 69-100).
While a thoughtful, educated person might see and try to resist attempts
at homogenization, our social environment is now fundamentally different
from that of the previous century: people then were not exposed to the
constant intrusion of the media into those attempts at meditation and con-
templation best carried out in silence. Ellul's belief, and Weaver's, is that
the continual barrage of the voices and sounds of advertising and the pop-
ular media help to mold and remold our attitudes and orientations. 9 On
another automobile trip, one of us heard a radio station advertise that its
music would "make the work day fly by." Weaver might well wonder about
the care and productivity of employees with their attention not on their
work but on the "best hits of yesterday and today," and he might also
wonder about the messages being absorbed by the uncritical listeners. 10
Weaver provides other illustrations besides journalism of the effects
modernism has had on traditional Western culture. He discusses the changing
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 3

status and role of women, changes in our educational system, and the mil-
itary mind's exchange of the war of limited objectives for the concept of
total war. We will turn to these topics in the next chapter. It is important
first to clarify the most important difference between traditional culture
and modernism, the difference that stands behind and gives impetus to
these many problems Weaver sees in twentieth-century society. We speak
of the conflict between realism and relativism as foundational philosophies
for culture.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN REALISM AND RELATIVISM

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Weaver contends that realism is
the philosophy of the traditional culture that existed through the medieval
ages, whereas nominalism, in the form of relativism, is the philosophy of
modernism. Realism, in Weaver's understanding, maintains the existence
of a transcendental realm, which provides "a structure of reality indepen-
dent of [our] own will and desires" (LP 158) and "a source of truth higher
than, and independent of, man" (IHC 3). Included in this realm are uni-
versals, which exist a priori and ante res, and, further, which are stable,
eternal, and independent of humankind and the physical world. As Weaver
recounts the history of the West, this Platonic realm of the universal serves
as the grounding for belief in a Judeo-Christian God, and the various proofs
for the existence of God developed by Church fathers all depend upon this
philosophical stance.
The universals are perceived to be more than conventions of the mind
in that they would exist even if humanity ceased to exist or never existed.
As examples, right triangularity is said to have existed even before the
invention of geometry, just as the mathematical formulation of the law of
gravity did not create this natural phenomenon but merely explained it.
Thus, universals are not created by a human thinker but rather discovered.
As Weaver says, "I suspect that this is evidence supporting the doctrine of
knowledge by recollection taught by Plato and the philosophers of the East"
(IHC 157); the Church's thinkers would say not that we previously existed
in Plato's metaphysical heaven and in that place gained our intuitive aware-
ness of the universals but rather that the universals exist in the mind of
God and are vouchsafed to us through God. This line of reasoning applies
not only for the truths of the physical world but also for values and for
ethics. For instance, the ideal of justice exists at a transcendental level
separate from this world; worldly justice, no matter how refined and prac-
ticed, never rises to the level of ideal justice, but gains value by its simi-
larity to ideal justice. This stability of values provides for Weaver the goal
for human reflection and activity, including rhetorical activity: the pursuit
of and adherence to the transcendental truth.
Nominalism, on the other hand, maintains that universals have no objec-
34 The Politics of Rhetoric

tive existence and validity, that they are merely intellectual and linguistic
conventions; all that exists are physical objects and our recollected experi-
ences and analyses of them. This world view shifts the focus of attention
from a transcendent principle (why the world was made) to a physical one
(how the world works), from philosophy and religion to science. It ignores
as an illusion the transcendent realm, leaving the material realm as the
sole context for human thought and action. Accordingly, nominalism is linked
to "a radical empiricism in which the evidential base for all knowledge is
direct experience of individual things and particular events" (Edwards, vol.
8, 307). This passage supports the contention Weaver makes that nominal-
ism provided the impetus for Western society's development of science; as
he puts it, "With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole
orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern em-
piricism" (IHC 3). As he continues, this turn ultimately makes relativism
the only reasonable epistemological stance. According to Weaver, relativ-
ism "denies outright that there are any absolute truths, any fixed princi-
ples, or any standards beyond what one may consider his convenience. A
theory is true only relative to the point of view of the individual, or to the
time in which it is asserted, or to the circumstances which prevail at the
moment. Truth is forever contingent and evolving, which means, of course,
that you can never lay hands on it" (RC 4).
Weaver's distinctions between the philosophical positions of realism and
relativism are crucial for the establishment of his ideal culture. He main-
tains the validity of realism, but it is not just his belief in eternal, unchang-
ing, absolute truths that make commentators so often identify Weaver as a
Platonist. It is also his insistence on claiming this realm as the source of
human values and the determinant of right actions. Now, few people argue
that there is no objective reality, at least when talking about the physical
world. Those who do so argue take a position that Daniel Royer identifies
as "subjective idealism," a position that denies the objective existence of
things known and reduces reality to appearance (293). Royer goes on to say
that extreme theories of epistemic rhetoric and social constructionist phi-
losophy partake of this erroneous view. Kenneth Burke offers a common-
sensical objection to this view in his discussion of "recalcitrance," saying
that reasonable people are not going to believe that they can safely jump
out of the window on the upper floor of a tall building, unless they have
something like a parachute (Permanence and Change 255-56). The laws of
objective reality, in this case the law of gravity, are not relative to the
leaper's point of view.
The difficulties for reasonable people do not arise when considering
whether the law of gravity exists, or whether a triangle will always contain
three angles that total 180 degrees; they arise when they look to the realm
of transcendentals for guidance in matters of value. Here the burden is on
the side of the realists. Royer notes an erroneous, dogmatic position here
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 35

as well, which h e calls "direct realism"; it denies the participation of h u m a n

knowers in the creation of reality and reduces appearance to reality (293).
The problem is to find some position between these two extreme dog-
mas. O n e approach is made by C. Jack Orr, who distinguishes between
two social constructionist theories of reality and truth, which he calls "in-
tersubjectivism" and "critical rationalism." The first, like Royer's subjective
idealism, posits that reality and truth are superfluous for the pursuit of
knowledge and in fact denies an objective reality that exists apart from the
mind. It is important to say that those who deny the existence of universals
are in some logical trouble, as both Orr and Weaver contend. O n e reason,
and perhaps the strongest, is that if one posits that reality or truth results
only from a specific way of knowing, then competing theories of either
cannot be criticized—including, to mention Orr's example and a particu-
larly problematic one for intersubjectivists, the mechanistic objectivism of
logical positivism. Weaver states that an individual who need not "refer his
action to the external frame of obligation" but only relies on his own beliefs
and sense of rights "cannot be disciplined on the theoretical level" (IHC
70). The result in practical terms, Weaver continues, is that he must be
disciplined by society but that society's power must logically be perceived
not as derived from a transcendent realm but only of human origin itself—
and therefore, insofar as it limits the individual, is brutal. That is, intersub-
jectivism does not differentiate between a belief in objective reality and a
belief in objectivism; it does not distinguish between absolute truth as an
ideal that we can never attain and a claim that the truth can b e known.
However, intersubjectivism is not the only way to understand social con-
structionist philosophy. In order to believe that one cannot d e t e r m i n e with
certainty reality and truth, one need not also believe that universals them-
selves do not exist. Critical rationalism, according to Orr, maintains the
following tenets: that while objective truth cannot be consistently denied,
knowledge is nonetheless uncertain; that knowledge claims d e p e n d on the
framework of the claimant; that socially constructed frames of reference are
rational if held self-reflectively and contingently and irrational if not; and
that all constructions of reality must be subject to criticism, which is to say
that criticism is a persistent aim of inquiry and not a prelude to certitude.
Weaver holds a position like this; according to Walter H. Beale, he main-
tains "the commonsense, fallibility-based view that every coherent con-
struction of reality must necessarily fall short of grasping the whole truth
of things, is inevitably contaminated with self-projections and self-decep-
tions, and will inevitably throw large chunks of reality into shadows" (633).
This position also allows for the concept of nomos as an analogue to nat-
ural law. Nomos requires not the prophetic voice of the priest or the hyp-
notizing voice of the bard, who present the truth to a mesmerized audi-
ence; rather, it requires a speaker and an audience both involved in defining
knowledge and deciding upon action (Jarratt 60). These definitions and de-
36 The Politics of Rhetoric

cisions are subject to the perceptions of the participants as well as to his-

torical and geographic contexts. Susan C. Jarratt, in her discussion of no-
moi, believes that one need not have a concept of absolute good in order
to participate in and resolve questions of ethics. If, however, ethical deci-
sions are determined solely by societal customs, then the ground on which
one looks for change, or even holds that one's different position is itself
enough reason to look for change, does not exist. Weaver, and the critical
rationalist position, hold that absolutes do exist, in fact that they give a
ground for questioning the customs of a society, customs that may have
become ethically suspect even though not seen or accepted as such by
societal members.
That is, Weaver, following Plato, tries to get beyond the dogmatism of
the direct realists without falling into the problems of the subjective ideal-
ists. Weaver accepts that the transcendental realm exists but, as does Plato,
admits that it is beyond the ability of anyone to know that realm with
certainty. Beale argues that, for Weaver, reality "is not something that
exists as an independent material substance to which a properly controlled
use of language has direct access. Though it may not exist independently
of human consciousness, it does exist independently of human will and
subjectivity, and the right use of language may provide a responsible and
creditable apprehension of it" (631). Royer takes much the same tack by
approving the "neorealism" of Alfred North Whitehead and Sean Sayers as
the solution, both of whom posit "a reality that is not disjunct but is yet
neither merely physical (phenomenal) nor merely mental (noumenal)"; they
posit the existence of an objective material world that is knowable by hu-
man consciousness (Royer 290-91). While it is not within the scope of this
book to address Whitehead's "organism" or any other variant of neorealism,
it is important to see that such a position supports Weaver's theoretical
position even as it undermines his more overtly political attacks on the
relativism he abhors in modern society.
All this is to say that, despite Weaver's concern that denying realism
leads to the "relativism of 'man the measure of all things' " (IHC 4), in his
theoretical statements he accepts something much like Protagoras's posi-
tion. The reasons for this seeming contradiction in Weaver's position are
complex, bound up with his views of cultural autonomy as well as his views
on ontology. To support his position on the origin and nature of cultures
he must place the culture's group into something like Burke's cultural ori-
entation and must assert that they view their world through what Burke
calls a "terministic screen" (Language as Symbolic Action 44-62). That is,
while asserting the existence of absolutes Weaver also says that "different
persons have . . . different orientations towards values. . . . Variations
appearing in these forms do not mean simply that one man is right and
another wrong; they mean that the persons in question are responding ac-
cording to their different powers to apprehend an order in reality." He
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 3

goes further in this passage to say that "the reason for not only permitting
but encouraging individualism is that each person is individually related
toward the source of ethical impulse and should be allowed to express his
special capacity for that relation" (LP 60-61). H Weaver is not shy about
asserting some people's scant capacities, some people's suspect impulses,
some people's flawed perspectives; however, he also admits that there is
"no ready position from which one can tell the fellow members of his cul-
ture that they are guilty of perverseness" and even less status for making
such a claim about people of other cultures (VO 74). It is not clear how one
identifies those with large capacities, pure impulses, and accurate perspec-
tives, nor is it clear whether one can with any assurance make these iden-
tifications, regardless of whether or not that person's cultural members will
agree.
To clarify: Addressing himself to the Phaedrus, Weaver reminds us that
Plato saw writing as at best a mixed blessing; in the dialogue's closing dis-
cussion, Socrates is made to say that written discourse cannot contain the
truth because "it has 'no reticences or proprieties toward different classes
of persons' " (IHC 95). For Plato as for Weaver, while the truth leaps up
"like a flame" between people engaged in oral discourse, it is "never wholly
captured by men even in animated discourse and in its purest form, cer-
tainly, never brought to paper" (IHC 95-96). As Weaver says, "To know
an absolute absolutely is something that is not given to men." He goes
further, saying that "in this concrete world the application of an absolute
principle has to be tempered by the diversity of fact and circumstance. To
imagine oneself able to proceed absolutely on an absolute principle is the
mark of a madman" (RC 11-12). Leaving aside Weaver's silence about the
means by which an absolute principle is identified, it seems necessary to
assume on the basis of this passage that the person making the application
is going to be the "measure" of how and in what ways diversities of fact
and circumstance will temper the application of the absolute principles.
Weaver does say that one must believe in absolute principles, that rela-
tivism "is a matter of relevance to the moment and to the situation" (RC
12). We assume that he is arguing against a kind of situation ethics—or lack
of ethics—that would be applied in particular instances without thought for
any principle other than immediate personal advantage. There are people
who operate in this way, and undoubtedly there are some who have some
power in the world. But once one accepts that the application of absolutes
must be adjusted for facts and situations, one has moved the issue to qual-
itatively different grounds, and the difficult task is the determination of
what constitutes an acceptable or unacceptable adjustment—not the deter-
mination that an adjustment has been made. It seems to us that critical
rationalism as Orr describes it makes sense of a good deal of Weaver's
position and brings him into agreement, especially in such statements as
the one quoted above from Life without Prejudice (60-61), with Chaim
38 The Politics of Rhetoric

Perelman's view of the state's responsibility to respect different individuals

and groups, not to suppress the liberties of individuals but only to moder-
ate dangerous excesses ("Philosophy of Pluralism" 67). In Weaver's terms,
"people of cultivation and intellectual perceptiveness are quickest to admit
a law of Tightness in ways of living different from their own; they have
mastered the principle that being has a right qua being" (IHC 175). With
such sentiments, Weaver allows for a cultural pluralism, albeit eschewing
cultural relativism.
Ultimately, insofar as Weaver's position can be described as critical ratio-
nalism, with its concomitant acceptance of pluralism, it can be said that he
accepts—consciously or not—the necessary corollary to this position: that
particular perspectives are not objective presentations of reality, nor are
they merely subjective. Thus, theoretically at least, Weaver accepts the
impossibility of possessing more than a partial—that is, an incomplete as
well as a prejudiced—world view; he accepts that a world view will be
necessarily ideological. In fact, in his discussion of positive and dialectical
terms, he says of the latter that "they take their meaning from the world
of idea and action. They are words for essences and principles, and their
meaning is reached not through sensory perception, but through the logical
processes of definition, inclusion, exclusion, and implication. Since their
meaning depends on a concatenation of ideas, what they signify cannot be
divorced from the ideological position of the user as revealed by the gen-
eral context of his discourse" (LIS 145). He also contends that the meaning
of a word "will depend upon the time and place in which it is used and the
point of view of the user" (LIS 117). Thus, not only is reality ideological
but its construction is established and maintained by means of language.
(How language helps to create and maintain an ideology is discussed in
Chapters 4 and 5.)
Putting this discussion into the context of most importance to Weaver,
we can say that the modernist may be able to tell the conservative that the
latter "cannot show any acceptable source of authority for what you say is
the nature and image of man" (LP 103). However, the conservative is cor-
rect to respond that the modernist provides no vision or intuition of what
man is, and since no grounds exist for saying how we should behave, ethics
and politics go out the window—a situation that is simply intolerable for
conservative and modernist alike. Further, the conservative can point to
historical evidence and to what Booth calls the "social test of truth," to
what the Sophists called the nomoi, and to what Weaver sees as the cul-
tural buttresses for harmonious social life and action, as worth something
in the establishment of these matters.
Weaver also responds to modernists who say about his desire for the
principles and values of the traditional culture that "you can't turn back the
clock"; some things do not have temporal status, Weaver responds, and so
do not need to change with the passing of time. As regards the attempt to
 Cultural Theory, Part 1 39

stay the march of material progress, modernists contend that we cannot

stop the inevitable march of events, that history is self-determining. Weaver
replies that we need not allow ourselves to b e "ground u n d e r by the iron
march of e v e n t s " (LP 118). Of course we cannot stop time, but the point
may b e taken that while it is hard to change our way of life as radically as
we would n e e d to change it to get away from the problems that modernism
and its technological component have caused us, such a contention does
not deny that we may, with enough adherence to principle and force of
will, stop the march of material progress. 1 2
The r e q u i r e m e n t of adherence to principle, however, can become a two-
edged sword, forcing a person to accept defeat because h e or she is un-
willing to compromise to fight what are perceived as unfair tactics. Such is
the failure Weaver attributes to the southern cause in the Civil War—a
noble failure, h e argues, but a failure nonetheless. F u r t h e r m o r e , we are
contending that Weaver allows, theoretically, for the adjusting of principles
to fit a more refined awareness of the transcendental truths; it seems, though,
that he at times cannot make the adjustment, cannot adjust his applied
rhetoric to his own principles. Either that, or, as we will suggest later, his
truths allow the use of certain means that others would find unethical—an
act that appears to others as trampling certain principles to uphold others.
The third chapter explores Weaver's closer description of the principles
that a society should uphold. These principles inform the metaphysical dream
that Weaver says is as near the ideal as we in the United States have come:
the society of the antebellum South. Weaver's explication of the South is
crucial to understanding his rhetorical theory. First we describe his analy-
sis and defense of southern society; then we critique them. T h e critique
attempts to illustrate how Weaver countermands his "ultimate" principle,
to cherish life and the world, in pursuing principles in the "dialectical realm."
T h e results, unfortunately, are some inhumane positions and actions.

NOTES
1. Similar to Carl Jung's position that poets access the collective unconscious of
the race, Weaver's position is that poets access the collective metaphysical dream
of their culture. We take up this point in Chapter 4.
2. In Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Wayne Booth makes quite
the same request, asking that, instead of withholding agreement pending proof, we
grant agreement pending disproof; he calls this strategy the "social test of truth"
(101).
3. The social problems that would result with this increase in premeditated
murder—by women, their doctors, and their doctors' staff—might be big enough
to keep Roe v. Wade intact. Declaring abortions illegal yet meting out no appro-
priate punishment to the criminals might well further erode citizens' respect for
the logic and practice of law. We discuss complications regarding this topic in Chap-
ter 9.
40 The Politics of Rhetoric

4. The next chapter considers the hierarchy of the antebellum American South,
in which the gentleman class had prestige without necessarily exhibiting the wis-
dom and justice that should be its prerequisite.
5. Despite changes since Weaver's time both in scientific disciplines and in
society's attitude toward them, the attitude that worried him is not dead. A review
of Paul Davies's The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World, in
The New York Times Book Review (February 23, 1992), quotes Davies: "The power
of science to explain things is so dazzling I found it easy to believe that, given the
resources, all the secrets of the universe might be revealed'' (12). Davies goes on
to assert that "given the laws of physics, the universe can create itself." The re-
viewer also cites the ending of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which
takes a similar position.
6. In the political realm Weaver sternly opposes the application of social science
in programs of social engineering, a notion that gained currency in the 1930s and
suggests Roosevelt's "liberal'' New Deal.
7. This point is made by T. S. Eliot in "The Humanism of Irving Babbitt" (Se-
lected Essays) and by Carl G. Jung in "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious."
8. In the first chapter of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the
Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue that owners of mass
media have an agenda, although one not readily apparent to the public or even to
many media workers. Ben H. Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly concurs with this
position.
9. Neil Postman notes that television's use of visual images heightens the me-
dia's ability to gain uncritical acceptance (Conscientious Objections 72-81). His dis-
cussion of television's effect on culture (103-15) logically extends Weaver's con-
cerns.
10. In a complementary argument, T. S. Eliot claims in "Religion and Litera-
ture" (Selected Essays) that the uncritical assumption of modern literature serves
to reform readers' orientations along lines detrimental to their existence here and
hereafter.
11. Here Weaver agrees again with Plato, who says that some people better
remember truth and had seen more truth before their souls inhabited their bodies.
Thus, as Plato says in the Phaedrus, "The one which has seen the most Reality shall
at birth enter the seeker of wisdom" (31).
12. Regarding Weaver's desire to "turn back the clock," we are reminded of
H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, in which the protagonist confronts a future that
makes him literally want to turn back the clock. Our society's embrace of techno-
logical, social, and political "progress" has brought with it a degradation of the
physical, social, and political environments that should make all reasonable people,
Weaver believes, consider the value of "turning back the clock."
 3
Cultural Theory, Part 2

WEAVER'S ANTEBELLUM SOUTH

We have tried to show how Weaver's theoretical view of culture supports
a critical rationalist position, a view that culture is a socially constructed,
ideological manifestation that may have affinities with a vaguely or subcon-
sciously intuited transcendent realm but that finally is only a representation
of that realm. The antebellum South provides for Weaver a close approxi-
mation of that realm, and, despite its poor reputation and historical treat-
ment over the last century, offers much to a society embroiled in the prob-
lems visited by modernism. It is an example of "the last non-materialist
civilization in the Western world"; its promise as well as its achievement
"offers a challenge . . . to save the human spirit by re-creating a non-
materialist society. Only this can rescue us from a future of nihilism, urged
on by the demoniacal force of technology and by our own moral defeatism"
(STB 391). For all its flaws, and Weaver admits that they exist, the ante-
bellum South is presented as a culture to be emulated.
The southern attributes of mind, Weaver contends, include an attitude
of veneration for nature as a creation of God and not as something to be
conquered; a dislike of analysis, especially in the sciences and other spe-
cialized activities; and a profound conservatism, including stability of reli-
gious and political opinions, a dislike of centralized government and the
fruits of industrialism (including the intellectual fruit of progressivism), and
an abiding attachment to one's physical and cultural locale (see SE 220-28,
236). These attributes come out of what Weaver sees as the fourfold root
of southern antebellum culture, which he takes up at length in the first
chapter of The Southern Tradition at Bay.
42 The Politics of Rhetoric

The first root was the establishment and maintenance of a feudal theory
of society. Feudalism provided the hierarchical structure necessary for what
Weaver claims was a harmonious fraternity among all m e m b e r s of the cul-
tural group, and it also provided a strong sense of place as regards the
people's physical and social environments; both helped to produce respect
and loyalty among m e m b e r s rather than envy and hatred (see I H C 43 and
STB 49). The feudal system also provided, continues Weaver, a stable and
acceptable economic system in which everyone was given a useful skill and
a place in which this skill could be practiced and appreciated. The second
root of southern culture was its code of chivalry, a means by which human-
ity's inherently violent nature could b e kept from threatening cultural sta-
bility, a means to channel violence and, if not harmlessly dissipate it, at
least keep it under control. The third cultural root of the South was the
gentleman class. The gentleman was not trained in specialized skills but
rather was educated in the general humanities; the focus of his education—
and the closest thing to a specialization in this education—was leadership
in statecraft and warfare. This class was an elite group whose cultural rea-
son for existence was to provide the apex to the hierarchy of the feudal
structure and so to provide the locus of power, privilege, and responsibil-
ity. Its importance was not in what its members could do but in who they
were (STB 81)—a strong statement in support of a hereditary aristocracy as
opposed to an aristocracy based on ability.
The fourth root of southern culture was its religiousness. W e have al-
ready touched on the importance of religion in maintaining cultural stabil-
ity; in his description of the South, Weaver clearly indicates how this tra-
ditional society, holding to philosophical realism rather than scientistic
relativism, accepted that a certain portion of life must remain inscrutable,
accepted that religion met this need, and accepted that it was thereby given
force in the establishing and enforcing of rules, dictates of conscience, and
ethical propriety. Religion was an unquestioned support of the culture (SE
135), a "great conservative agent and a bulwark of those institutions which
served [the gentleman]'' (STB 104-5). That is, it functioned much as the
established Roman Catholic Church traditionally has functioned in Central
American countries, keeping established orders in place and providing ra-
tionales for the establishments' maintenance of power and the lower classes'
submission to that power.

A CRITIQUE OF THE ROOTS OF SOUTHERN CULTURE

Despite Weaver's arguments for the value of antebellum southern cul-
ture, a critique of its fourfold root exposes shortcomings of some magni-
tude. First, Weaver's contention that the feudal system results in societal
m e m b e r s ' knowing their place—no matter what that place may be—and
consenting to live and work in harmony with the other classes, is on its
 Cultural Theory, Part

face suspect. Ideological propaganda can persuade people to believe that

their existence as serfs or slaves is in their best interest in this world as
well as in some heaven to come, yet Weaver does state, in another context
but applicable here, that it is moral solipsism to hold a belief in the self-
justification of any cultural expression (VO 76). Even if cultural leaders are
able to convince an enthralled class that they should love their status, and
even if cultural nomoi develop to accept, for instance, the establishment of
slavery, a doctor of culture may still reasonably assume that slavery is wrong
according to natural law and so is wrong for the culture. (As mentioned in
the previous chapter, Justice Clarence Thomas, although no doctor of cul-
ture, takes this position.) Weaver himself belonged to a class that, while
not in thrall, lacked in the antebellum South much opportunity for a uni-
versity education.
Furthermore, although society's elite might not seriously consider his-
tories written by members of the lower classes that express social and cul-
tural discontent, and although Weaver may not have been aware of many
such histories, there are slaves' narratives that indicate a profound dissat-
isfaction with their lot. Frederick Douglass's Narrative certainly was ava
able to Weaver; so was the 1946 dissertation by Marion W. Starling, "The
Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History"; and so was the autobio-
graphical writing of Harriet Brent Jacobs (Linda Brent), Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl, which provides ample reasons for a profound dissatis-
faction with her lot. l As with claims of scholars attempting to expand the
literary canon to include women writers of past centuries, a dearth of his-
tories written by people who were systematically denied public voice does
not mean that the canonical history accurately reflects those times. How-
ever, Weaver does come uncomfortably close to assuming just such a weak
position when he offers as evidence for the worth of the feudal system
Goethe's description of German life, a description that showed a hierarchi-
cal social order without dissension among its various classes. After quoting
at length from Goethe's Poetry and Truth from My Life, Weaver remarks:
"The classes thrived in mutual dependence, and the principle of distinc-
tion, far from being felt as invidious, was the cement that held the whole
together. One senses the kind of satisfaction that was felt in seeing different
kinds of people to the right and left of one and, since it is in the nature of
things, above and below. Not to be overlooked is the fact that the lowest'
class often finds satisfaction in knowing itself 'superior' to other classes in
certain respects—in hardihood, in industry, or in religiousness'' (VO 17).
Anyone evaluating these observations should remember that Goethe's at-
tention was not on the lower classes or women but only on upper- and
middle-class men—on the noblemen, secure in their exclusive and time-
honored privileges, and on the burghers, who, Goethe claimed, felt it be-
neath their dignity to pretend to the noble's level. Nor should one fail to
consider Goethe's interest in maintaining a status quo beneficial to himself.
44 The Politics of Rhetoric

He need not be seen as a wicked social commentator crassly representing

his culture to his own advantage; he could rather be seen merely as one
comfortable in and therefore persuaded of the belief that his world view is
not ideological but objectively real. Finally, one might also remember that
Goethe's Germany did not remain harmonious and that the seeds of its
disharmony were somehow within the very feudal system that was offered
as a benefit to the society. Goethe's observations support the adage that
history, including cultural history, is written by those who have won, and
they support the truism that the victors who have created the cultural ori-
entation come to believe that everyone is as pleased about the victory as
are they.
In articulating the argument for slavery, an important component of the
social and economic system of feudalism, Weaver, referring to a comment
by Albert Taylor Bledsoe, says, "The right to freedom is predicated upon
the ability to use it, and since the negro was without experience in the
conduct of a civilized state, the law could abridge his freedom as it does
that of children and defectives'' (SE 150). That is, leaders can refuse to
prepare a people for their duties as citizens and thereby retain the right to
deny these people their place as free citizens in the society. What might
have appeared to an antebellum southerner as conventional wisdom ought
not to receive so easy a verdict from modern readers, who should detect
its self-serving captiousness. It is also untenable to argue, as Weaver does,
that providing for each slave a specific job on the plantation was "an im-
portant factor in his self-respect" (STB 52), or to argue that slavery bene-
fited the slaves because it enforced "habits of discipline and industry" (STB
167). Self-respect is not developed by a system that tells individuals they
are not human, and it is debatable that what is most desirable to develop
in human beings is discipline rather than se/f-discipline—that is, forced
accession to external control instead of thoughtful self-control. It is also
debatable whether industry is developed within a person through forced
labor, especially when proceeds of the labor are taken from the worker and
given to a relatively idle overlord.
However, Weaver attempts to support these observations by citing a
number of commentators on the southern condition, including Frances Butler
Leigh, who complains of primitive and indolent freed slaves who yearned
for nothing more than "plenty to eat and unlimited idleness" (STB 263).
Additionally, in his lecture notes on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin, which he used at the University of Chicago, Weaver remarks that
the accounts northerners offered about the southern slave "seldom report
that he was by nature very industrious or provident, that he preferred
monogamy to other forms of marriage or that he had a deeper understand-
ing of the Christian mysteries than the white people from whom he learned
his religion. Nor is there any evidence in the documents I have studied
that family ties were especially strong." Weaver continues by citing the
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 4

emancipated slave's poor performance in education and his propensity for

criminal behavior, finishing with the observation that "he has been an ami-
able, docile, and frequently bewildered and confused member of the higher
civilization into which he was unfortunately thrust. There is pathos in that
situation, but there is no reason for inverting the real order of things, as
Mrs. Stowe did in her ideological novel" (UTC 317-18).
Such a characterization of the African-American population is gross ster-
eotyping, and a careful and thoughtful doctor of culture would consider
laying at least some of the blame for any poor record that emancipated
slaves may have at the feet of the system under which they were held in
thrall. A feudal structure undermines self-motivation, and it undermines
respect for the authority and the government that had perpetuated slavery.
If African-Americans of the twentieth century are disproportionately incar-
cerated and score lower on the Scholastic Aptitude Test than white Amer-
icans, perhaps the reason is that the culture's ideology has not yet allowed
the freed slaves an equal place in the society. Before one blames the vic-
tims of such discrimination, it seems fair to blame a society that does not
provide reasonable opportunities for education or reasonable hope for
meaningful and gainful employment, a society with a documented record
of prejudicial legal treatment on the basis of skin color.
Furthermore, a doctor of culture would consider more closely the charges
leveled at the black race: They are indolent and improvident; they have
high divorce rates and weak family ties; they have poor educational records
and high crime rates; they are "frequently bewildered and confused mem-
bers" of the civilization they inhabit. The antebellum southern society de-
stroyed African-Americans' culture, first by taking them from their indige-
nous culture, then through treatment that included sexual harassment, forced
breeding, and family separation; the denial of any education beyond voca-
tional training immediately useful to their owners; and the systematic dis-
ruption, through threats, punishments, and relocations, of any attempts to
develop cultural identity. Since Weaver also argues forcefully that a good
deal of the modern "white" world's problems are the result of a weakened
culture, it seems reasonable to compare the plight of African-Americans
with the plight of modern people at large. The spoiled child syndrome of
which Weaver speaks charges the dominant culture with indolence and
improvidence; he claims that the dominant culture's divorce rates and fam-
ily problems result from our fateful turn to modernism and, specifically,
the modernist idea of equal rights for women; he rails against poor educa-
tional policies of the dominant culture and the poor educational perfor-
mances of all our students. He even uses the same word—confusion (IHC
21)—to describe everyone's problems that he uses to describe the prob-
lems of the African-American, and he clearly sees the dominant culture's
dominant group as increasingly bewildered and confused by and in the
culture we have created. In short, the distinction between the plight of the
46 The Politics of Rhetoric

emancipated slaves and the rest of society's members is primarily that the
former had their culture taken from them forcefully, while the latter have
no one to blame but themselves.
A fair evaluation of this crucial economic linchpin of the feudal system
ought to consider at least two more points. First, Weaver states: "Although
some slaveholders were not gentlemen, there was moral truth in the ob-
servation that only u n d e r the rule of gentlemen was the peculiar institution
tolerable" (STB 54-55). Thus, by the logic of the statement the system was
intolerable, which means, to the extent that the feudal society d e p e n d e d
upon the slave class, that the culture of the antebellum South was also
intolerable.
Second, the feudal system is built on large manorial holdings in which
slaves work specialized jobs but gain no private property thereby. How-
ever, specialization, Weaver contends, both dehumanizes and criminalizes,
because the workers are not likely to have a clear sense of what they are
producing (IHC 64); although this concern may not apply to the artisan
class of slaves, it does to those who harvest cotton. In fact, Weaver claims
that a worker who is not responsible for what is produced "is made to
surrender both freedom and initiative" and, since a burden of responsibil-
ity is the best means of getting anyone to think straight, ultimately to sur-
r e n d e r "the ability to think clearly as well." When a worker "has long b e e n
absolved of the duty of thinking, he may be seized with a sense of help-
lessness and panic when the necessity of it is thrust upon him" (IHC 66).
In his epilogue to The Southern Tradition at Bay, Weaver notes that "there
are numerous resemblances between the Southern Agrarian mind and the
mind of modern fascism" (395), and while he does not approve of this form
of government or society, the comparison may be more accurate than he
wishes. Burke observes that fascism, "with its great hordes of state laborers
. . . shows a marked analogy to the feudal ideal" (Attitudes toward History
21n), and the ease with which a fascist-minded government can usurp free-
dom is a mirror for the treatment of slaves—and probably the lower-class
whites as well—by the wealthy agrarians of the antebellum South: Just as
the fascist state underwrites corporations that in turn support it, so south-
ern state government and plantations were mutually supportive and to-
gether protected "the peculiar institution."
In Weaver's way of seeing things, "the moral solution" to the problems
that such economic systems visit on us "is the distributive ownership of
small properties. These take the form of independent farms, of local busi-
nesses, of homes owned by the occupants, where individual responsibility
gives significance to prerogative over property. Such ownership provides a
range of volition through which one can be a complete person. . . .
[Pjroperty shows itself a benevolent institution by encouraging certain vir-
tues, notable among which is providence" (IHC 133). Clearly, as the feudal
system militates against the moral solution through its establishment of large
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 47

tracts held by individuals and worked by slaves, and through its refusal to
provide to some millions of its inhabitants the chance to possess any private
property whatsoever, it is small wonder that the lower class would be "im-
provident" and the society as a whole immoral.
The second root of the antebellum southern culture, the code of chiv-
alry, was also inherently flawed. Among the reasons offered for its exis-
tence, Weaver contends that since human beings will always engage in war
we should maintain a means by which these wars can be formalized to
some degree and so managed. The code of chivalry raises war from the
barbarism with which it is otherwise fought—as it was fought for hundreds
of years after the fall of Rome, and as it was fought by the American gov-
ernment in the Civil War and World War II. Weaver also contends that
might makes right, that strength is given to those in the right, that losers
submit to their enemies when defeated, and that victors will treat the van-
quished according to humane rules of war (VO 100, 102). But do these
contentions obtain in any historical or imaginable culture? As regards merely
the last: medieval serfs who rebelled against their lords were not treated
according to humane rules of war, nor were runaway or rebellious slaves
in the American South treated humanely. While a proponent of the code
of chivalry can argue that it does not apply to the nobleman's treatment of
the lower classes, such an omission would reopen the door to barbarism.
To hang, draw, and quarter a recalcitrant serf or to set dogs on a runaway
slave is to engage in barbaric acts that are out of place in civilized society.
Further, Weaver admits, whereas the code was in general upheld by southern
gentlemen fighting in the Civil War, these men were guilty of occasional
breaches. For a code of chivalry to work as a means of maintaining social
harmony and stability, it cannot be followed only when it is convenient to
do so. Such would be to live by the rule of expediency rather than by
principle—the mark of a society, Weaver says elsewhere, that has replaced
realism with relativism. But even if the nobility were always to act accord-
ing to the rule of chivalry, Weaver's preference for it is still suspect.
The statement that chivalry raises war from barbarism assumes too much.
One should question if civilization can flourish when it condones warfare
as a response to disagreements, insofar as warfare is itself a throwback and
a concession to our barbarism. Of war, Weaver says, many southern sol-
diers "were forced to admit that it brought out the brutish nature of man"
(STB 206), and, in what Weaver himself calls "one of the most searching
observations ever made," no less chivalrous a gentleman than General Rob-
ert E. Lee remarked of war, "It is well this is terrible; otherwise we should
grow fond of it" (SE 172). That southern gentlemen were fond of warfare,
that they studied it and, saw it and statecraft as the only occupations wor-
thy of gentlemen, and that they reveled in it when given the opportunity,
suggests that if a culture makes a place for war and presents that place as
romantic and even charismatic, then people will continue to engage in it.
48 The Politics of Rhetori

It is possible—as the duels of the South indicate—that warfare so perceived

would be not only condoned but encouraged and pursued.
Furthermore, the logic of Weaver's defense would seem to dictate that
if we make a place for war because we engage in it, we should make places
for other corruptions we practice—such as murder, theft, and other
transgressions against traditional cultural values. It is also reasonable to
argue, despite Weaver's protestations to the contrary, that some civilians
are harmed even in the limited wars that a code of chivalry would pre-
serve. Everyone works harder and longer to maintain the war effort—even
though that effort may result in their poverty or even continued slavery.
Peasants and other members of the lower classes are often forced to feed
troops, and the female members of these lower classes are perhaps forced
to submit to the sexual demands of officers. Of the female noncombatants
in such a system it can also be said that their spouses, their fathers, and
their sons are killed in these wars, and that they, as well as the aged and
the young, are left without the emotional and economic assistance of their
men. Finally, it is useful to consider whether the horrors of a total war
encourage people to advance beyond the use of warfare to resolve their
disagreements. This last point seems particularly apposite in 1992, since
we seem to have witnessed the decline of the Soviet Union as a threat to
our social and cultural well-being (a threat Weaver saw as very real and
very useful in supporting much of his political theory). We have witnessed
this apparent decline without having to have helped it along with a war
involving the United States and the Soviet Union as principals; in fact,
according to the political heirs of Weaver's theory, this decline has oc-
curred because the terror of total war in the nuclear age has kept the United
States and the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from settling differ-
ences on the field of battle.
Closely connected to the code of chivalry is the concept of the gentleman
class. An evaluation of this third support again confronts us with problems.
As Weaver reads southern history, the code of chivalry was designed not
merely to control our inherent propensity for war but also to reinforce and
protect the gentleman class, who, under the code's rules, could not be
injured with impunity or questioned about their motives or their word (STB
61). This class was granted the sole right to engage in duels, and while a
gentleman was barred thereby from challenging a member of the lower
class on the field of honor, he was allowed to "chastise a low fellow with
whip or cane for offering him an insult" (SE 162; see also STB 63). Without
researching the matter we imagine that the "low fellow" had little recourse
if he thought his caning unjustified, or if he was insulted by a gentleman.
Gentlemen were simply treated differently from members of the lower
classes, but this inequality, if it is to be allowed, must produce compensa-
tory benefits for the society as a whole—and especially, it would seem, for
the lower classes. We have already suggested that the compensation to the
 Cultural Theory, Part 2

society's slaves was inadequate. Further, since the purpose of this prefer-
ential treatment was to provide for social stability, its weakening by gentle-
men would problematize their preferential treatment and their very exis-
tence as a class. It seems that they did, indeed, cause problems for the
South.
Consider, for instance, their disinterest in literature, even though liter-
ature, Weaver argues, is not only a repository for the culture's metaphysi-
cal dream but also a significant means for maintaining cultural unity and
coherence. Despite literary journalists' expressions of belief in the impor-
tance of literature for southern society, literary journals were unsupported
by the gentleman class and so short-lived. The literary man in the South,
Weaver admits, was considered by the gentleman class to be in times of
peace an entertainer and in times of conflict a derisive being (STB 96); in
general, the gentleman's attitude toward artists was one of tolerance rather
than respect (STB 71). Weaver also notes that the southern people, includ-
ing apparently the gentleman class, were less interested in literary maga-
zines than in sensational magazines such as the Police Gazette, magazines
described by a commentator of the day to be "receptacles for every species
of moral filth that cannot find sewerage through other channels" (STB 165);
and although this specific complaint comes after the war, the people's dis-
interest in great literature is said by Weaver to predate the war. The lower
classes might have taken an interest in good literature had only their aris-
tocracy led the way, but, as regards the activity of the gentleman himself,
"where war and statecraft are held the chief offices of man, preoccupation
with an art will be regarded as a sentimental weakness" (STB 82).
The gentleman class's disinterest in literature was rivaled by its disinter-
est in education. "It is a maxim that in every society education will ulti-
mately serve the needs of the dominant class," Weaver says, "and in the
South this consisted of gentlemen planters, who contemplated lives of ease
and independence" (STB 73). The sons of the planters looked to futures as
unquestioned rulers of their plantations and did not feel the need for spe-
cial training. Indeed, the significant feature of the education of the south-
ern gentleman "was its avoidance of specialization. . . . Since specializa-
tion is illiberal in a freeman, his acquaintance with the arts and sciences
must remain that of the amateur. . . . The career of a gentleman is being
a gentleman" (STB 79, 81). Thus, much like the system of classical Greece,
the southern economy was fueled by the specialized talents of slaves; the
role of gentlemen was to appropriate their slaves' labor and manage their
own holdings—although, as Weaver admits, the gentlemen usually hired
others to take even this duty from them; they "exhibited an aversion to the
handling of money, except perhaps at the gaming table" (STB 64). How-
ever, unlike the Greek, the southern gentleman did not consider literature
worthy of serious educational effort, nor did he—again unlike the Greek—
find analytical study worthwhile. In an observation that, as much as any
50 The Politics of Rhetoric

other, distinguishes Weaver from the traditional southerner, he notes that

"the southerner rebels against the idea of analysis because his philosophy
or his intellectual tradition, however transmitted down the years, tells him
that this is not the way to arrive at the kind of truth he is interested in"
(SE 190). It can be said that analysis—"the process of breaking things down
(which is nearly always carried on for some practical purpose)"—is neces-
sary for synthesis, and that the South's lack of interest in the former caused
its ultimate inadequacy with the latter. The South's failure, Weaver says,
is "a failure to study its position until it arrived at metaphysical founda-
tions. . . . Perhaps the sin for which the South has most fully though un-
knowingly atoned is its failure to encourage the mind" (STB 389).
The gentleman also saw education as a privilege of class. "Education
beyond the most elementary, it was believed, is adapted only to those
whose minds are previously disposed to the virtuous and honorable—in
other words, to an aristocracy" (STB 75). One result of the lack of education
offered the lower classes is that they were poorly equipped for the rigors
of life during the Civil War; Weaver cites a number of diaries whose au-
thors argue that the better soldiers were the educated ones, those who
were better able to adapt to new situations, who knew about hygienic pre-
cautions and so were not as apt to go on sick call, whose better-trained
minds kept them from despair, and who, in general, were "hardier, stronger,
tougher, less liable to break down than the sons of the soil" (STB 247-48).
The denial of educational opportunities to the lower classes, then, seems
to be at least a contributing cause of the southern defeat in the Civil War.
It should be noted in this context that "every system of education is ulti-
mately a tool of the state" (STB 97), which means that, as regards the
system of education chosen to support their system of economics and gov-
ernment, southerners apparently chose wrong.
Finally, it should be mentioned that even the education in which the
upper class was interested did not do much for them. Weaver reports: "It
was natural that a people whose talent lay almost wholly in the direction of
statecraft should consider eminence in war and eloquence in council the
marks of illustrious manhood" (STB 72). However, their eminence in war
notwithstanding, the victory went to their opponents and, as regards elo-
quence in council, Weaver reports that many of their legislative and mili-
tary sessions were rife with meaningless contention, self-pluming, and petty
dignity (STB 245). Such are hardly the marks of oratorical or political emi-
nence but are rather indications of spoiled, unrealistic people. In short,
despite the educational advantages of the gentleman class, despite their
freedom to develop all the skills necessary for the effective rule of a society,
despite their privileged place, the South fell on hard times, as Mary Ches-
nut complained, because of "the gradual loss of initiative and energy on
the part of the old ruling class" (STB 245). As Weaver admits at the conclu-
sion of The Southern Tradition at Bay, after the war the South surrendered
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 51

initiative and no longer believed in itself (389). As Weaver elsewhere says,

to remain stable and healthy a society must have wise and good leaders
who not only enjoy prestige but who also bear responsibility; it seems that
the gentleman class was not sufficiently resilient to discharge its responsi-
bilities in its society's darkest hours, and that inability is a telling comment
on the worth of its status in the social structure.
Regarding the fourth root of southern culture, religiousness, Weaver dif-
ferentiates between religion's role in the North and its role in the South.
He contends that New England tested belief by reason, making it conform
to the fruits of empirical investigation and the laws of logic, whereas the
South continued to believe that a certain portion of life should and must
remain inscrutable, and that religion served to provide "for guidance in
this life a body of knowledge to which the facts of natural discovery are
either subordinate or irrelevant" (STB 106; see also SE 138). Given south-
erners' conservative position on social change, it is not surprising that they
would criticize the North for making religion a handmaiden for political
and social reform, a means for converting the outer society instead of the
inner person (SE 141). However, it is significant that powerful and edu-
cated southern churchgoers seemed to have little respect for religion, that
they regarded their faith and the labor of its ministers with apathy (SE
140). Rather, religion was perceived by the populace, and so used by the
gentleman class, as an unquestioned support for culture, as "a great con-
servative agent and a bulwark of those institutions which served him [the
gentleman]" (STB 104-5; see also SE 135). Like education, religion served
the ends of the controlling class. Weaver argues that religious skepticism
is the achievement of people with education and access to libraries, and
that the general populace is unaffected by the skepticism if uneducated (SE
144). Since an educated class might wish to maintain control over a society
that provides them with privileges of place and action, it is not overly cyn-
ical to imagine that this class might use the "revealed truths" of the peo-
ple's religion (truths a skeptic might see to be foolish, unexamined myths)
to maintain the status quo. The Bible was often used to defend the insti-
tution of slavery, as Weaver himself attests, by saying that "it is well rec-
ognized in the Old Testament, and it is not without endorsement in the
New; indeed, a strict constructionalist interpretation almost requires its
defense" (SE 150). Of course, strict constructionalism can also ban dueling,
drinking alcohol, and even wearing cloth made of more than one material,
although perhaps only this last stricture would have the approval of the
cotton growers. The point is that the religiousness that serves as one of the
roots of the southern culture may well have been cynically used by the
elite to maintain a system of government and economy that had no other
defensible support.
It seems, then, that the culture of the antebellum South generated more
problems than benefits. It was woefully deficient in developing or even
52 The Politics of Rhetoric

allowing the expression of the four faculties of human nature: as we have

said, its interest in the aesthetic faculty was limited as was—in light of its
scant regard for analysis and education—-its interest in the cognitive faculty;
and, as we have suggested, its interest in the religious faculty may have
been merely a cynical cover for partisan purposes, leading thereby to per-
versions of an ethical faculty that should have protected citizens from the
excesses of the gentleman class and the horrors of slavery. Further, its
system of social order was manifestly unfair and illogical, and its need for
stability was undermined by the forces designed to maintain that stability.
Weaver does admit that the South erred in certain ways; he does not say
that it lacked an adequate foundation, but simply that its disinterest in
education and philosophy meant that it never determined the foundation
that would have given it the strength to persevere in its beliefs and actions.
Despite these shortcomings, it does, according to Weaver, offer modern
readers the challenge to "save the human spirit by re-creating a non-
materialist society" (STB 391).
We leave unexamined the notion that a society can be nonmaterialist
whose leaders were so much in love with land and other possessions; who
lived with an eye toward ease, eating, and fighting; who were uninterested
in such nonmaterialist pursuits as literature and the life of the mind. How-
ever, we do want to end this section by remarking on Weaver's statement
that the "politicians of mid-nineteenth-century America were unknowingly
entangled in the great debate of the Schoolmen, with the southern sepa-
ratists playing the part of the Nominalists, and the Northern democrats and
equalitarians playing the part of the Realists" (STB 197). While in this con-
text the southerners are supposed to be seen as superior, defending the
particulars of locale and association against the universals of common hu-
man experience, still it is surprising to see the southern cause linked to
that philosophy, which, through its changes in Western culture, created
the untenable position in which the South came to find itself. It is surpris-
ing, and it is illuminating.

SOME LINEAMENTS FOR AN IMPROVED CULTURE

It is important that a critical analysis of a society's weaknesses have an
ideal against which it is being compared, and Weaver's vision of the South
provides his grounds for identifying the bad in a society. Although his con-
ception of a specific ideal culture is less important than his critique of the
existing modernist culture, it must be said that Weaver is at his weakest
when he tries to describe specifically an ideal society. It is, furthermore,
also important to realize that Weaver's theory of culture can be useful even
though his attempt to apply his theory practically is flawed.
Perhaps his problems of application can be considered from another an-
gle. It is the mark of a confused person to desire a hierarchical system in
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 53

which he would like to have power and place but apparently not to recog-
nize that he would fit into the system only at one of the lower levels. His
observations about William Gilmore Simms offer an illustrative analogy.
"The career of William Gilmore Simms demands special appraisal, for it is
peculiarly instructive in the fascination which the Southern social order
exercised upon men of strong and independent mind, even while it tor-
mented them with frustration. . . . The tragedy of Simms' entire career
was that he expected something which this [Southern] society was not pre-
pared to give, and that in the struggle he sacrificed too much" (STB 93,
95). These comments could have been Weaver's own epitaph, had the kind
of hierarchy he hoped for actually been returned to his society. Yet, while
his appeal to the values of the antebellum South is fraught with difficulties,
Weaver does provide indications of the principles that guide his belief in
an ideal culture. In this concluding section, we look at the strengths that
can be culled from Weaver's cultural theory and his vision of an ideal so-
ciety.
Some of the strengths already mentioned include his awareness that cul-
tures are and must remain to a certain extent closed to alien ideas; his
awareness of the difficulty in examining the worth of one culture from the
perspective of another, even while accepting that some cultures and some
cultural institutions are intrinsically less valuable than others; his realiza-
tion of the ideological nature of any cultural position; and his awareness of
the necessity of hierarchy in cultural organization. As regards this last point
Burke comments that "the hierarchic principle itself is inevitable in sys-
tematic thought" (Rhetoric of Motives 141), and it seems for Weaver just
as inevitable that hierarchy is necessary in social systems, even though it
might need to be less rigid than the class system of medieval Europe and
less rigid even than that of the southern society before the Civil War. Hi-
erarchy, Weaver maintains, is natural, in that some people are more intel-
ligent, more adept at organizational tasks, stronger, and what have you
than other people, and these people will of necessity rise to the top of an
orderly society that wishes to maintain its order and its very existence. But
there is no reason to replace such a hierarchy of worth with a hierarchy of
birth, as was the case in feudal societies. Indeed, Weaver argues elsewhere
that society's leaders must constantly be recruited according to democratic
principles, "that aristocracy cannot exist without democracy" (IHC 49).
Further, "no country can be great unless it possesses sufficient social mo-
bility to allow its citizens to find places consonant with their gifts. The
unanswerable argument in favor of democratic education is that it enriches
the community by discovering aptitudes" (STB 371). One of the flaws of
Weaver's South was that it did not realize the truth of this idea until after
the Civil War, and one of its fallacies was that these ideas were honored
more in theory than in practice. Further, as regards hierarchy, there is no
necessary reason for a hierarchy of worth to include privileges of excessive
54 The Politics of Rhetoric

wealth or exemptions from laws that govern the rest of the society; in Pla-
to's ideal society, those who are better equipped to rule do so, but personal
gain is neither their reason for doing so nor the reason for providing them
with the chance.
Even these theoretical strengths, however, are not without practical lim-
itations. Just as a hierarchy can be conditioned by a culture's ideology to
diminish the place and possibilities of minority groups, so can it be condi-
tioned to diminish the place of women. Weaver argues that modernism's
alteration of our cultural values includes both the placement of women on
a level equal with men, which is "more truly a degradation than an eleva-
tion," and the decay of chivalry, which require thereby that women make
their own way in the world (IHC 178-79). He argues that women are not
happy in the workplace because they are unfitted for it, yet admits that
"they are not treated as equals" and that the men responsible for this treat-
ment "have been the white-slavers of business who traffic in the low wages
of these creatures" (IHC 179). Like Weaver's characterization of the Afri-
can-American population, this argument is guilty of gross stereotyping, and
our arguments concerning African-American slaves, made earlier in this
chapter, apply to some extent here as well. Many women are happy and
successful, and many exhibit freedom and initiative in the workplace, just
as some exhibited happiness, success, and initiative in 1948, when Weaver
wrote these words. Furthermore, it is reasonable, and certainly so from a
feminist ideological perspective, to argue that much of the failure and un-
happiness of women in the business world result less from their lack of
fitness and the "fact of stubborn nature" than from oppression and discrim-
ination by "white slavers," the dominant group of businessmen. Further,
this ideological perspective accepts not just that women have been made
wage-slaves by patriarchal businessmen but that women have always been
kinds of slaves in Western society, lacking the "freedom and initiative" that
Weaver indicates is necessary for a happy and productive life (IHC 66).
His use of Queen Elizabeth I to condemn "feminist agitators" (IHC 180)
seems particularly suspect, since she was not a traditional mother or house-
wife but the "Virgin Queen," the powerful ruler of a powerful nation-state.
Here again his theory is adequate insofar as he claims that modernism dis-
rupts traditional values of culture and the possibility of reasonable forms of
hierarchy, but his ideological biases flaw his practical application. Hier-
archy is inevitable in society, but in the establishment of a hierarchy of
worth Weaver provides no reason for claiming that this worth is somehow
gender-specific.
Of significance also is his investigation of modern education, especially
of the progressive education movement, in which he illustrates again his
difficulty in moving from theory to practice. Theoretically, Weaver holds
that education is a tool by which the dominant ideology maintains power
by controlling the populace's view of its own welfare (IHC 93; STB 73, 97).
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 5

He suggests the lineaments of an educational program built on his cultural

principles and identifies the problems caused to education by the dominant
modernist ideology. In practice, however, Weaver denies the very cultural
principles he needs for his theoretical construct.
Ideally, education should develop the critical faculties of dialectic and
rhetoric in order to provide a liberal and humanistic education that devel-
ops the mind and orders the passions (IHC 49). Educators must be allowed
to assert their understanding of truth "regardless of the political winds of
doctrine at the moment" (LP 53-54); in fact, the expanding knowledge that
education provides must be allowed even if it unsettles societal conventions
(AF 7). Academic freedom allows education to be free of manipulation by
the ideological hierarchy (LP 56; AF 11) and of political ensnarements (IHC
136; RE 616); it thereby can help students understand their society's cur-
rent ideology, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and maintain the for-
mer while improving the latter. This liberal and liberalizing education is
countered by the educational system, informed by modernism, which is in
place today.
Modernism has devised an educational system that maintains its materi-
alist principles; this system's methods are to emphasize empirical observa-
tions rather than abstractions, particulars rather than universals, induction
rather than deduction. That is, education changes from truths of the intel-
lect to facts of experience (IHC 7); it encourages "modern man" to believe
in the preeminence of facts and information, and to believe that "an indus-
trious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge" (IHC
13). It assumes that the values of our capitalist society are acceptable, and
it aims to prepare students to accept and, for some at least, to succeed in
their commercial lives as producers, purveyors, and purchasers of material
goods. 2 To achieve this goal it must keep students from seeing or feeling
the loss of the transcendental issues of contemplation, aesthetic apprecia-
tion, and ethical action. Modernism in equalitarian democracy proposes
universal education; but without a sense of what should be taught, the
result is an elective system that produces specialization and vocationalism,
not a carefully wrought liberal education that produces broad intellectual
growth. The appeal for universal literacy is not enough. The question so-
ciety needs to ask as it ponders its citizens' literacy is not what people can
read but what they do read, and what they learn from their reading (IHC
14). Too often people are debauched by what they read, because they lack
the cultural stability that tells them how to place their reading into a con-
text and how to determine thereby what is valuable and what is not. The
cure is a carefully designed educational system that provides for the "sym-
metrical growth of the individual, so that he is his own sufficient guardian"
against the debaucheries that modernism encourages (LP 27).
In theory these ideas do not seem too controversial. In sum, Weaver
contends that the path to true knowledge assumes that speculative inquiry,
56 The Politics of Rhetoric

not merely the investigation of experience, is necessary for understanding

(IHC 13). Weaver is right that "no education is worthy of the name which
fails to make the point that the world is best understood from a certain
distance or that the most elementary understanding requires a degree of
abstraction. To insist on less is to merge ourselves with the exterior reality
or to capitulate to the endless induction of empiricism" (IHC 27). The
question, especially in light of Weaver's preference for the antebellum South,
is under what auspices the distance is to be gained and the abstractions
made.
To illustrate his answer, Weaver identifies John Dewey and the progres-
sive education movement as the agents of modernism against which one
should fight. It is Weaver's contention that the progressive education
movement teaches "a concept of society not espoused by the people" (VO
114), and that its proponents are "openly proposing a theory of man and a
theory of education wildly at variance with the traditional beliefs of the
American people" (AF 11). Generally, it is "not designed for man as an
immortal soul, nor is it designed to help him measure up to any ideal
standard. The only goal which it professes to have in view is 'adjustment
to life' " (LP 48). However, adjustment is not an end in itself, since "it
would be nearer the truth to say that the great creative spirits of the past
have been maladjusted to life in one or more important ways." Further,
insofar as human life involves no transcendent spiritual considerations, life
adjustment becomes for the progressive educationalists "nothing more than
the adjustment of a worm to the surface it is crawling on" (LP 49—50).
Specifically, Weaver is exercised by progressive education's proposal that
schools teach the "strange cant" of "education for democratic living, . . . a
rhetorical way of sneaking in the totalitarian concept" by identifying a way
of life with a form of government (VO 131; see also RE 617). Progressive
education errs also by implying that our political nature is more important
than our contemplative, aesthetic, and cultural natures, that is, than the
traditional focus of liberal education, which is not "compatible with the
current concept of mass democracy" (VO 132). He provides a list of this
movement's major tenets (VO 115-16), which can be shortened to a lack
of faith in the existence of absolute knowledge, a belief in the goal of edu-
cation as "the educationally illicit one of conditioning the young for political
purposes," and an identification of the teacher as a facilitator rather than
an authority (VO 132).
To say that progressive education teaches concepts of human nature and
society not espoused by the people seems to contradict his argument that
society's members have in fact come to accept just such concepts, and that
this acceptance is what makes the culture sick. It seems rather that Weav-
er's concepts of education are the ones not espoused by the people. Re-
gardless, on general grounds Weaver is opposed to censorship of teachers
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 57

or ideas, holding that reform must come not from governmental dictate but
"with the symmetrical development of the individual, so that he is his own
sufficient guardian" (LP 27). He comes close to suggesting censorship in
cases "where physical and moral survival raise problems of a more imme-
diate kind" (LP 37). And because we are in dangerous times and need the
survival of our political and social systems in order to provide academic
freedom, he does allow for the restriction of those practices of academic
freedoms that are part of "an offensive campaign against the traditional
foundations of our country" (AF 12-15). 3 Still, Weaver does advocate free
speech. He argues that our "pluralistic society by its very nature tolerates
propaganda of all kinds [because] . . . most issues, including some of vital
relation to our welfare, are still in the realm of deliberative forensics [and]
. . . there exists among our people enough good sense, education, and
reflective intelligence to insure us that in this deliberative process we will
come up with the right answer" (RR 82). His theoretical position also holds
that teachers need academic freedom for the unpopular ideas and knowl-
edge they may disseminate and for protection in the ensuing disagree-
ments. Perhaps, like last century's stands for women's suffrage and against
slavery and child labor, some ideas are "right" even when not immediately
accepted, and our traditions of deliberative forensics and academic freedom
allow these ideas to get the hearings they need. Of course, "no education
[or idea] is innocent of an attitude toward the existing world" (VO 120),
which is to say that all education and ideas are politicized: they are neces-
sarily ideological, and they either necessarily support the status quo or they
try to refine or overthrow it. The question, then, must consider in what
way the campaign of progressive educationalists threatens our political and
moral survival.
One way is to say that education for democratic living imports a totali-
tarian concept into education and our lives, but this charge relies on Weav-
er's identification of these educators as part of a Communist vanguard in-
tent on overthrowing the American way of life. Indeed, if knowledge is
absolute and discernible by an expert, then democracy seems to be a sus-
pect form of government as well as a suspect attitude to take toward stu-
dents. However, if people lack the ability to perceive absolute knowledge
and so must socially construct their positions—and in the previous chapter
we showed that Weaver in fact agrees with this position—then education
should be concerned with helping students to understand this and to help
build and maintain adequate consensual versions of reality. Students need
to develop the dialectical skills required for their intellectual development
and social intercourse, and a true dialectic requires the democratic treat-
ment of interlocutors. Since reaching consensus requires that participants
be political equals and adept at democratic negotiation—which is to say,
skilled in expressing and judging others' responses—education, especially
58 The Politics of Rhetoric

an education in rhetoric, must be in part an education for democracy.

(Chapter 5 explores the implications that education for democracy has for
a rhetorical education.)
F u r t h e r m o r e , Weaver contends that modernism's weakening of hierar-
chical structures has allowed progressive education to remove teachers from
their place as people of superior knowledge, relegating them to moderators
in democratic forums (IHC 50; VO 129). As Gregory Clark argues, students
must serve apprenticeships before they are able to engage in the cultural
conversation (69), and it seems inescapable that teachers must possess, and
students must understand that they possess, knowledge that the students
do not yet have. Teachers know more than their students, as regards both
what and how to think, and to claim otherwise would lead to the self-
evident absurdity that we can "choose our teachers as the ancient Greek
democracies chose their magistrates, by lot" (LIS 194-95). If facilitation
skills are the only requirements teachers must possess, then advanced d e -
grees in chemistry or philosophy or rhetoric are irrelevant to teachers.
However, there is no necessary theoretical contradiction between the sen-
timents Weaver expresses here—that one group of people know the truth
to the extent that they can transmit it to others—and his agreement with
that position in the Phaedrus that perceives truth to leap up "like a flame"
b e t w e e n people engaged in dialogue. It does appear, though, that W e a v e r
agrees with the Platonic sentiment only insofar as the m e m b e r s of the dia-
logue are peers engaging in mutual investigation; perhaps he does not see
students as peers, certainly not in their knowledge of his subject matter,
probably not in their adherence to the life of the mind, and perhaps not
even for purposes of a classroom dialectic. As will be explained in Chapter
5, Weaver seems to hold that teachers find truth through a dialectic prac-
ticed with themselves and their peers; they present the discovered truth
to their students through an epideictic rhetoric, relying on their superior
knowledge (logos), their authority as teachers (ethos), and their skills of
presentation (pathos), to induce their students to listen and understand.
However, belief in teachers' superior knowledge does not require this
practice of what Paulo Freire calls the "banking concept" of education, in
which students are passive receptacles waiting to be filled with the teach-
ers' necessarily ideological version of the truth (57-59). Rather, teachers
can act as the "midwife" Socrates saw himself to be in the Theaetetus: one
who guides students on a path that will allow them to learn for themselves.
Socrates speaks of the midwife as intellectually barren and of the knowl-
edge students gain as coming from within themselves, but we take these
observations to b e more complicated than they at first appear. Certainly
Socrates knows much, including a sense of both what the students are likely
to say and w h e r e they and he are likely to end up agreeing; and the knowl-
edge that comes from within his students might best be thought of as their
realization that what rises like a flame between their teacher and them-
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 59

selves is valuable—more valuable than what they receive only from them-
selves or only from the teacher. Thus, it seems perverse to interpret Dew-
ey's declaration that it is more important to make maps than to learn them
as his privileging of activity over thinking (VO 126). It is much more rea-
sonable to say that Dewey believes students should actively pursue knowl-
edge—that is, make it in a dialectical exchange with others—rather than
simply read the ahistorical "knowledge" that others have constructed in
other contexts and for other audiences and purposes, and that is therefore
not necessarily applicable to them. Weaver seems willfully to misread Dewey,
just as he misreads progressive educators who, he charges, ought not to be
allowed to teach because, in their subservience to the Moscow party line,
they do not freely present truths they have discovered but rather misrep-
resent what they believe for partisan ends (AF 12).4 It is more reasonable
to say that the professoriate has a duty to present knowledge even if it
conflicts with tradition but does not have the right to use its position—with
its attendant academic freedom—to move from the exposition of discovered
knowledge to a persuasive attempt to see that knowledge introduced into
society; the latter role is for those who accept the risks that come with
supporting such unpleasantnesses. Yet, since all language use, including its
use in education, is "sermonic . . . [and] we have no sooner uttered words
than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or some
small part of it, in our way" (LIS 224), it is difficult to differentiate between
exposition and persuasion.
Also important in Weaver's cultural theory is his belief that philosophical
ideas are more important than material comfort. He opposes a culture of
modernism that creates an urban, corporate environment and that employs
technology. He desires in its place a culture of tradition, which emphasizes
philosophy and ideas. Weaver believes that the driving force behind cul-
ture ought to be a concept of the Good, or of God; what drives modern
culture, he contends, is economics—Marxism in the East and capitalism in
the West—and of both he has a low regard. Weaver is concerned that we
not emphasize economics as a cultural criterion, except as economics fol-
lows certain principles. In this regard, his observations on the modern
business practices of American society are particularly interesting. He holds,
for instance, that assembly line manufacturing dehumanizes and criminal-
izes workers because they no longer know what they are producing and so
are unable to grasp the ethical implications of their tasks (IHC 64). His
example is the atomic bomb project at Oak Ridge, and many other ex-
amples exist. Would people have more severe ethical problems, this posi-
tion asks, if instead of producing minute and unconnected items that look
like nothing in particular they worked from start to finish on nerve-gas
bombs or other horrors of mass destruction? Further, business's commit-
ment to this manufacturing process unsettles established ways of life and
action by initiating endless innovations of technological "progress" (SE 17)—
60 The Politics of Rhetoric

as regards both the means of production and the new products that must
constantly be offered to consumers if the corporations are to grow.
The products of finance capitalism, in the forms of stocks, bonds, and
securities, make the owners of corporations analogous to assembly line
workers in that they too have no say in the business of the corporation.
Such ownership makes the corporations in effect anonymously owned, pro-
viding another threat to our "metaphysical right" to private property. The
anonymity is in Weaver's opinion also a constant invitation to increased
state direction in our lives because, as he says, "it requires but a slight step
to transfer them to state control . . . and, if we continue the analysis fur-
ther, we should discover that business develops a bureaucracy that can be
quite easily merged with that of government" (IHC 133).5 Stockholders do
not have an interest in the particular activities of the corporation—in the
product it creates, in its treatment of its workers and the environment, in
its attitude toward the law and the duties of good citizenship; they are
concerned only with two very specific items: the stock's yearly dividend
and its selling price.
The emphasis on business harms the culture in another way. Referring
to Donald Davidson's "A Mirror for Artists," Weaver argues that industri-
alism "prevents the conditions out of which true art emerges. It can create
wealth; it can organize and distribute; but it destroys the one thing most
needful for artistic creation: the attitude of leisure" (SE 19). He approves
of Davidson's statements that the leisure afforded by industrialism is pure
sloth, and that art becomes thereby merely entertainment, "purchased in
boredom and enjoyed in utter passivity" (SE 20). If the late twentieth cen-
tury is examined for proofs of the increasing control of business, its increas-
ing merger with government, and the decreasing importance of "high" art,
Weaver's concerns seem to be borne out.
Weaver's fears of business's effects on our traditional culture are couched
in his belief that businessmen are a threat, and if he is right about the links
between business and government, he is right to worry about the power
these people have. 6 He is quite blunt, saying, for instance, that "the man
of commerce is by the nature of things a relativist . . . [which] explains
the tendency of all organic societies to exclude the trader from positions of
influence and prestige" (IHC 32). Because businessmen stand not on prin-
ciple but rather on expediency and immediate profit, they ought not to be
in the position of public leaders. Businessmen see knowledge as in the
service of consumerism and appetite, and the state, if run by such people,
ceases to concern itself with the development of human potential but only
with the promotion of economic activity and the desire to consume.
In one of his more loosely developed attacks, Weaver claims that the
British Empire illustrates these problems. Asking himself how the empire
could be built without noble principles, he responds by saying that "cyni-
cism and indifference to principle may be exactly the qualities that make
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 67

for a successful worldly career. Modern empire rests upon commerce, and
it is an indisputable truth that the factors in commercial success are shifti-
ness and opportunism" (PEM 389). These characteristics, he claims, the
British Empire's leaders showed in abundance. "There are always those
with a negative understanding of the good, that is to say, with a perception
of how the good attracts the masses of people, but without any impulsion
towards it. These may well be the most evil members of society[.] [W]hile
applying decorum to themselves, they bring the good into disrepute, they
exhaust its power for meretricious ends, and so diminish the power of the
ordinary man to distinguish between good and bad. Commercial men are
usually of this group" (PEM 389-90).
Weaver has been called the fons et origo of modern American political
conservatism, and if one looks at his attacks on liberalism in its various
forms, at his attacks on progressive education, or at any number of the
topics he takes up during his career, this appellation seems well deserved.
However, his stated concerns about technological progress and especially
his statements on business certainly ought to give pause to those political
and economic leaders who, in and during the Republican administrations
since 1980, have claimed status as conservatives.7 The rapid increase in
corporate mergers, the increasing influence of government in business and
business in government, the push for ever more technology as the means
to solve problems that technology has created in the pursuit of even more
money, and the decreasing interest in the arts—except as they are occa-
sionally attacked by proponents of the conservative Right: these events in-
dicate that the conservatism Weaver espoused as the model for American
society is, if anything, less likely to be put into practice than before the
"conservative" Reagan revolution. 8
In place of the material comforts promised by the economically oriented
government now in place, comforts that are not always forthcoming, not
always comforting, and accompanied by the baggage of the discomfort of a
bewildering and fragmented culture that seems to have no sustaining rea-
son for living, Weaver proposes the comforts of clear principles. In dis-
cussing the loss of a clear sense of the important values and issues that a
society should share, he claims that we have now "mere empirical com-
munities, which are but people living together in one place, without
friendship or common understanding, and without capacity, when the test
comes, to pull together for survival. On the other side," Weaver continues,
"is the metaphysical community, suffused with a common feeling about the
world which enables all vocations to meet without embarrassment and to
enjoy the strength that comes of common tendency. Our plea then must
be to have back our metaphysical dream that we may save ourselves from
the sins of sentimentality and brutality" (IHC 32-33; for an eloquent state-
ment of his concern for the loss of a clear sense of principles, see ER 213-
14). He follows this passage by quoting, from William Butler Yeats's "The
62 The Politics of Rhetoric

Second Coming," the lines, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/
Are full of passionate intensity," and claims they are explained by the re-
placement of our metaphysical community with an empirical one. Appar-
ently, we are to understand in these lines that "the best" are unwilling or
unable to develop strong convictions in such a state of flux, while those
who are less thoughtful and virtuous passionately embrace one or another
of the faddish issues of the day. However, in the context of Weaver's dis-
cussion, the poetic lines are used to stress the passionate embracers, the
"worst" of society, and for Weaver they are the relativists, the liberals. 9
Yeats, however, does not make this distinction, saying only, "Things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
"The worst" for Yeats are simply those who in the confused world are pas-
sionate advocates of their position. In this construction, we have to count
Yeats himself among the worst, given the passion he evinces for the posi-
tion he presents in this poem as well as for the other passions for which he
is generally known. And, of course, insofar as Weaver is a passionate ad-
vocate of the conservative values of traditional Western culture, we must
count him among the "worst" as well. In any event, while Weaver often
enough decries the excesses of the liberals, Yeats's poems would encourage
him to decry equally the excesses of the Right; Weaver is unwilling to
accept this encouragement, and consequently he harms his ethical appeal
as a person willing to play fair with all aspects of the issue. We are unwill-
ing, though, to call Weaver one of "the worst" of modern times. We would
like to claim that Yeats is employing a bit of poetic excess to make his case;
for our purposes here we would consider a change of emphasis in the poem
by altering the end of the line, so that instead of "the worst" it indicates
something less extreme—perhaps "the more." While we do not claim to
be improving on Yeats's poetic craft, we do claim that" such an alteration
more closely describes the modern state than does the line as written.
To clarify: William Perry in his Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Devel-
opment in the College Years: A Scheme argues that human beings cogni-
tively develop from a position Perry calls dualism—a polarized position of
good versus bad, right versus wrong, and no gray areas between—to a
position he calls commitment in relativism—a position in which we exam-
ine competing responses and tentatively commit to one that under the par-
ticular circumstances seems most reasonable. Perry claims that the devel-
opment is both intellectual and ethical: the realization that we ought to
commit only tentatively to a position allows us, in fact encourages us, to
see the other positions as potentially worthy. 10 It is fair to say that whereas
"conviction" is qualitatively distinguished from "passionate intensity" by
Yeats and Weaver, distinctions between the two are not easy to determine.
What is conviction without passion and intensity? Cannot passionate inten-
sity exist because of one's conviction? Would Weaver say that he has con-
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 63

viction whereas Kenneth Burke, who is as liberal as Weaver is conserva-

tive, has only passionate intensity?
Instructively, Burke does take a different stand on the sentiments ex-
pressed in Yeats's lines, although to our knowledge he doesn't address the
poem. He agrees with Weaver that modern culture has lost the cultural
unity that it had in earlier centuries (a position he develops at length in
Permanence and Change and Attitudes toward History), and he offers as
an explanatory analogy the conditions during the rise of Christianity in Im-
perial Rome. It was

a time of cultural mongrelism, when many distinct cultural integers had been brought
into vital contact by the political unification of Rome. . . . There were many dis-
cordancies of evaluation, many conflicting schemes of spiritual order, leading to
much the kind of imperfect overlaps we find in perspectives today. There was also
a highly tolerant group of thinkers who took the very confluence of rival certainties
as their point of departure, and were seeking to erect a philosophy of tentativeness
precisely at the moment when a new authoritarian doctrine was beginning to gain
power (Permanence and Change 159-60).

This philosophy of tentativeness, it should be noted, has something in com-

mon with the psychological perspective of William Perry; furthermore, as
is explained in Chapter 5, it has a great deal in common with a fully rhe-
torical perspective, even as Weaver describes it. Eor Burke and Perry, at
least, to lack uncritical conviction is good, and they would be suspicious of
such a comment as this: "The prospect of living again in a world of meta-
physical certitude—what relief will this not bring to those made sea-sick
by the truth-denying doctrines of the relativists!" (IHC 131). Perry points
out that those who are cognitively developing, when confronted with com-
plexities for which they do not feel prepared, may "retreat" into their pre-
vious stage of development; Perry, Burke, and those who hold to a critical
rationalist position all urge that we not engage in what Burke calls a "hys-
terical retreat into belief," lest by locking ourselves into a single position
we lose the flexibility, the tentativeness, that allows us to adjust our per-
spectives to account for the refinements we are able to make on our view
of the transcendental realm.
Once again, Weaver causes himself problems when he attempts to artic-
ulate the specifics of his cultural theory; there remain two important issues
not yet addressed, perhaps the two issues besides cultural theory closest to
Weaver's philosophical interests and certainly the two on which he is best
educated to speak. First, he contends that literature serves an important
function in the generation and maintenance of a stable culture, and he
urges increased attention to it. A virtuous society will give place to litera-
ture and to the creators of literature. He also contends that rhetoric is the
64 The Politics of Rhetoric

noblest activity that can be practiced by human beings as they work to

attend to their literary artifacts and to the health of their culture, and he
urges increased attention to it as well. Perhaps of all his useful ideas, those
that bear on literature and rhetoric are the most important. As with his
cultural theory, we find that his theoretical pronouncements in these areas
offer a great deal while some of his applications are not so salutary. The
following chapters take up both the theories and his applications in detail.

NOTES
1. Mary Helen Washington states that Brent's life has been documented "as
not only entirely authentic but 'representative' of the experience of many slave
women" (xx). Washington provides bibliographies of numerous other slave narra-
tives.
2. As both Chaim Perelman and Jacques Ellul state, education echoes the cul-
ture. Ellul states that education is "prepropaganda" that prepares people to act
upon the information selected by the state and subtly promotes the fundamental
beliefs in its society. Perelman makes connections among the propagandist, the
educator, and the epideictic rhetorician (The New Rhetoric 52).
3. Elsewhere (PEM 403-4) Weaver offers a rationale for limiting free speech;
this argument is addressed in Chapter 9.
4. Perhaps Dewey's liberal political stance, his embrace of science, and his signing
of the Humanist Manifesto prejudiced Weaver toward anything this educator said.
5. From an economic perspective, fascism is corporationism. Centrally con-
trolled big business can as easily be controlled by the federal government as by a
corporate headquarters. A typical conservative position—and one to which Weaver
ascribes in theory—is that small businesses and their tendency toward individual-
ism and personal freedom should be encouraged.
6. Strictly economic interpretations of human nature—capitalist or commu-
nist—deny metaphysical and religious interpretations. If our purpose is to accu-
mulate capital, to consume, or to communize, we cannot live life in the pursuit of
the ideal.
7. President Eisenhower dismayed the military and big business in his "Fare-
well Address" by castigating "the military industrial complex," which tended away
from traditional principles of a limited federal government and, therefore, threat-
ened freedom. The policies of Reaganomics, which ignored his concerns, are a
throwback to Coolidge, whose position was that "what is good for business is good
for government."
8. Postman claims that President Reagan was not a conservative but a radical,
and his reasons sound quite Weaverian: "I do not say he is against preserving
tradition; I say only that this is not where his interests lie. You cannot have failed
to notice that he is mostly concerned to preserve a free-market economy, to en-
courage the development of what is new, and to keep America technologically pro-
gressive. He is what may be called a free-market extremist. All of which is to say
he is devoted to capitalism. A capitalist cannot afford the pleasures of conservatism,
and of necessity regards tradition as an obstacle to be overcome" (105).
 Cultural Theory, Part 2 65

9. Weaver's reading here seems self-contradictory. Relativists, by his definition,

are those who lack convictions.
10. Perry's research was done in the 1950s at Harvard, when that institution
accepted only males. While the model of development presented by Mary Belenky
and her co-authors of Women's Ways of Knowing differs in some respect from Per-
ry's, it would also endorse these comments.
This page intentionally left blank
 4
Literary Theory

INTRODUCTION
Weaver's literary theory, like his broader philosophic outlook, has similar-
ities to Plato's. Both say that the artist is "inspired,'' by which they mean
that he is acting "out of his senses"—possessed by the gods or God, or
whatever, but in any event acting beyond the limits of mere rationality.
And both Plato and Weaver say that art not only delights its audience but
also teaches and persuades. However, literature, as well as rhetoric, occu-
pies a much broader, more useful, and more honored place in Weaver's
world view than it does in Plato's. Weaver says that literature contributes
something to the life of the mind—"feeling and motion"—that dialectic
does not and cannot, thus linking literature with rhetoric. The emotions
employed and generated by literature are good, and these works are cre-
ative and instructive gifts to society, "certain forms of cognition and expres-
sion which have a part in holding culture together" (VO 62).
In Weaver's view, art is more realistic, the artist wiser, and effects the
art produces on its audience much more constructive than in Plato's view.
Art is realistic in the philosophical sense: it represents what we know in-
tuitively to be the true nature of things, and it holds as real the values and
beliefs by which we can understand and live our lives. In fact, art does not
distort reality but helps us to define and constitute it. The artist, like the
noble rhetorician, is interested in "truth plus its artful presentation," and
if the poet sometimes seems as interested in presentation as in truth, none-
theless she or he has a much more profound insight into the nature of
things than Plato would grant. Noble literature, again like noble rhetoric,
68 The Politics of Rhetoric

teaches people to understand their culture and themselves, and helps them
develop better versions of themselves.
In this chapter we will take up these three aspects of literature—its sta-
tus as cultural artifact, its creators, and its effects on audiences. However,
before this material is presented two clarifications are in order. First, while
Weaver's emphasis is on "fine" literature per se—poetry, prose, and drama—
his argument supports the inclusion of all art and, ultimately, the artistic
products of noble rhetoric. * In this chapter, then, the terms artist, poet,
and author, and the terms art, poetry, and literature will be used inter-
changeably. In order to develop his views on literature, this chapter will
also introduce Weaver's perception of the similarities between literature
and rhetoric, emphasizing the literary side of the similarity and leaving the
rhetorical side to the next chapter. Second, while this chapter focuses on
Weaver's thoughts on the nature and function of literature, his published
work develops no detailed theory or criticism of literature comparable in
its subtlety and complexity with, say, that offered by Kenneth Burke in
works he had published during Weaver's lifetime or, for that matter, with
literary and rhetorical critics more traditional than Burke. Weaver does
not, for instance, concern himself with analyzing and categorizing tropes or
with counting sentence and paragraph lengths, nor is he overly interested
in seeking the archetypes, symbols, mythic images, or "tyrannizing im-
ages" that give works of literature so much power. This last notion, how-
ever, comes closest to Weaver's theoretical interest, because it addresses
his specific concerns regarding literature: its psychological, ethical, and cul-
tural aspects. His primary interest in literature, and this chapter's empha-
sis, is not with its stylistic or aesthetic effects and certainly not with these
effects in individual works, but in literature's ability to teach and persuade.
In order to explain Weaver's position on these issues, we begin by offering
a comparison to the position taken by Plato.

PLATO ON THE NATURE OF ART

Plato's opinions on the nature of art are interspersed throughout his dia-
logues. They amount to a rejection of most art, even when it is not de-
signed purposefully to lead audiences astray. In Book 10 of The Republic
he calls art an imitation of an imitation, by which he means that art imper-
fectly imitates the physical world, which itself imperfectly imitates the realm
of ideal forms; as such, art cannot be taken as an accurate representation.
A poem written in praise of a hero's horsemanship in battle, for instance,
will misrepresent at the same time that it presents both the nature of
horsemanship and the strategies of warfare.
Plato's complaint, of course, is not the error of a naive realist who fears
that some day he may mistake a picture of a horse or, worse yet, a written
description of one for a physical horse and thereby have an unsatisfactory
 Literary Theory 69

ride. Like the General Semanticists of the twentieth century, Plato knows
that a word is not the thing we use it to represent, although he is con-
cerned with rectifying the word with its true meaning, its essence. What
comes clear in The Republic is that he is concerned with the degree to
which the artistic imitation agrees with his perception of the thing, and
whether the artistic rendering will persuade members of the audience toward
culturally unethical and socially unacceptable actions. As Socrates reminds
Glaucon in The Republic, poets may utter blasphemy. Further, even if
they accurately express the prevailing social position on an issue—no small
feat in itself—that prevailing position may be wrong from a realistic point
of view. That is, what the poet says is true is not always so, since what
people say is true is not always so. By his explicit remarks on poetry as
well as by his comments about those who read poetry dramatically, Plato
shows disdain for the belief that it is a means for telling the truth. Further,
by his references to the stylistic method of appeal that poetry shares with
sophistic rhetoric, Plato broaches his disapproval of literature's use of these
emotional appeals to induce persuasion.
Plato refers to the poet as divinely inspired, so it might seem that the
poet thereby should be honored and listened to, unable to fall into error.
However, even while describing the poet as divinely inspired, Plato says
also, in the Ion and the Phaedrus, that he is mad, out of his senses. Should
a poet appear at the gates of the republic, Socrates and Glaucon agree,
they would "fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful
being," but they would also refuse him admittance to the city (Book 3,
398A). While this refusal might seem from a modern perspective another
instance of blasphemy, the Greeks perceived the gods not as creators of
the cosmos but only as exalted beings living in it, subject to errors and
passions themselves, and so perhaps flawed in their inspirations to mortals.
For modern purposes, this distinction proves to be useful in explaining
why in our day poets and other "inspired" voices seem to differ in their
messages even while their representations are so powerful for their audi-
ences. Of course another explanation, and one to which we will return, is
the Platonic belief, adhered to by Weaver, that we cannot accurately pre-
sent absolute truths in human language.2 One more way of coming to grips
with Plato's charges against poets is to say that he condemns inspired dis-
course because it is not the product of Socratic dialectic. If poetry has truth
value yet does not have dialectically developed support, its truth is sus-
pect, for in Plato's cosmology the intellect is privileged and should be the
guide toward truth and right action. That which does not rely on the intel-
lect or, worse, which ignores it, is prone to error.
But even if the messenger of the gods or the madman were accurate and
accurately understood, and even if upon dialectical investigation poetic truths
were seen to be reasonable, still the method of presentation "feeds the
waters of the emotions" of the audience. Having to appeal to the passions
70 The Politics of Rhetoric

in order to gain an audience's adherence is a weakness both of speaker and

of audience (a point with which Aristotle, at the beginning of Book 3 of
The Rhetoric, agrees); the intellect itself and the force of its logical argu-
ment should suffice. Furthermore, employing the irrational emotions to
elicit acceptance weakens the mind's control over them. In terms of Plato's
analogy in the Phaedrus, it strengthens the black horse at the expense of
the white horse and, ultimately, of the charioteer. Unlike Aristotle's con-
tention that art provides a cathartic for drawing off emotional weakness and
unbalance, Plato contends that art increases these problems; it seduces an
audience through its emotional appeal, making them feel and even act in
ways they otherwise would not if they were in control of their senses, and
infecting them with increasing susceptibility toward this illogical method of
persuasion.
This observation brings us to Plato's second serious charge against liter-
ature and connects the two, even as it provides a bridge to Weaver's coun-
terstatement. When a poet or an audience says that something adheres to
"the way men say things are," the nature of ideological orientations invites
the conclusion that such is the way things ought to be. Plato knows that an
effective presentation can induce people to accept the accuracy of its per-
spective, and that "what is" is oftentimes accepted as "what ought to be."
Art has formidable propagandistic potential, and whether it is used in the
societal propaganda to which education is sometimes put, or employed in
the market place in the form of advertising or television programming, or
bodied forth in more traditional forms of art, it can affect social and political
attitudes and actions. In fact, Oscar Wilde's observation that life imitates
art is quite accurate when literature is thought of as powerful rhetoric, able
to persuade thoroughly.
In The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, Wayne Booth argues
that if literature can profit us, there is no escaping the fact that it can also
harm us. Further, if artists can powerfully affect their audiences even when
sometimes they do not know exactly what they are saying or why they are
saying it, they will at times, even though they may not wish to do so, affect
audiences in socially harmful ways. A work of literature may induce a judge
to weep for a criminal or a people for a regicide. The veracity of the poetic
truths cannot be demonstrated, and, contends Plato, the audiences become
increasingly susceptible to both the message and the method of delivering
that message. Everyone ultimately suffers, with the potential for a criminal
to be freed and even for a judge to fall into similar criminal actions. For
Plato, the drawbacks of free artistic speech outweigh the benefits, and while
he is willing to let into his ideal republic poetry written in praise of heroes
and the gods by proven patriotic citizens in the employ of the state, still
he limits literature's use to the explicit goals of the state. He goes so far as
to make this statement at the end of The Republic: "At all events we are
well aware that poetry being such as we have described is not to be re-
 Literary Theory 71

garded seriously as attaining to the truth; and he who listens to her . . .

should be on his guard against her seductions" (608A).

WEAVERS CONCEPTION OF LITERATURE

While Weaver has many affinities with Plato, there is a good deal that
he does not accept. Weaver espouses an ethical and psychological realism
for the nature of art's imitation, ethical because it is grounded in the deeply
held cultural values and symbols that validate "what ought to be," and
psychological because it accepts as the repository for these values and sym-
bols the collective and individual human mind. He espouses the status of
inspired truth for poetry, although the source of inspiration is not unam-
biguously divine, and he even places the truths of literature exclusive of
and above those that dialectic can disclose. And he espouses for literature
an important educative function in the culture.
In his statements on the existence of cultural values and symbols in a
transcendent realm, he suspects that our participation in a "communal mind"
itself supports the doctrine of "knowledge by recollection taught by Plato"
(IHC 157), the knowledge that there exists a God who creates all and leg-
islates all. Of course, in a Judeo-Christian culture, Plato's doctrine of divine
inspiration requires that the poet gain the rank of prophet and requires
that the audience accept the revelation without question or reservation.
However, Weaver does not want to sink into the quagmire of speculating
about which poets are divinely inspired and which mistaken or duplicitous.
Instead, he affirms only that truths partake of universal patterns within
human minds and are transcendent only in this way. His distinction is the
same one Burke makes between Plato and Kant when Burke says of Plato,
"We need but take his universals out of heaven and situate them in the
human mind (a process begun by Kant), making them not metaphysical but
psychological" (Counter-Statement 48). Weaver's poets have access to these
universal psychological truths, as we all do according to this view; their
artistry is in the fullness with which they see and depict these truths and
in their ability to prophesy persuasively about the effects of confrontations
with these truths.
Weaver thereby shifts the source of the poet's power from the supernat-
ural to the natural, and his position on the origins of this power find sup-
port in psychological and scientific theories. Artistic truths, like psycho-
biologists' "biogrammatical triggers" and Carl Jung's archetypes of the
collective unconscious, are innate and psychological. Jung says that arche-
types are "universal images that have existed since the remotest times";
they are the stuff that informs myths and are "first and foremost psychic
phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul" ("Archetypes of the Collec-
tive Unconscious" 206-7). Of the importance of cultural myths, Weaver
says that they are "the great symbolic structure which hold together the
72 The Politics of Rhetori

imagination of a people and provide bases of harmonious thought and ac-

tion" (VO 34). The archetypes that embody the myths reside in the depths
of the collective unconscious, and poetry is able to drag from these depths,
blurred and obscured though they are, glimpses of archetypes.
Certain of these archetypal images of a collective unconscious are col-
lected in the "metaphysical dream" of the culture. Tyrannizing images,
analogous to archetypal images, are compelling embodiments of shared be-
liefs and attitudes. Like archetypes and the collective unconscious, tyran-
nizing images and the metaphysical dream are not dialectically secured,
and while their truth can only be apprehended intuitively they are quite
compelling. Unlike Jung's archetypes, however, a great deal of their force
is dependent on culture; their power lasts as long as the culture does and
when the culture's unity is weakened, so must be the power of that which
relies on common agreement. The force of a tyrannizing image comes in
part from its linkage with the archetypes of the collective unconscious, and
in part from its participation in the subconscious collectivity of the cultural
members in their metaphysical dream. And again analogous to archetypes,
they are strongly deterministic and fundamentally nonrational.
Thus, changes in political and social attitudes affect our access to a tyr-
annizing image. Burke mentions how an adult may chop down a tree for
the utilitarian purpose of firewood, yet lurking just below conscious aware-
ness feel a vague sense of symbolic parricide. "It is possible," he continues,
"that much of the anguish affecting poets in the modern world is due to
the many symbolic outrages which a purely utilitarian philosophy of action
requires us to commit." He goes on to suggest that primitive cultures may
have understood the offenses better and devised propitiatory rituals of ex-
piation (Permanence and Change 71-72). Weaver's position is much the
same: The "overriding mythos, . . . [the] constructive symbol which gave
the artist a starting point and a resolution of his values" (LP 28-29), has
been harmed enormously in the last century or two by modernism; since
the communal assumptions have been weakening, it is not surprising that
literature has become less persuasive and so is held in increasingly less
regard by modern society. In many ways the effects on literature of the
scientistic assumptions of modernism are like those on rhetoric, and the
loss of literature's status as a powerful force for cultural cohesion is a loss
to society.
Weaver says that "man necessarily uses both the poetical and the logical
resources of speech" (VO 165). Literature's weakening, like the weakening
of rhetoric, has resulted from society's emphasis on the rational, empirical,
logical patterns of thought to the neglect of its irrational, intuitive, and
emotional feelings and motions. Like his attitude toward rhetoric, Weaver's
attitude toward literature includes a positive depiction of its nonrational
basis. The emotions are not bad but necessary to give direction and elan
to the intellectual processes, and the means by which literature effects
emotional responses are similar to the means employed by rhetoric.
 Literary Theory 73

Of course, poets remain subject to the charge that they are not "in-
spired," that what they say is not a prophecy culled through some special
ability but only exaggeration or caricature. (See ER 19-20, and LIS 217-
20, for discussions of this charge as it is leveled against rhetorical inspira-
tion.) Since an awareness of archetypes is available to all people—indeed,
must be available to give them their status as "collective"—poets differ
from the rest of the society in that they see more deeply into the uncon-
scious realm and respond to cues more subtly and fully than do others.
This ability comes because the poet "communes with the mind of the su-
perperson," with the communal mind, an ability that derives in part from
the poet's facility with language. Weaver continues, "It is a means of access
to the complex reality . . . which gives him his ability to see potencies in
circumstances" (IHC 162). This process is similar to that outlined by T. S.
Eliot in "The Metaphysical Poets," where he observes that the poet's mind
"is constantly amalgamating disparate experience . . . always forming new
wholes" from the chaotic and fragmentary experiences of life (Selected Es-
says 247). The poet whose amalgamations reflect deeply felt beliefs of the
audience is "inspired," eloquent.
It is useful here to return for a moment to the connection between mad-
ness and poetry in order to point out that madness can be construed as the
process of inspiration through which poets produce their work and by which
they delve into the cultural images and body forth eloquent representa-
tions. But madness can also be positioned in the audience. Burke notes in
Counter-Statement that it is not the artist who dreams but rather the au-
dience: the audience is induced to act "irrationally," to accept without di-
alectical support certain truths contained in a work of art, whereas the
artist oversees the conditions that determine this dream (36). A similar
point is made by Gorgias in his Encomium, when he tries to exonerate
Helen by saying that language has the power of witchcraft, or magic, that
it operates on the mind like drugs on the body to make people act against
their wills. The rhetor is an enchanter of souls and so, presumably, the
audience's madness is the product of enchantment (35 [10]). Even so, the
notion of the audience's madness seems at least partially a misnomer. Peo-
ple suspect eloquence when they are moved by a work of literature. But
as more people are moved—over time and over societal differences—and
especially as they remain moved after critical reflection, it is easier to award
the name of poet to the creator of the literary work and easier to see an
audience who is moved by a work to be not mad but sensitive and accul-
turated. As a result of the poet's ability to induce this response, he is called
by Weaver, referring to Shelley's famous dictum, the unacknowledged leg-
islator of mankind, a strong statement of the truth value of poetic discourse
and a direct contradiction of Plato's perspective (IHC 162).
It is this legislative ability that Weaver has in mind when he says that
"art is a form of cognition of reality; one of its functions is thus epistemic"
(LP 36). It is not, or at least need not be, merely an imitation of an indi-
74 The Politics of Rhetoric

vidual's perspective. However, it is not accurate to say that by "epistemic"

Weaver means that art creates reality; rather, he continues, "the consensus
speaks to the artist, but it does not tell him exactly what he must do. . . .
It rather says, Tell the story, but tell it in a new way' " (LP 36). The
epistemic nature is not an ability to create reality but an ability to create a
way of understanding and seeing reality that did not previously exist; it is
still a realistic universe, a reality already shared by the audience. If the
literary work's assumptions are based in the collective unconscious, it can
present a perspective that is persuasive as proverbial advice for one's life.
The artist presents a perspectival "is" with such archetypal support that it
stands for many as a cultural "ought." Thus, in a discussion of "the world
of our best Southern writing," Weaver says, "It is a world of place and
time, but it is also a world which includes the mystery of the timeless. It
is a place in which the transcendental is apprehended in the actual, and
the actual is never without some link to the transcendental" (SE 57).
In Weaver's view, the artist does even more. Our interdependency not
only makes communication possible but also makes cooperation critical. All
members of a community are linked by common assumptions that they
must understand in order to communicate well, and literature helps to
maintain cooperation by clearly and forcefully presenting our common
ground, our areas of interdependency. Beyond tapping the collective un-
conscious and presenting reality to audiences, the poet helps develop and
then maintain the metaphysical dream around which a culture is organized.
What is tapped from the collective unconscious, then, are those elements
that exist with the culture's metaphysical dream, which means that any
healthy culture will have a metaphysical dream with strong affinities to the
collective unconscious of the race. Further, literature is "the form in which
an intellectual culture stores the ideas from which a society derives its
rhetoric of cohesion and impulsion," that is to say, the storehouse of the
metaphysical dream (VO 152). In fact, the culture need not be particularly
"intellectual," if one wants to consider such things as creation myths and
religious rituals of primitive tribes to be elements in the cultural store-
house. Literature has a cultural mission to symbolize reality as reflected in
our attitudes and as expressive of a consensus (LP 21). To find acceptance,
a work of literature depends upon shared assumptions of the culture about
important issues; it then builds on and maintains these agreements. The
assumptions may not be apparent to the audience; as Weaver notes, the
artist may be presenting an emerging consensus and so may appear to have
a skewed perspective. The artist might well be ahead of his or her time in
identifying the movement of the culture, and societal members need the
work of art to help the nascent movement begin to coalesce. It is probably
accurate to say that the artist applies the cultural values to new situations
and so provides what will become the culture's accepted way of dealing
with the situation. We think, for instance, of John Steinbeck's treatment of
 Literary Theory 75

migrant workers in The Grapes of Wrath, of Kate Chopin's treatment of

women in The Awakening, even, perhaps, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's treat-
m e n t of scientists in "The Birthmark" and "Rappacini's D a u g h t e r . "
F u r t h e r m o r e , a work of literature can serve us in our daily lives. As
Burke contends in an argument much like Weaver's, although more devel-
oped, works of art are "proverbs writ large." They strategically name a
common h u m a n situation and present an attitude toward it. Artists size up
the situation, naming its structure and outstanding ingredients in a way
that contains an attitude toward them (Philosophy of Literary Form 1). As
the situations are common to their audiences the names will be of "socio-
logical" interest to others—entirely in addition to the aesthetic interest
(Philosophy of Literary Form 296-300). Sociologists may consider the value
of a work in "naming" a situation according to how it may work sociologi-
cally in real life. For example, the sociological critic might look at how
Sophocles, Shakespeare, Shirley Jackson, Anthony Burgess, and Henry
Thoreau develop strategies for dealing with the question of civil disobedi-
ence in Antigone, Coriolanus, "The Lottery," A Clockwork Orange, and
Walden, in an attempt to figure out an appropriate strategy in a similar,
real-world predicament. Thus, Weaver suggests that "there is more social
psychology in Hamlet than in a dozen volumes on the theory of the sub-
ject" (ER 204). W h e t h e r we read Sinclair Lewis or Shakespeare or some
other author, "it is enlightening to know that some men are like Babbitt
and others like Hamlet, or that we all have our Babbitt and Hamlet phases"
(ER 205).
It is important h e r e to distinguish between literature in the narrow sense
of propaganda and in the broader sense of guidelines for living in one's
community. T. S. Eliot makes a similar point in his analysis of the different
kinds of religious literature, claiming for the first two narrow moral pur-
poses we might call propagandistic and only for the third the kind of ethical
power Weaver claims (Selected Essays 344—46). As Weaver notes: "We may
freely admit that it is not the prime purpose of literature and of art in
general to edify; still, no art can avoid providing materials which will b e
used for instruction. As a great philosopher of the aesthetic has pointed
out: we cannot conceptualize unless we have data in the form of images,
and it is the exercise of the aesthetic faculty which provides these images.
The artist provides the basic content of our knowledge through his faithful
seeing and truthful expression" (SE 72-73). W e take W e a v e r s restrictions
on the aesthetic realm to b e strategic, as h e is concerned in the essay from
which this quotation is drawn with a comparison b e t w e e n southern and
other literature. In Visions of Order, on the other hand, he allows that
when literature is not controlled by the ethical faculty, w h e n a culture is
satisfied only with the formal excellencies of its literature, the result can
b e disastrous for the culture's health (84-87). As discussed in the second
chapter, the aesthetic realm, if it is to provide health and happiness, must
76 The Politics of Rhetoric

be controlled by the ethical faculty that is itself ultimately controlled by

the religious faculty. This is to say, in Weaver's psychology, good literature
must represent the metaphysical dream of the culture; these reflections
give to a people the images worth conceptualizing about.
Thus, when Weaver says that works of literature such as The Canterbury
Tales "were composed not to further any specific moral purpose, but to
deepen our vision of what is, to help us to penetrate to the structure of
reality and potentiality" (VO 90), he is arguing that literature does not serve
some specific, narrow moral interest. In helping us understand societal views
of reality, it does help us understand our culture's ethical strictures in their
broadest articulation. It relates "the events of history to a pure or noble
metaphysical dream, which [all people] have as a protecting arch over their
system of values" (IHC 165). Thus, by participating in the establishment
and maintenance of the metaphysical dream, literature is certainly impli-
cated in ethical matters.
In sum, Weaver, like Plato, believes that there is a body of values and
beliefs that exists beyond any one individual's full perception of it, and
outside of the purely intellectual realm. Also like Plato, Weaver accepts
that artistic representations of these archetypes are possible, are subject to
error, and may powerfully affect the conduct of our lives. So, how does the
artist succeed in an accurate and powerful presentation? The answer, says
Weaver, is that the artist adds what dialectic alone cannot, and without
which there is no life; the artist adds feeling and motion.
However, because of the effects of modernism, literature is less able to
produce these additions. "True" art cannot flourish unless we believe that
life presents us with momentous issues; unfortunately, the modern age has
no clear "overriding mythos" to give the artist a starting point and a reso-
lution of values. Belief is fragmented (LP 30). Not only the weakness of art
but also its wholesale revolt in modern times can be explained by this loss
of cultural coherence, in that the fragmentation of the culture's overriding
mythos leaves artists with two choices: to symbolize traditional values in
traditional forms and be quaint, or to revitalize the tradition, beginning
with an audience who is aware of what has happened. 3 An artist who chooses
the second option and attempts to revive the cultural mythos must address
the audience through "offensive warfare against the complacent and ster-
eotypical" (LP 31). The poet uses revolutionary means to move toward a
more unified and full world view, avoiding stock devices and patterns, us-
ing rather unexpected combinations and juxtapositions as means to surprise
and shock readers into realizing the reality aesthetically to be intuited be-
yond sentimental and vulgar encrustations of contemporary society. T. S.
Eliot's oeuvre is a good example of the "offensive warfare . . . working to
restore the tradition." His revolutionary techniques are not meant to pre-
sent a picture of fragmentation or anarchy but rather "something like the
 Literary Theory 77

consensus which underlay the mythic structure of Western culture" (LP

28-35).

LITERATURE, TRAGEDY, AND MODERNISM

The consensus, as it is played out in literary works, requires the ability
to write and understand tragedy. "Tragedy presents a universe still un-
knowable when it depicts man as incapable of learning enough in time to
insure his happiness" (VO 146). Tragedy, in Weaver's definition,

is about a being who potentially is, and actually should be, discerning and free, but
who gets entangled in something which "conditions" him to the extent of obscuring
his discernment and ending his freedom. The tragic struggle itself is between this
spiritual and unconditioned man and the forces that conspire against that condition-
less state. . . . The tragic flaw is always this susceptibility to losing one's freedom
of choice where right action is necessary. Our response to the tragic depends upon
a belief that some men become in this sense conditioned and others do not (VO
148).

Instead of the culture's traditional view of human nature, that we are flawed
agents who need education and restraint (SE 236), modernism provides us
with a somewhat self-contradicting vision that denies our capacity to choose
consciously but incorrectly. It is of no small importance to Weaver that a
large contributor to this confusion is the loss of religiousness in culture, a
religiousness that reinforces our flawed natures and teaches the right choices
to make in life. Tragedy, for Weaver, reinforces the lessons of religion. It
teaches us that we can choose, and that we do not always choose correctly:
"Perhaps there is nothing in the world as truly educative as tragedy. Trag-
edy is a kind of ultimate. When you have known it, you've known the
worst, and probably also you have had a glimpse of the mystery of things.
And if this is so, we may infer that there is nothing which educates or
matures a man or a people in the way that the experience of tragedy does.
Its lessons, though usually indescribable, are poignant and long remem-
bered" (SE 218). Until we admit again of our flawed nature, Weaver con-
tends, we will be unable to appreciate and be guided by tragic works of
literature.
We believe, however, that it is more accurate to say that the theory of
modernism makes theoretically impossible the existence of tragedy. Insofar
as people give up their freedom of choice they give up the possibility of
tragic action—or any purposive action at all.4 However, those who do not
accept the conditions that derive from modernism (no matter whether they
profess belief in its theory) will not have this limitation. We wish to explore
the implications of Weaver's position on tragedy, especially his contention
78 The Politics of Rhetoric

that it, and religion, are crucial to the maintenance of the kind of culture
h e sees as most worth having.
In Principles of Literary Criticism, I. A. Richards says: "Tragedy is only
possible to a mind which is for the moment agnostic or Manichean. The
least touch of any theology which has a compensating heaven to offer the
tragic hero is fatal" (246). This book was published in 1925, and although
Richards was both a literary and rhetorical theorist of some note during
Weaver's professional career, there seems to be no consideration by Weaver
of this restriction on religion's place in tragedy, but in fact, just the oppo-
site. Yet Richards's position has merit. If a person knows that his or h e r
actions are wrong and will result in eternal perdition, we would not have
tragedy. Iago, after all, is not a tragic figure. And if a person has no sense
that his or her actions are wrong, punishment would produce not tragedy
but, as Aristotle says, outrage or pathos. Sophocles tells us, for instance,
that Oedipus' horrific fate was foreordained by the gods before his birth;
some would say, thereby, that he should be considered a pathetic rather
than a tragic figure.
F u r t h e r m o r e , we have a problem with Weaver's contention that tragedy
is possible only in a society in which values and mores are agreed upon,
w h e r e there is ethical and religious uniformity, rather than where there is
conflict. Rather, great tragedies are written specifically at those cultural
moments when people question established guidelines. 5 The pre-Socratics
had thrown into question the Greek establishment just before and during
the time of the great tragedians of the ancient world, and the Renaissance
and the discovery of the New World had done the same just before the
Elizabethan era. As Burke states: Macbeth "stands at the turning point
between the feudal attitude toward ambition, as punishable pride, and the
commercial attitude toward ambition, as the essence of vocation. Shake
speare heralds the new, while fearing it in terms of the old" (Attitudes
toward History 24). H e goes on to say that Goethe both welcomed and
feared his Faust, and that both playwrights illustrate " 'tragic ambiguity,'
whereby a growing trend is at once recommended and punished"; the trend
is given expression, but in "forbidding connotations of criminality" (29).
Nor does it seem quite accurate to say that tragedy teaches right from
wrong, or that it teaches what happens when we choose the wrong thing.
Consider Sophocles' Antigone. The ruler of Thebes, Creon, is confronted
with a conflict; in his mind, he must either let Antigone bury her brother
and thereby risk the dissolution of the shaky social stability he has so pains-
takingly held together, or he must punish her for transgressing his law. H e
chooses to execute his duties as a ruler and so executes her; Antigone dies,
as do his son and his wife, but society remains intact. H e is devastated by
the death of his family but has carried out his duty as the ruler of Thebes.
It is not easy to decide—indeed, Creon is not sure himself—if he has done
right or wrong, and therefore it is not easy to say what lesson we are to
 Literary Theory 79

learn from the drama except that, as humans, we are going to b e faced
with monumental choices, the answers to which we can neither guess nor
assume we will be able to answer correctly. Weaver might say that the
arrogant individualism of Antigone must be punished and the social struc-
ture of Thebes maintained; then again, he might say that the society ought
not to stand if the only way to do so is to renege on the duties humans
owe to the gods; society is not worth preserving, may in fact b e too "pro-
gressive" to warrant preserving, if Creon goes against the express law of
the gods to bury one's relatives.
T. S. Eliot, to whom Weaver refers as an artist who illustrates how to
recover our traditional culture and values, seems himself quite capable of
tragedy—at least in his early career when h e was not expressly a religious
believer. For instance, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a poem
certainly modernist in form as well as in the issues addressed, is described
by Weaver as "an extraordinary intuition of the frustration, lack of direc-
tion, and helplessness which can be felt by a modern man at the height of
our materially flourishing civilization" (LP 33). That much alone makes the
poem tragic, since the titular character is aware of his condition and aware
that he has brought it upon himself. In the first two-thirds of this poem
Prufrock is debating whether he will ask his overwhelming question, whether
he will act on his desires; but after he frightens himself with a vision of the
"eternal F o o t m a n , " after h e frightens himself with the possibility that his
question will not b e well received, his monologue changes to the past tense.
His story is the story of a being who should be discerning and free but who
entangles himself in conditions that end his freedom; the great tragedy of
Prufrock is that h e has not lost his discernment and is aware that his loss
of options is his own doing. After Eliot's conversion, however, it is less
clear that he is able to write tragedy; it seems, as Richards contends, that
the existence of a transcendental afterlife denies it. A good indication of
Eliot's change is Murder in the Cathedral: the saint dies, to be sure, but
he has escaped the temptations visited upon him and will, we assume, be
with his creator in eternity. If we feel pathos rather than tragedy over the
problems of Oedipus, we feel outrage rather than tragedy over the m u r d e r
of the saint.
O u r concern with Weaver's views on tragedy extends to his comments
about American literature. H e sees it as incapable of tragedy and contends
that the loss is the result of two systematic distortions in our literature as
regards our traditional view of human nature. One distortion is naturalism,
which posits a universe in which the transcendent realm does not exist and
in which we are merely creatures of circumstance. The other distortion is
transcendentalism, which posits that we are by nature good, and which, in
H e n r y James, Sr.'s opinion, does not recognize the existence of evil. In
Weaver's mind, both literary schools remove responsibility for evil and so
remove the possibility of tragedy, the former because we are helpless vie-
80 The Politics of Rhetoric

tims unable to choose and the latter because there is no evil that could
tempt us to choose it (SE 51-54). These two distortions come from two
differing emphases of modernism, both of which derive from materialism
and produce two radically different views of human nature. The scientific
emphasis holds that, with the denial of the transcendent realm, we are
merely material beings who by logical necessity must be creatures of cir-
cumstance. This emphasis allows for literary naturalism. The social empha-
sis derives from benefits science has brought and holds that we are as gods,
able to know everything and have everything; this latter emphasis might
be described as materialism run amok, in that scientific materialism pro-
vides the reason for believing we can know all and our materialist emphasis
on capitalism provides the reason for believing that we can have every-
thing. This emphasis allows for literary transcendentalism. However, it seems
to us that neither transcendentalism nor naturalism in practice denies the
possibility of tragedy being written or understood.
As regards transcendentalism's loss of tragic possibility, Stephen E. Wicher
disagrees with Weaver, at least as regards the form of transcendentalism
presented by Emerson. In an article published six years before Weaver's
essay just cited, Wicher argues that Emerson did exhibit a "tragic sense."
He contrasts Emerson with Benjamin Franklin, whose "free and easy as-
surance" about life and himself is found to be lacking in the New England
Transcendentalist. Wicher sees the Emersonian tragedy as a "tragedy of
incapacity . . . between a vision that claims all power now, and an expe-
rience that finds none. . . . Only as we sense this tension of faith and
experience in him can we catch the quality of his affirmation. He had to
ascribe more reality to his brief moments of 'religious sentiment' than to
the rest of life, or he could not live" (43). It is also worthwhile to note,
pace Richards's observations, that Emerson had a strong strain of Mani-
chean belief.
We might also consider the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Her-
man Melville, who are often grouped with the Transcendentalists and who,
with Emerson, were skeptical about traditional Christianity. As Weaver
suggests in his brief notes on Hawthorne, this writer "was haunted by
knowledge of a 'bosom serpent.' This serpent was egotism" (HH 719). For
example, in Hawthorne's "Ethan Brand," "Rappacini's Daughter," and "The
Birthmark," and in Melville's Moby Dick, characters are tragic because, in
part at least, they conceive of themselves as gods. If, as Weaver contends,
one emphasis of modernism would have us believe we are gods, the ground
is fertile for tragedy. We cannot of course know and have everything, and
to think that we can is hubris, the tragic flaw of pride. When we do not
understand what we need to understand, when we do not get what we
want—and sooner or later these eventualities happen to all—we thereby
experience tragedy. Indeed, in "The Spoiled Child Psychology" (IHC 113-
 Literary Theory 81

28), Weaver makes this very point—although for reasons we will mention
shortly, he does not term modern people's experience as tragedy.
Although the great Romantic writers of the transcendental movement
seem perfectly capable of producing tragedy, Weaver's point is a good one
if we consider the "hysterical optimism" not of the best Romantic writers
but of popular romancers: If evil does not exist or is so ineffectual that
protagonists easily overcome it and choose only the good, then tragedy
does disappear. Popular romances, of course, while popular, are not often
mistaken for real life or for the best that is thought and said.
The practitioners of literary naturalism hardly suggest a world in which
hysterical optimism grips modern humanity. Further, Weaver is correct to
point out that the naturalists' theoretical pronouncements do deny the pos-
sibility of tragedy. Naturalism is "a heresy from the world of scientific ma-
terialism" (SE 54), a world in which, as described in the second chapter,
human beings are creatures of circumstance. He cites the great American
literary naturalist Theodore Dreiser's theory and claims that in the uni-
verse Dreiser describes, "neither intellect nor moral will has any efficacy"
(SE 54). In such a world tragedy could not exist because free action does
not exist. However, we are confronted again with a theory of the universe
and human nature, and, as Weaver continues, "Dreiser the novelist and
Dreiser the philosopher go marching off in opposite directions . . . [since]
there cannot be a story about a man who has no moral choice; there can
only be a chronicle, and between the two lies a great gulf" (SE 54-55). It
is a commonplace among literary critics that the novels of the great Amer-
ican literary naturalists—such as Dreiser, Stephen Crane, and Frank Nor-
ris—are at best ambiguous about such a world and can be read more prof-
itably, and perhaps more fairly, as something quite different, even as
tragedies. If characters are unable to choose at all because they are helpless
victims of circumstances they can neither understand nor control, then they
cannot be tragic figures. However, George Hurstwood of Dreiser's Sister
Carrie cannot be said to be without free will; rather, in terms of Weaver's
description of tragedy we have cited above, Hurstwood is discerning and
free but gets entangled in his desire for Carrie and a new life and so takes
money from his employer's safe. The tragic struggle, in at least one reading
of the novel, is between the spiritual and unconditioned Hurstwood before
he meets Carrie and the forces conspiring against his conditionless state.
He loses very clearly his freedom of choice when the safe door swings shut
and thereby loses the chance for right action, but the loss is of his own
making.
Tragedy is a powerful means for recommending a cause, an action, a way
of life, since it shows a person willing to die for his or her beliefs (Burke,
Permanence and Change 196). It is, thereby, a useful form of literature,
one that should exist in the best society, although Weaver would not want
82 The Politics of Rhetoric

it available to those who wish to promote the wrong ideas. It occurs to us,
therefore, that possibly Weaver's statements concerning tragedy have hier-
archic intimations. That is, Aristotle and many literary theorists and critics
who followed him perceive the tragic mode of literature as the most re-
fined, as the "goddess of poetry." If Weaver believes in this positioning,
he might on some conscious or subconscious level wish to claim that good
cultures have the capacity to write and understand tragedies whereas flawed
cultures do not, and then fit his analysis of literary works to his desire. In
Attitudes toward History Burke says: "Call a man a villain, and you have
the choice of either attacking or cringing. Call him mistaken, and you in-
vite yourself to attempt setting him right. Contemporary exasperations make
us prefer the tragic (sometimes melodramatic) names of Villain' and 'hero'
to the comic names of 'tricked' and 'intelligent' " (4-5). Weaver was exas-
perated by contemporary life, and his privileging of the tragic could well
be a means by which he established the dominance of his ideal over the
modernism all around him—a modernism that produced not tragic figures
but only spoiled children. 6
These observations suggest that, despite the theoretical pronouncements
of modernism, people are nonetheless unable to maintain their "hysterical
optimism" and, sooner or later, must fall. It may be harder to accept the
fall, let alone learn from it, when we also have to learn the lesson that we
are limited beings, but this adds to the power of tragedy rather than less-
ens it. There is, however, one last point to be addressed concerning Weav-
er's concept of tragedy. He says that for a literary work to capture and then
present effectively a representative human event, the author and the au-
dience must have shared assumptions and values that allow the audience
to make sense of the work and have the subsequent emotional response.
We have contended that the modern author and audience do share a great
deal—including the theory of modernism and the experiential awareness of
its limitations. However, there remain the elements of fragmentation caused
by modernism, occupational specialization, and alienation from the imme-
diate lives and interests of our fellows. These do cause problems. However,
it does not take great effort for the fragmented audience to understand
something of a literary work's perspective. Further, a literary work is able
to appeal to members of its audience in ways that transcend their various
specializations and other differences. Besides the events presented in the
plot, art's power comes also from the formal and stylistic excellences that
help to embody the images but that are enticing in themselves. The former
emphasis Burke calls "emotional form" and the latter "technical form"; we
respond to the latter, he says, because of our "racial appetites" that appre-
ciate the sort of closure—an arousing and fulfilling of desire—provided by
form, regardless of the content that the emotional form offers to us (Counter-
Statement 41-45).
Weaver has not chosen to write much about the strategies of stylistic
 Literary Theory 83

appeal, his lengthiest treatment being in his textbook on writing, and al-
most nothing explicitly addressing specifically literary rather than broadly
rhetorical matters. Instead of a discussion of the strategies of presentation
and appeal, he is more interested in their effects, particularly as regards
what can be called the "charismatic effects" of literature.

CHARISMA AS AN ARTISTIC EFFECT

In "The Spaciousness of Old Rhetoric," Weaver emphasizes the impor-
tance of moving from individual to collective perspectives. A narrow artistic
perspective on a particular image is an "impertinence" because, as a detail,
a singularity, a datum of information, it asks that attention be focused on
itself rather than on that idea it illustrates. Proverbially put, it sees the
trees instead of the forest. Since the truths that the artist presents are not
specific pieces of empirically supported information but deeply held arche-
typal truths, they are generic, or representative, or "idealized" images rather
than particular images. What concrete data they do employ are used in the
service of presenting the idealization, and the importance rests not with
the image in its particularity but with what that image can connote. (A
similar notion, discussed in the second chapter, concerns the appropriate
uses of journalism.) Weaver's notion of "spaciousness" relates to this sense
of resonance—the elements of context—which is comparable to I. A.
Richards's "interinanimation" of words (Philosophy of Rhetoric 47-66). In
describing his concept of spaciousness Weaver also refers to "aesthetic dis-
tance." Aesthetic distance provides a fuller perspective on the image through
which "the parts fall into a meaningful pattern, the dominant effect emerges,
and one sees it 'as it really is' " (ER 175). It permits one to filter the data
of experience through a tightly woven net of propositions. We perceive
what we intend to perceive, in accordance with our inclinations and pref-
erences.
An object that is perceived "as it really is," that has escaped the confines
of the realm of the particular and physical for the realm of the idealized,
has for its audience a "charismatic" power. It generates "feeling" sympa-
thetic to it and "motion" toward it. Weaver introduces a taxonomy that
includes "god terms," "devil terms," and "charismatic terms" and distin-
guishes between the appeal of god and devil terms, which are dialectically
secured, and the appeal of charismatic terms, which are not. He notes:
"We normally 'understand' a rhetorical term's appeal through its connec-
tion with something we apprehend . . . from a reading of palpable circum-
stances," and we give allegiance and good will to those ideas that have
clearly been beneficial—physically, politically, socially—in our day-to-day
lives. Charismatic terms, however, "seem to have broken loose somehow
and to operate independently of referential connections," that is, are not
84 The Politics of Rhetoric

clearly apprehensible from a reading of experience, and thus we can offer

no logical reason for accepting them (ER 227).
Weaver provides for both god terms and devil terms examples from two
categories, one relating to politics and one relating to the larger community
and culture that contain the political system. For god terms, American is
the political term and science, progress, fact, and efficient the broader terms.
His political devil terms include un-American, Communist, fascist, Tory,
and—depending perhaps on one's upbringing—rebel or Yankee; his broader
devil terms include prejudice and various descriptions of biological elimi-
nation and reproduction—what Weaver calls "GI rhetoric." The dialectical
ground for the significance of the political terms is easy to understand.
Devils are called such because their values are antithetical to those which
we have been taught to value, and because they try to usurp what we
perceive to be rights and privileges. Some Christians would contend, for
example, that heaven is our birthright but that Satan can cheat us out of
it. For another example, the period from the end of World War II through
the appearance of "Ultimate Terms" in 1953 provides a bracing list of
"Communist" transgressions against our way of life. The list includes the
transfer of political power in Eastern Europe and China to Communist
governments, the threat to Greece and Turkey repulsed only after the in-
stitution of the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, and the Berlin Crisis; the
list emphasizes how real and large were the stakes for Weaver and for the
West at that time. Indeed, more recently President Reagan once went so
far as to refer to the Communist government in the Soviet Union as the
"evil empire." The point is that society's members are asked to associate
"Communist" with bad actions and intentions, just as Christians are asked
to associate "devil" with bad actions and intentions. Further, for Weaver
and for many Christian Americans, communism was also evil because it
was anti-Christian as well as totalitarian and antidemocratic.
God terms work in the same way. In the political lives of Weaver's au-
dience in the 1950s, to be an American was an unalloyed good. The status
of that term was faced with challenges in the 1960s and early 1970s, chal-
lenges that Weaver would have seen as examples of our society's increasing
fragmentation. Using the American flag as a curtain, as a patch for the seat
of one's blue jeans, or as fuel for a fire, he might continue, illustrates the
sense of alienation from the sources of culture and society that has been
produced by the country's liberalism. Yet, despite the beatings this term
has taken, American is the name we call ourselves, and insofar as our so-
ciety is not riddled with self-loathing and schizophrenia, it retains the power
of a god term. Such a source of power can be seen as an illustration of the
question-begging fallacy, or simply as acknowledgment that our first prin-
ciples of action at the socioeconomic level are cultural assumptions that
determine us and tyrannize over us.
Charismatic terms that Weaver identifies in the broader field, such as
 Literary Theory 85

freedom or democracy, like terms of the narrower political sort, rely for
their effects on their connection to the shared values and symbols of the
group. Given this connection, it is not difficult to see why Weaver selects
democracy as an example. His political perspective would see in its use by
the German Democratic People's Republic a usurpation of its charismatic
power for a political system that, in Weaver's eyes, has no right to use it.
The East German Communists had cynically appropriated the good will
and allegiance people feel for the term.
Weaver's taxonomy helps clarify the extra-logical force in words available
for literary use. A slight realignment of the terms, moreover, can further
clarify this functioning of artistic effect. All terrns of whatever kind gain
much of their power from the cultural attitudes that lie behind them, not
from the logic of scientific law, and this is more important than any distinc-
tion among them. God and devil terms give names to positive and negative
poles of society's system of values, so they help to categorize eulogistic and
dyslogistic images used by artists. Of course one person's god term might
be another's devil term, even when they live in the same society. Thus,
progress was a god term for the citizens of the United States in the early
1950s, although it is clearly not so for Weaver or for many others. The
more common such differences, the more fragmented the society. In a so-
ciety with a clear and strong value system, however, well-named terms
have the power implied by their names, but in all societies their force
comes from whatever foundation the society has, on whatever common as-
sumptions are beyond question. Charisma is the degree of adherence a god
or devil term generates, which is only partly determined by explicit ties to
community values. While we can perhaps point to physical evidence that
supports our feelings about American or progress or Communist or preju-
dice, such evidence does not account for the full force of our emotional
attachment or rejection.
Charisma appeals on a limbic level and on the level of the collective
unconscious, and the acquired uncritical responses form a strong cultural
orientation. The source of this power may be called the "biogrammar," or
the collective unconscious, or the metaphysical dream, but regardless, its
method of appeal is the use of charisma. A "pure" charisma would have no
rationally discernible reason for acceptance. From Plato's point of view it
would constitute what he means by poor imitation; after all, anything we
accept as a good imitation should have some basis for belief in the intellect
as well as the emotion. Dialectically secured truths, as well as empirically
validated truths, have their own methods for belief, but charisma names
that power of an image to evoke irrational, emotional feelings. In his use
of this term Weaver does not explicitly include the charismatic power of a
powerful style, a charismatic power not in the image but in the presenta-
tion of it. Implicitly, however, he does, so that charisma need not attach
to a single term but can attach to a concept or an idea. Therefore, one of
66 The Politics of Rhetoric

his definitions of rhetoric, "truth plus its artful presentation," can stand as
his definition of art as well; truth residing in the image has a charismatic
force, perhaps is even seen as truth because of its charismatic force, while
the appeal of the artistic presentation has another kind of force. An art
work is charismatic in its use of a powerful image, and in its powerful
presentation of that image.
So, to take an example from the legal world, a charismatic idea is some-
thing like the "little red wagon" that psychology consultants emphasize as
an important component in lawyers' cases. If the lawyer can find just the
right image, of a child with a shining red wagon who is crossing the street
just as the drunk driver careens down the road, for example, the jury will
remember and be affected—albeit extra-logically—by that image during its
deliberations. A similar example is offered by Wayne Booth in a discussion
of how the attorney for a small southern utility company beat the attorney
for a large one: The attorney for the large company thought he had the law
on his side, and thought he had presented his case quite well. Then the
other attorney fixed in the jury's mind the image of the small company as
a catfish and the big company as a fisherman about to gut the fish. As Booth
recounts the story, the first lawyer accurately predicted at that moment
that he had lost the case (Company We Keep 304).
To clarify further our analysis of Weaver's concept of charisma in artistic
effects, we offer an extended illustration. "Rugged individualism" is a con-
cept that has played a major role in the development of the American ethos.
As a charismatic idea it has gone under different names, but it includes
especially the attribute of self-sufficiency, the ability and the willingness to
"go it alone" in everything from procuring food and shelter to societal re-
lations. The charismatic image of the rugged individual embodies attributes
described by the idea, and when artistically rendered it can command al-
legiance. In our societal tradition this image conjures up pioneers, cow-
boys, and Indian scouts, yeoman farmers and independent businessmen.
Perhaps in today's more complex society, with such forms of rugged indi-
vidualism long since impossible, the examples would include the indepen-
dent entrepreneur, perhaps the private detective or spy, or even the cor-
porate raider. We know the extent to which politicians have traded on the
concept of rugged individualism, as regards their backgrounds and qualifi-
cations for election and as regards their appeals to their audience's sense
of the American ethos. 7 Of course, advertisers use this charismatic image,
as they do any such image that they can discern as powerful. For instance,
the Marlboro advertisements, using western mountains and ranges as set-
tings, portray a single, rugged horseman herding cattle through winter storms
or performing other difficult but useful activities alone; the charisma of this
Marlboro Man is apparently thought by the cigarette manufacturer to be
powerful enough to sell its cigarettes, even though there is no discernible
logical connection between the cowboy and the product.
 Literary Theory 87

Numerous canonical authors of American literature have provided gen-

eral descriptions of this charismatic idea, but perhaps two have been most
effective. Before the colonies achieved independence, Benjamin Franklin
wrote a handbook for the practice of self-reliance in the country's economic
system, his Autobiography. This text describes the free enterprise econ-
omy and offers practical approaches for success. Franklin has been called
the patron saint of American business, and those who call him this believe
that the lessons from this saint's life should be used by the industrious
individual to get ahead in the dangerous world of business. Franklin's de-
scription of and influence on this charismatic idea is, however, only partial.
It emphasizes what the rugged individual can accomplish in business and
public service, but it is left to Ralph Waldo Emerson to describe this in-
dividual's nature and attributes. Nature and essays like "Self-Reliance" do
for psychological individualism what Franklin did for the economic. They
argue for the extent to which the idea can be taken in the psychological
realm, as for example in the remarkable ending of Nature in which Emer-
son asserts that the individual can create one's own world, devoid of all the
vermin and other pests that make the world less than ideal. Although
Emerson maintains an appreciation for Plato, in the American's philosophy
the dialectical questioner after knowledge is replaced with the individual
who intuits, even creates, knowledge. That is, transcendentalism gives the
rugged individual not only extreme economic freedom but also extreme
individual freedom and opens the door to an individual relativity of values.
With Thoreau's Walden, the handbook is available for the sort of individu-
alism whose practitioners march to the beat of a different drummer, and
whose philosophy and subsequent actions so exercise Weaver.
Taken together, Franklin and Emerson provide a description of the re-
sourcefulness, industry, self-reliance, and individual system of values at-
tributed to this charismatic idea. But Franklin and the Transcendentalists
only describe the charismatic idea; as with the difference between the neu-
tral discourse of science and business on the one hand and the powerful
discourse of the rhetorician on the other, it is one thing to offer instructions
on how something is done and another to show it in vivid particularity.
The Autobiography and Nature inform us about a tyrannizing image, while
other literary works appropriate its charismatic charge in some sort of story.
Literary characters who exemplify this image include James Fenimore
Cooper's Natty Bumpo and Theodore Dreiser's Frank Cowperwood, as well
as Walt Whitman's poetic persona and most of Ernest Hemingway's char-
acters. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman can be read as Willy Loman's
tragic response to his heritage of rugged individualism, genetically his through
his father, and culturally his through his acceptance of Benjamin Franklin's
business ethic as it developed in modern American society. His inability to
succeed in business can be read as Miller's condemnation of the economic
version of rugged individualism.
88 The Politics of Rhetoric

Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" offers a most instructive illustra-
tion of the power of the charismatic idea, since the poem is often read as a
paean to rugged individualism. In this reading the narrator is faced with a
fork in a path and decides not to follow the crowd but instead to take "the
one less traveled by." Striking off for himself "has made all the difference"
in his outing. Something momentous has happened, which he will be talk-
ing about ages and ages hence. This reading places the poem in a tradition
with Franklin and Emerson, with Whitman and Cooper and Hemingway,
and it is not surprising that Frost is seen as a quintessentially American
poet. This poem is probably one of the most often anthologized and most
often read American poems, and a reader equipped with even basic read-
ing skills can get through it easily. It is also a powerful poem, because of
its craftsmanship and the charismatic image so boldly sketched.
The poem is stylistically charismatic, to be sure. Its aesthetic appeal,
Plato might complain, in fact helps blind the audience to a curious discrep-
ancy between the action of the narrator's woodlands walk and the recitation
of it which he plans to deliver "ages and ages hence." But in this analysis
we want to look not at Frost's stylistic appeals but at his use of this charis-
matic image. For three quarters of the poem the narrator clearly tells us
that he has no way of choosing between the two paths. He might as well
have flipped a coin. Whereas the rugged individual controls his circum-
stances and knows what he is doing when he acts, the narrator appears to
be merely a creature of chance, responsible neither for the glories nor the
shame at the end of the trail. Yet the narrator himself seems hardly able
to accept this interpretation; he knows he will later say that matters were
different, the paths did differ, and his archetypal act has "made all the
difference." He knows that later he will impose a form on that chaotic
moment, the traditional form that invests his action with the accepted val-
ues of the group. Frost thereby confronts his audience with this question:
Are we to understand the narrator's action through the data we are given
or through the narrator's attitude? Restating the question, are we to accept
the scientific or the charismatic perspective?
"The Road Not Taken" does more than ask us to contemplate these ques-
tions. It provides us with good reasons to doubt the validity of the charis-
matic image itself, and by extension to question the validity of beliefs based
not on empirical proof but otherwise. We suggest that Frost's narrator pre-
sents in his woodlands walk a metaphor for the modernist's loss of self-
determination, and he asks that the audience accept this implication of its
perspective. The disjunction between facts and attitudes is so clear, the
weight of evidence so clearly on the side of the facts, and the attitude of
the traveler so patently irrational, that the poet dares the audience to be
swept away by the charismatic image when it appears at the end of the
poem.
Nonetheless, very often readers are swept away. They ignore the facts
 Literary Theory 89

because they see rugged individualism as a cultural good, as well as some-

thing that can be achieved. We could say that the poem is a cynical por-
trayal of how emotions will overwhelm the truth, just as too much garlic in
a dish overwhelms subtler spices. We could say that Frost created the
poem so that each reading would be a scientific experiment conducted on
the reader, to determine whether empirical data or charisma is the more
persuasive. In the case of this poem, the results constitute a scientific de-
fense of the unscientific. The poet gives us every opportunity to protect
ourselves from being taken in by the poem's emotional power, and we
nonetheless are taken in, unless we are careful readers. Insofar as we fall
for the trap and accept that the poem is this paean to rugged individualism,
which is to say, insofar as the charisma seduces us, thus far are we acting
not like individualists: we are acting not as a member of the human race
but rather, almost instinctually, subconsciously, as a member of the race.
In any event, however one wants to argue the intentions of the narrator or
the author, it is clear that charismatic effects are a powerful vehicle.

CONCLUSION
For Weaver, literature is a powerful vehicle for cultural order and social
cohesion, but disruptions in modern society have cost it a great deal of
influence and power. Nonetheless, Weaver says, it "offers the fairest hope
of restoring our lost unity of mind" by helping us to see that "there are
ways of feeling about things which are not provincial either in space or
time" (IHC 166). Literature reminds us that we are more than eating, de-
fecating, and mating animals; it provides a gesture of piety toward a realm
beyond the merely physical (VO 152). Like Burke, who argues for the po-
etic metaphor as the "ultimate metaphor for discussing the universe and
man's relations to it" (Permanence and Change 263), and who encourages
us to attend not just to great drama but to the dramas of everyday life,
Weaver contends that if we and our culture are to be saved we must come
to have "an awareness of the ethical and religious drama of every moment"
(VO 152). By understanding everyday life, we realize that it mirrors a higher
realm; as we see this relationship, we are able to give to our social and
political lives a sense of the measure and reason necessary for virtuous
living.
A great deal of the power of literature overlaps the power of a noble
rhetoric, and the purpose of a noble rhetoric overlaps the purpose of liter-
ature as Weaver has described it. Indeed, it is perhaps less accurate to say
that the "complete man" is "the 'lover' added to the scientist; the rhetori-
cian to the dialectician" (ER 21) and more accurate to say that, insofar as
the complete person is the rhetorician (and we believe for Weaver that this
is the case), this person is the poet added to the dialectician.
A problem arises, however, with this description of the rhetorician. Both
90 The Politics of Rhetoric

the dialectic and poetic aspects of rhetoric are involved in the canon of
invention, in that both are means of discovering truths. Weaver intimates
in a n u m b e r of places (ER 18-19 and VO 6 1 - 6 5 offering two good illustra-
tions) that the truths of dialectic are prefatory to the poetic inspiration of
rhetoric; they clear the ground of misunderstandings and identify the gen-
eral position. However, the truths of poetry are clearly superior, not only
for purposes of rhetorical persuasion but as kinds of truth. And we note
that whereas dialectic is a process carried out collaboratively, designed so
that everyone participates in the identification of truths, the inspired truths
of poetry and noble rhetoric come from one person. In this reading, Weav-
er's vision of the rhetorician is indeed in line with the Romantic view of
the "unacknowledged legislator," even in line with the Augustinian rheto-
rician who is inspired by God. The rhetorician as prophet or lawgiver opens
up the ominous possibility that this person will see himself or herself as
possessing truth and not in need of verifying it through communal dis-
course. Shifting the focus from literary theory to rhetorical theory, the next
chapter takes up this potential problem, especially insofar as Weaver sees
its purpose to produce a virtuous culture and virtuous citizens of society.

NOTES
1. In "Egotism in Work and Art" (IHC 70-91), Weaver discusses music and
painting, as well as literature, as aspects of art. He also refers, in a footnote to "The
Importance of Cultural Freedom" (LP 39), to architecture.
2. Language's inability to represent reality is discussed by Gorgias in his Encom-
ium. His point, that to represent truth we need a different language since current
language only represents probabilities (35 [11]), is made by Plato in the Phaedrus
(246).
3. Weaver's options are a variation of those offered the modern artist by Burke
in Permanence and Change (52-54).
4. The point is identical to that made by Burke in his distinction between action
and motion. For one discussion, see The Rhetoric of Religion (39).
5. Terrance DesPres contends that the power of Antigone today comes from the
instability of our modern world, which arose from the French Revolution (12).
6. The conservative hero strives to support the conservative way of life, but the
tragic hero, as we have argued, is not conservative but liberal, acting contrary to
established traditions. The liberal hero is thus not a lawgiver but a lawbreaker, or
lawmaker. Accordingly, Antigone is a conservative hero who, like the American
South in the Civil War, is willing to lose all in the defense of cultural principle,
which in her case is piety to the gods. Creon is a liberal hero, risking change in
tradition for what he believes to be necessary. In this reading, Creon's end is tragic,
and Antigone's outrageous.
7. On the eve of his election, Herbert Hoover said, "Our national task is to meet
our many problems, and in meeting them to courageously preserve our rugged
individualism, together with the principles of ordered liberty and freedom, equality
of opportunity with that of idealism to which our nation has been consecrated'' (New
 Literary Theory 91

York Times 6 November 1928: 24). Six years later Hoover said that the term "has
been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-
fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless asser-
tion of rights led them to make their own way of life" (Safire 387).
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 5
Rhetorical and Composition
Theory

INTRODUCTION
During his thirty-year academic life, Weaver taught primarily freshman
composition at the University of Chicago. Of his coauthored essay, "Look-
ing for an Argument," Edward P. J. Corbett has said that it provides "per-
haps the first suggestion of the value of classical rhetoric for the Freshman
composition course," and of his writing textbook that it "represented the
first instance of the use of the topics in a freshman rhetoric since . . . the
1930's" (380). Yet despite Corbett's kind words and those of others in writ-
ing and public speaking, and despite the depth and range of Weaver's work
in composition as well as in rhetorical theory, he is not often cited by
rhetorical theorists, at least by those affiliated with English departments,
and he is infrequently cited in the burgeoning number of articles and books
devoted to composition pedagogy.
It is possible that Weaver's philosophical and political conservatism has
caused some of his neglect. Teachers and scholars who have embraced
General Semantics (a particular bugbear of Weaver's) or who find conserva-
tive political theory uncongenial, or who find congenial such philosophi-
cally liberal theories as Robert Scott's epistemic rhetoric, or James Sledd's
demands for students' rights to their own languages, or James Moffett's
student-centered research and expressive writing: such teachers may shy
away from Weaver. Furthermore, Weaver's statements on race and gender
issues, on politics, and on education, to cite but a few examples, can cause
legitimate trepidation for first-time readers who discover them in Weaver's
writings, and they can give pause—or worse—to those who feel they un-
derstand something of Weaver's overall theory. Yet for teachers to neglect
94 The Politics of Rhetoric

Weaver's writing on composition because of his conservatism would be un-

fortunate. As we argued in the second chapter, it is not only useful, but
necessary, for anyone espousing the social construction of knowledge or the
idea of rhetoric as epistemic to be open to different points of view; silenc-
ing or ignoring dissenting voices is a sure path to intellectual and disciplin-
ary rigidity and torpor and, ultimately, inadequacy. A commonplace at least
as old as Plato states that good rhetoricians cannot understand their own
positions fully without also coming to grips with the other positions. It
therefore seems reasonable that current rhetorical theorists, by the very
nature of the field, should be open to examining competing perspectives
for whatever they could offer. If nothing else, Weaver's distinctive coun-
terstatement provides a richer context in which liberal theorists and teach-
ers could consider their own perspectives, and it could even offer partial
correctives or adjustments.
Weaver also may have been neglected in the field of composition be-
cause he did not publish profusely, and all his publications predate the
tremendous growth of this field. He was part of what Walter H. Beale calls
the "First Rhetorical Awakening,'' which took place before composition be-
came important as a disciplinary interest (626-27). 1 Yet, while the quantity
of his advice is slight and his topics broad, still this advice should command
attention because of its quality and foresight. Composition, he makes clear
to say, is not a course in grammar or logic or some other skill in the narrow
sense of "a system of forms of public speech" (ER 115) without its own
content. Weaver recognizes the conventional belief that composition courses
are designed to make students more articulate but notes the confusion con-
cerning appropriate ends for their improved articulation. Teachers of com-
munication courses are "turning loose upon the world a power. Where do
we expect the wielders of that power to learn the proper use of it?" (LIS
188). He believes that a course in composition should be a course in liberal
education, and the "content and method" of liberal education should "de-
velop the mind and the character in making choices between truth and
error, between right and wrong" (LP 63). As Wilma R. Ebbitt has pointed
out, Weaver argues that freshman composition has content, that its content
is rhetoric, and that rhetoric is not a skill but the key to a liberal education
(417); one can suppose that this very notion has caused at least some of
Weaver's marginalization in composition studies: his is a philosophy of
rhetoric rather than an outline of rhetorical principles and as such is not
easily cited, summarized, or applied to freshman composition. He also ar-
gues that a good writing course enlarges students' understanding of the
humanities as well as of the principles of scientific investigation, and that
it helps students in their other courses, in their professions, and in their
social relations (EC 741). In the preface to his textbook he expands the
importance of rhetorical studies still farther, asserting that "the continuing
debate' which is democracy cannot proceed unless a significant number of
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 95

our people have an adequate grounding in logic and persuasion" (vii).

Weaver's reason for granting rhetoric this importance is that rhetoric de-
termines values and involves ethical choices, and he insists that rhetoric
should be taught and used with these attributes in mind.
While logic is not the focus of a course in speaking or writing, it is an
important component. Since Weaver agrees with Kenneth Burke that all
discourse is persuasive (LIS 224), and with Plato that sound persuasion has
a basis in logic (LIS 73; PL 730), he naturally gives the study of logic an
important place in his textbook. He argues for its "unassailable" place in
the curriculum, saying that it is a necessary part of argumentation (PL 729).
It verifies a line of reasoning, making it convincing for readers, while rhet-
oric induces them to accept the convincing (RCWR 134). By emphasizing
formal logic, Weaver includes a method of critical analysis that was not
present in many courses, and while he cannot be said to be the major
impetus for the recent attention to argument in the composition class, the
increase in argument-based textbooks and the appearance of numerous pro-
fessional articles on the subject suggest that his emphasis is well founded.
To this emphasis Weaver adds an introduction to and thorough discus-
sion of the topics. Besides his textbook and the coauthored "Looking for an
Argument," Weaver also discusses the topics in "A Responsible Rhetoric"
and "Language is Sermonic." In the latter essay he ranks the topics accord-
ing to their ethical worth in an argument, with definition first, then simi-
litude, cause and effect, and circumstance. In the former essay he adds
another topic, the "rhetorical-historical," which, taking notice of the dis-
tinction between dialectic and rhetoric, combines definition with reference
to historical circumstance. 2 Commentators on Weaver have criticized the
hierarchy of topics for one reason or another. For instance, J. Michael Sproule
argues that classifying arguments is more subjective than objective (297-
98), and that the origins of arguments are not as neatly determined as
Weaver's contention that arguments from definition arise from dialectically
secured positions and arguments from circumstance from expedient factual
inquiries (298-303). Further, lower-ranking topoi may not indicate inher-
ently unethical arguments but rather conscious decisions to use what is
deemed to be more agreeable to particular audiences. Indeed, while Weaver
says in one place that his analyses exclude "artful choices which have in
view only ad hoc persuasions" (ER 55), he elsewhere says that the rheto-
rician should use whichever topic has "the greatest chance to impress" the
audience (LIS 217), and it can be argued that an appeal to one's audience
other than "in the name of their highest good" (LIS 212) uses ends to
justify means. Regardless of the problems Weaver's ranking causes, his
privileging of definition does find support in Kenneth Burke's contention
that definitions indicate one's perspective on the world and are in fact most
often the causes for disagreement. As Sproule claims, "Weaver is correct
in his belief that the moral analysis of rhetoric may profitably begin with
96 The Politics of Rhetoric

an inquiry into a rhetor's definitions" (304).3 Furthermore, current com-

position textbooks show the value of Weaver's reintroduction: almost all
offer some sort of topical heuristic, and many offer variations on the classi-
cal topics.
In his textbook, where most of the particular techniques of composition
are discussed, Weaver offers what has become standard discussions of in-
vention and organization, traditional advice on diction, sentence structure
and paragraphing, and a handbook on grammar. In various other places he
offers some good apothegms for writers. For instance, in "Milton's Heroic
Prose" he remarks, "A timid correctness, like perfect lucidity, sometimes
shows that more attention has been devoted to the form than to the thought,
and this may give the writing a kind of hard surface which impedes sym-
pathy between writer and reader" (ER 162). In the same chapter he notes
the value of writing "built upon concepts and not conventionalized exposi-
tory patterns" (144)—advice that, when one looks at the modal organization
of many composition textbooks (including a section of his own), has unfor-
tunately not been heeded. And his chapter entitled "Some Rhetorical As-
pects of Grammatical Categories" (ER 115-42) provides interesting obser-
vations on sentence patterns and parts of speech that students of rhetoric
may wish to consider.
Whether we accept the implications for composition that Weaver draws
from his cultural theory, such as his belief that every writer should strive
for the protection of democratic principles, his emphasis on critical think-
ing and argument is salutary. In many ways Weaver was ahead of his time,
which passed through a "current-traditional" product-oriented phase em-
phasizing modes and products, through a process phase emphasizing per-
sonal and expressive writing, to the current interest in argument and the
fuller understanding of rhetoric that requires writers to take responsibility
for their writing and consider the predispositions of those who read it.
Whatever the reasons for the lack of attention given to Weaver, they
have denied us a full accounting of his rhetorical theory and an adequate
evaluation of the relationship of his rhetorical theory to the teaching of
composition. He presents a perspective that demands our response; we can
accept or reject or modify it, but in any event he leads us to clarify what
we mean by rhetoric and how we should teach and use it. In this chapter,
we want to explore his rhetorical theory and its implications. In many ways,
his theory is a response to the effects of modernism, and these effects are
most clearly seen in that form of rhetoric taught under the rubric of pro-
fessional communication. Thus, we begin with an examination of how pro-
fessional communication courses indicate these effects and follow with a
discussion of how Weaver would readjust the teaching of writing toward
what he sees as a "noble rhetoric" by replacing the ethical component in
rhetorical study and practice removed by modernism. However, there are
some ominous implications for the application of noble rhetoric in society,
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 97

and the chapter moves next to take these up. Generally, we contend that
his noble rhetoric has theoretical value but his practical use of it is flawed;
he falls prey to pressures in his political conservatism and comes to teach
and employ an ethically suspect rhetoric.

MODERNISM'S EFFECTS ON COMPOSITION

Professional communication courses, explicitly designed to prepare stu-
dents for rhetorical situations they will face during their adult lives, often-
times present two conflicting attitudes toward their product during the same
course of instruction. One approach holds that professional communication
should teach students about forms and formats standard in their profes-
sional worlds and about the importance of an objective discourse that trans-
mits information. The other approach holds that these courses should teach
students about appeals available to them in their professional world and
their utility for manipulating audiences. While these approaches describe
fairly well two kinds of rhetorics, neither considers adequately the relation-
ships among rhetoric, truth, and ethics. They both treat rhetoric as a tool
to present knowledge found by other means, rather than a part of the pro-
cess for discovering knowledge. And while theoretically Weaver seems at
times to place rhetoric in a more central place in this process, in the end
he theoretically—and so practically—treats it as a tool, divorced from the
discovery of truth and limited in its ethical significance.
In "To Write the Truth" (LIS 187-200), Weaver describes the two mod-
ern variants and his corrective, calling them recte loqui, utiliter loqui, and
vere loqui—correct speaking, useful speaking, and true speaking. He also
provides a historical context for them. Weaver says of the conception of
modernism: "There came a moment in the fourteenth century when teach-
ers of rhetoric and philosophy hesitated between two aims: Was it their
duty to teach men vere loqui or recte loqui, in the phrases then em-
ployed?" (LIS 188). Vere loqui was employed by the Scholastic fathers in
debates about metaphysics, within the context of medieval philosophical
and social unity and stability, and, says Weaver, employed dialectic and
rhetoric in order to discover truth and present it effectively. Western cul-
ture abandoned vere loqui because it came to believe scientific assumptions
about the nature and limits of truth: metaphysics, or any issue of meta-
physics, becomes unscientific and so unimportant; medieval unity and sta-
bility is broken down; and the components of truth and the effective pre-
sentation of truth are artificially separated. To replace this approach, Western
culture has employed recte loqui and utiliter loqui. Recte loqui is described
as the concern to use conventions in the attempt to "get things right" within
the context of increasing occupational specializations and social fragmenta-
tion. It arose because the belief that science could determine objective,
empirical truths led to the need to present these truths clearly and accu-
98 The Politics of Rhetoric

rately (see LIS 190). This belief produced the corresponding belief that
some areas of experience are outside the bounds of empirical verification,
and utiliter loqui arose to express personal opinions and desires in those
areas. Utiliter loqui simply realized the logical implications of the "loosen-
ing [of] the ontological referents" begun by the rise of science and became
concerned to use anything to "better our position in the world" in those
areas not covered by empirical investigation (LIS 189). It has been em-
ployed by journalists, politicians, and the advertisers of business. Weaver
sums up the taxonomy this way: "From speaking truthfully to speaking
correctly to speaking usefully—is this not the rhetorician's easy descent to
Avernus?" (LIS 188-89). 4
While Weaver makes a case for the historical progression, his tripartite
division describes elements of language use that are not so much tempo-
rally as dialectically related. That moment in the fourteenth century is for-
ever born anew: we are always asked to decide the degree to which we
will try to distance our personality and beliefs from our discourse, the lim-
its that we will place on our attempts to persuade others and aggrandize
ourselves, and the extent to which we will say the right thing in the way
w e believe it should be said, regardless of how much it might cost us per-
sonally or financially or socially. Textbooks for writing courses, and this is
especially clear with professional writing textbooks, admit of this logical,
rather than temporal, division, although they offer as choices only recte
loqui and utiliter loqui. These nearly opposite formulations, of neutral and
highly partisan discourse, coexist in the textbooks' conventional approach
to professional writing, and the seeming paradox is explained by the nature
of society's modernist perspective: the former is used to put forward objec-
tively the empirically discovered truths of research, and the second is used
in those areas in which scientific verification does not apply. As will be
shown momentarily, Weaver would hold that the former emphasizes di-
alectic without rhetoric, and that the latter emphasizes rhetoric without
dialectic. Significantly, the third alternative, the vere loqui that combines
dialectic and rhetoric, is most often left unmentioned. This is not to say
that professional writing instruction willfully misrepresents the nature of
language and discourse. Rather, it may be that some teachers do not realize
that something is missing, and the more thoroughly society and teacher
education have been conditioned by the scientistic perspective, the better
the chance of this happening. Alternatively, they may sense an absence in
the theoretical conception of professional writing and so its pedagogy—may
sense that there is a need for something besides pure objectivity or manip-
ulation—but have no way of thinking or speaking about it, because a re-
ceived modernist theory of language does not allow for it.
In such a pedagogy, recte loqui is precise and concise, a slave to conven-
tional English and standardized formats, and, above all, neutral or objec-
tive. Such writing was put forward as the ideal by Thomas Sprat in his The
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 99

History of the Royal-Society of London, in which he says that writers must

"return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so
many things, almost in an equal n u m b e r of words. They have exacted from
all their m e m b e r s , a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expres-
sions; clear senses; and native easiness: bringing all things as near the
Mathematical plainness, as they can" (113). Such writing shows no affection
for its subject, employs a "sober fidelity," and distrusts any departure from
the literal and prosaic (ER 8). In professional writing it is used for instruc-
tions, process analyses, and the three to thirteen kinds of business and
technical reports categorized in the textbooks. Its emphasis on convention
exhibits itself in the classroom when students are asked to learn accepted
forms that are said to apply to contexts in their future professions. Yet, as
even a cursory review of real-world professional writing shows, there are
no "forms" of any specificity that can be taught in the classroom. T h e r e are
certain formats, such as the formats for professional letters or memoranda,
and there are general psychological strategies that suggest outlines for "good
n e w s , " "bad n e w s , " and "sales" letters. Beyond these generalities, the for-
mulaic approach to professional writing should be met with Quintilian's
observation, that "rhetoric would be a very easy and small matter, if it
could b e included in one short body of rules, but rules must generally b e
altered to suit the nature of each individual case, the time, and necessity
itself" (II, xiii, Book 2). 5 Its emphasis on standard English and an objective
style is also apparent. Besides a demand for correct grammar, punctuation,
and spelling, this style employs a neutral tone and an objective point of
view in an attempt to let the facts speak for themselves; it is perceived as
a "window p a n e , " which the writer constructs and through which the au-
dience is able, as Matthew Arnold says in another context, "to see the
object as in itself it really is." The important function of neuter rhetoric is
the clear and precise delivery of information, and students learn to keep
from this window pane anything that would distort clear presentation, in-
cluding authors themselves.
However, the convention of the scientistic, "window p a n e " theory of
communication is misguided and perhaps even dangerous (LIS 139-58; ER
2 1 - 2 2 ; 186-210). It is misguided because no one can practice a purely
neutral discourse: since "reality" is not something that can be "objectively"
understood, it stands to reason that it cannot be objectively rendered.6 The
facts that go to make u p our versions of reality are necessarily "regarded
with sympathy and . . . treated with that kind of historical understanding
and appreciation which lie outside the dialectical process" (VO 56). 7 It is
dangerous because it allows and perhaps even encourages ethical irrespon-
sibility, since removing the author removes one way of addressing the eth-
ical component. A tenet of modernism is that the scientist qua scientist is
not charged with ethical responsibility. As Burke notes, a technical expert
assigned the task of perfecting new and more destructive weapons is mor-
100 The Politics of Rhetoric

ally required, as technical expert, only to work on the task thoroughly and
effectively. "The question of what the new force might mean, as released
into a social texture emotionally and intellectually unfit to control it . . .
is simply 'none of his business,' as specialist, however great may be his
misgivings as father of a family, or as a citizen of his nation and of the
world" (Rhetoric of Motives 30). The clear, accurate transmittal of the now-
determined truth is likewise ethically neutral. Far from being responsible
for what is transmitted, the investigator—or a writer employed by the in-
vestigator—is concerned only to stay out of the way. Recte loqui, as Weaver
contends, "appeals to those who expect a scientific solution to human prob-
lems" (ER 9). However, from a perspective outside the modernist assump-
tions, recte loqui creates "an inherently unethical behavior": it allows writ-
ers anonymity and so freedom from being responsible for what they write,
by suggesting that texts replicate objective knowledge gained from scien-
tific research (Rubens 337). It is a tool, ethically neutral in itself and in its
concern for its content.
Recte loqui is not seen as suitable for all professional contexts, such as
those in which no "truths" can exist, nor is it seen as appropriate—or ef-
fective—for intentions other than the clear and precise transmittal of such
truths. These additional contexts and intentions are also part of the profes-
sional communicator's responsibilities and included in modern professional
writing textbooks. For these contexts and intentions, the suitable approach
is utiliter loqui, seen as effective for sales, request, and bad news letters,
for proposals, and, in fact, for all those documents whose function is not
primarily informative (for example, a trip report that tries also to obtain
money for future trips, or a progress report that tries to make the writer
look as busy as he or she was supposed to be). Utiliter loqui is epitomized
in the writing of many advertisers and political speech writers, who believe
in emotionally charged language, in a highly subjective point of view, and
in making the "facts" speak for the interests of the writer. Since values and
policies cannot be supported with demonstrable proofs, such arguments
must be seen as merely expressions of writers' "irrational" beliefs: while
users of recte loqui assume that choices are already determined, users of
utiliter loqui are solipsistically free to follow their own "irrational" desires.
Aristotle's point—that strict scientific demonstration is applicable only in
narrow areas of experience and that elsewhere less stringent but still rea-
sonable means for agreement must be used—is lost.
However, users of utiliter loqui must go beyond irrational desire and
undertake thorough rhetorical analyses of contexts and audiences, the bet-
ter to find out how to manipulate acceptance for their positions. Since rhe-
torical choices in such writing have no ethical limits (Booth, Modern Dogma
65-67), they have at their disposal any strategy that will get the job done.
If the technical expert has no option but to report on new weaponry, writ-
ers whose job it is to sell this weapon to Pentagon officials or to the Amer-
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 101

ican public have all sorts of options. They might provide facts in the most
neutral style, or they may use euphemisms, emotional appeals, perhaps
misrepresented statistics and even outright lies to make the sale. Addition-
ally, writers need not even be true to their own personal beliefs. For in-
stance, a writer of advertisements for cigarettes may emphasize the rugged
individualism of an American cowboy on the Montana range, or the glam-
orous life of a career woman in a tasteful and expensive salon of a midtown
Manhattan apartment; the writer may use these ploys because he or she
believes that while the members of the audience consciously are admiring
the scene, they subliminally are induced to buy the cigarette in order to
"join" that scene. The writer may say that the product has "just the great
taste of success you deserve," or that it "gives you 30 percent more of the
flavor you want," or perhaps will go further. The writer need not think that
cowboys or salons have anything to do with cigarettes, nor have any idea
how success tastes and how much of it one deserves, or how one measures
flavor; he or she certainly need not believe that the copy clearly and pre-
cisely presents much of anything. The goal of this writing is only "to make
men more eloquent about their passions and their interests" (LIS 189).
This separation of "truth" from rhetorical techniques of persuasion is pos-
sible because rhetoric is perceived as a tool. The attention-getting devices
and catchy phrases and excited tones are merely tools a writer uses, and
since the writing is not meant to be objective, the assumption is that it can
employ any view of reality the writer pleases—so long as the readers will
buy it. If recte loqui is in the service of business truth, then utiliter loqui
is in the service of what Wayne Booth calls a "systematic deception," which
assumes that "men are not accountable to their fellows for how they ac-
quire and spend their private fortunes" (Modern Dogma 202n). However,
making people eloquent about their passions and interests while ignoring
ethical accountability produces a cacophony of selfish, competing voices
that easily leads to chaos—either that or, in the attempt to avoid chaos, to
the growth of a totalitarian government and its systematic, forceful suppres-
sion of the individual's passions and interests (IHC 70). Further, regardless
of whether one can achieve and sustain selfish eloquence, Weaver is op-
posed to the assumptions and methodology of a rhetorical practice that
condones self-aggrandizement through willful deception of and even harm
to an audience. When he argues that the classroom should reflect values
that are not a matter of controversy in society (VO 114), he certainly does
not believe that our society accepts or even overtly condones deception;
and when he argues that the classroom should be the place where scholars
"seek out the structure of reality and to proclaim it by one means or an-
other to the uninitiated" (AF 3), he certainly does not believe that utiliter
loqui accurately represents anything like reality.
Such use of discourse Plato calls sophistry. From the perspective of those
who buy the cigarettes and remain far from the range or the riches of
102 The Politics of Rhetoric

Manhattan, and from the perspective of those who develop emphysema

and cancer, this appellation seems correct. Yet, attitudes of rhetoric as a
tool cannot and need not do much with Plato's charge. Given the retreat
of ethics, one cannot call utiliter loqui sophistic, nor can one call "inher-
ently unethical" the abdication of responsibility by the writer employing
recte loqui. For that matter, one cannot say that a consideration of ethics,
no matter the ethical position taken, is part and parcel of the modernist
way of life. It is difficult, when materialism has replaced transcendentalism,
to challenge whatever uses of rhetoric seem accepted by the society. So-
phistry is in the eye of the beholder, and complaints about the uses to
which rhetoric is put would only identify the beholder as out of step with
the current rhetorical climate. Some alternative to the pure objectivity or
pure relativism available when ethics is removed is essential, Weaver con-
tends, if we are to use rhetoric for the artful presentation of transcendent
truth. 8

A NOBLE RHETORIC
In considering the kind of instruction needed to develop this fuller rhet-
oric in the face of the dominant use of recte loqui and utiliter loqui, more
must be done than simply to "rebuke the moral impotence fathered by
empiricism"; Weaver goes further to assert that the role of rhetoric is to
"reclaim the world of metaphysical certitude," and that education should
be involved in "the difficult, and dangerous, work of teaching men to speak
and write the truth" (LIS 198).
A rhetoric whose aim is to reclaim this world has the "intellectual love
of God" as "its essence and the fans et origo of its power" (ER 25). It is
not the neutral presentation of material truths discovered by empirical in-
vestigation and limited by logical positivism, or a partial presentation of
those truths to gain what is personally desired. This rhetoric is intellectual,
he continues, because it employs dialectic, so that each position taken "has
been adjudicated with reference to the whole universe of discourse." It is
love, because it desires to give actuality to the truth discovered by dialectic
and because it acts for "emotional" as well as logical reasons. And it is the
love of God, which Weaver allows to be read as the "love of the Good,"
because it gives ultimate place to the highest good we can intuit. Thus,
"rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions
of themselves, links in that chain extending up toward the ideal, which
only the intellect can apprehend and only the soul have affection for. . . .
Rhetoric appears, finally, as a means by which the impulse of the soul to
be ever moving is redeemed" (ER 25).9 The last passage prepares for two
central issues of noble rhetoric: the relationship of dialectic, as agency of
the intellect, to inspiration, the motive impulse for rhetoric; and the ques-
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 103

tion of how ethics and metaphysics are related to rhetoric, which is to say,
the concept of redemption.
In saying that the soul—the human being—moves, Weaver refers to our
ability to make conscious choices. Burke makes a useful distinction, to which
we have referred previously, between motion and action. People act, Burke
says, and things are moved, which means that we have the capacity to
choose consciously and so the capacity to know good choices from bad,
right from wrong. To say then that the soul is ever moving means that, as
human beings, we must act: our ethical faculty, our knowledge of good and
evil formed by our religious faculty's perception of the metaphysical dream,
is forever a part of any idea, decision, and action with which we are en-
gaged. It is the function of rhetoric to guide this motive impulse, Weaver
says, but the actions we depend upon rhetoric to guide cannot be justified
merely by logic. One reason is that logic cannot act on its own accord. As
rhetoric itself is a tool for the users of recte loqui and utiliter loqui, logic is
merely a tool for thinking—a neutral method of investigating that tries to
establish the truth of doubtful propositions (VO 71)—requiring some out-
side force to be put into action. Once engaged by the rhetorical process, it
pursues its epistemological and logical role of defining and categorizing so
that the subject under discussion is adequately represented with regard to
logos (VO 64; ER 27). Thus, claims Weaver, "In any general characteriza-
tion, rhetoric will include dialectic" (ER 15; see also VO 65).
Another reason why dialectic cannot guide actions is that the intellect is
limited in the degree to which it can identify right action. As Weaver states,
"The duty of rhetoric is to bring together action and understanding into a
whole that is greater than scientific perception" (ER 24). The strength of
scientific perception, and of dialectic, is its ability to provide truth and
knowledge of the physical world—experiential observations of physical events
and verifiable logical deductions based on these observations. These intel-
lectual faculties are concerned with what Weaver identifies as "positive
terms," things that exist simply in the physical world. "Consequently, a
rhetoric of positive terms is a rhetoric of simple description, which requires
only powers of accurate observation and reporting." They are not con-
cerned with "dialectical terms, . . . terms that reflect judgments of values
and always leave one committed to something (ER 187-88). And they are
most certainly not concerned with "ultimate terms," terms that "impart a
general ideological tendency to the entire discourse" (Beale 634) and pro-
vide that to which dialectical terms commit. 10 Dialectic alone is unable to
make such judgments and, when brought to bear on them, can be subver-
sive. 11 Pure dialectic does not consider audience emotions, so the dialecti-
cian may thereby seem remote, arrogant, or otherwise insulting. And it is
"antisocial," since it works only with logical inference and not with what
people believe or what has happened in the past; it is unconcerned with
the organic feeling of the community that comes from its history, tradi-
104 The Politics of Rhetoric

tions, and culture. Thus, pure dialectic cannot support the metaphysical
dream but rather threatens to dissolve society. It questions everything,
tears down but doesn't build, and ends as an "unassimilable social agnostic"
(VO 58-65). For example, in his analysis of the Webster-Hayne debate,
Weaver maintains that Webster's argument for the sale of public lands is a
dialectic regarding power while Hayne's argument constitutes a "rhetoric
of history," arguing thereby that Webster was undermining the fragile
agreement that held North and South together (SE 114).
Dialectic functions as an aid in our attempt to cope with the data of the
world, after we have accepted the existence of inspired truths, understood
that they must be considered, and established our feelings toward them
(IHC 167). Dialectic is employed like logic, something to be used after one
determines one's position, in order to develop a defense that can rationally
validate it. This position offers an interesting alternative to the concept of
"writing as a way of knowing," by which through and in the process of
writing students come to know something about the world and their own
attitudes that they did not know before, and, more narrowly, know what
they want to say in the writing they are undertaking. Weaver's alternative
is helpful not because the concept of "writing as a way of knowing" is
wrongheaded but because an extreme statement of it can be. A number of
researchers into the composition process (Hagge; Selzer; Broadhead and
Freed) believe that real-world writers employ a much more linear process
than is suggested in some process-oriented writing textbooks. They already
have a clear sense of their rhetorical contexts, including their data and their
intentions, and so can move from this knowledge through an outline and
often to a single-draft piece. While researchers do not discount that writing
leads to further discovery, the writers being studied seem not to discover
their intentions in the process of writing so much as they come to the
process with intentions already in mind. 12 Writers write most often be-
cause they have something to say, and they have something to say because
they believe they have a topic and an audience who wants or needs to hear
their thoughts. Weaver would recoil from some process theorists' assertions
that the "knowing" that writing produces is "a self-centered, inward-turn-
ing act dependent on private inarticulate meanings" (Hagge 100). Instead,
he cites with approval a passage from the Phaedrus in which Plato's per-
sonified rhetoric is made to say, "I do not compel anyone to learn to speak
without knowing the truth, but if my advice is of any value, he learns that
first and then acquires me. So what I claim is this, that without my help
the knowledge of the truth does not give the art of persuasion" (ER 15,
emphasis added).
However, dialectic, as it involves an active dialogue with others, remains
part of the rhetorical process for much longer than Plato's quotation im-
plies, and perhaps the issue of dialectic's role in rhetoric is only a quibble
over terms. That is, besides the kind of dialectic that would verify one's
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 105

previously attained position, there is the sense of dialectic as an abductive,

investigative, Socratic process used to determine one's position, and it is
this use of dialectic, perhaps more than the other, that provides protection
from megalomaniacal "truths." To explain, let us say that dialectic is the
name for the process of rhetorical invention by which one investigates
questions at issue between oneself and one's putative audience, then moves
the investigation toward and logically secures a position one thinks makes
sense for the interlocutors; so far we have described the process of S«#cratic
dialectic. Now let us imagine that the dialectician wishes to prepare a speech
or essay in which the discovered position and its supporting argument are
to be presented to people not necessarily involved in the original dialogue.
In the process of drafting the essay or speech, the rhetor "revises" the
position, engaging in an attenuated dialectic with interlocutors past and
audiences future as well as with himself or herself. This revision occurs
because new ideas come to the rhetor and because the situation changes
insofar as the audience or the speaker changes, even though, as the re-
searchers mentioned above observe, it sometimes does not change much.
It is even fair to say that issues commonly considered rhetorical because
they are categorized under the aspects of "editing"—choices of organiza-
tion, rephrasing, and so on—can be called dialectical issues insofar as choices
are made in order to help the audience more clearly understand the com-
municator's point. Further, as Karen Burke LeFevre argues, "rhetorical
invention . . . is an act initiated by a writer and completed by readers"
(35), which is to say, the dialectic process goes on in an attenuated version
by the audience—while listening or reading and afterward. Indeed, this is
Weaver's position on the use of the enthymeme in discourse (LIS 154-55;
ER 173-74; VO 63). LeFevre's comments and Weaver's discussion of the
enthymeme can be used at least as partial responses to Socrates's com-
plaints about writing that conclude the Phaedrus; a written text cannot
answer, it is true, but it can induce the audience into active contemplation
and questioning of their previously held positions.
We are hard pressed to categorize all aspects of creation, revision, and
editing as dialectic; some choices are made less to clarify a point than to
lead the audience to accept "uncritically" the communicator's position. And
we are hard pressed to claim that our broad description of dialectic is
Weaver's as well. He contends that in the process of creation dialectic goes
only so far and must be replaced by inspiration. Similarly, in the process
of communication, "the clearest demonstration in terms of logical inclusion
and exclusion often fails to win assent. . . . [The communicator] passes
from the logical to the analogical . . . where figuration comes into rheto-
ric" (ER 17-18). In the first process, that of discovering knowledge, the
creator nonlogically comes to an understanding and acceptance of the truth
of a situation; in the second process, that of presenting it, the audience
nonlogically understands and accepts, while the creator, through artful pre-
106 The Politics of Rhetoric

sentation, oversees the conditions by which this is accomplished (Burke,

Counter-Statement 36). That is, the dialectical interchange that goes on to
discover knowledge is supplanted by a monologic presentation of that dis-
covery. Gregory Clark says: "What rhetoric represents, for Weaver, is an
attempt by one person to define for others a truth they all will share, a
claim to power that is the private purpose that propels much of what we
say to others. . . . Implicitly or explicitly, writers write for the purpose of
inducing others to adopt their beliefs. And because we cannot not fully
believe what it is we believe, nor, when we express those beliefs, not try
to persuade others to accept them, that purpose is unavoidable" (49-50).
Because of dialectic's limitations, Weaver believes that we must get be-
yond mere intellect to "intuit" the truth. This intuition is nonlogical (not
necessary illogical), "a movement which cannot finally be justified logically"
(ER 23). It is therefore akin to poetic inspiration or divine madness (ER
14, 17), a kinship whose Platonic shift Weaver finds congenial. The results
of this madness, while not scientifically verifiable, are not thereby the re-
sults of megalomania but rather of what cannot be proven but is nonethe-
less true. Inspiration is not the result of exaggeration or caricature, not the
product of mere wantonness, but rather "prophecy" (ER 19-20). While
perhaps we cannot know if it is exaggeration or prophecy until, like a lit-
erary classic, it has stood the test of time, we should consider that proph-
ecy is not about an "unreal potentiality" but about an "actual possibility":
it is not analogous to the impossible romances of Horatio Alger or others
but to the novels of Steinbeck or Orwell, whose fictional presentations re-
semble what later came to pass in society.
To determine whether one might believe what lacks empirical verifica-
tion, Weaver provides three kinds of unverifiable truths: judgments whose
verifications have dropped out of memory but that exist; judgments adopted
from others, not proven by us but by them; and judgments that have a
subconscious origin (LP 8). Thus, scientists believe, although they cannot
prove, that any particular discovery they make in the laboratory will fit
with the collected body of scientific knowledge, that somehow all the bits
of scientific knowledge are connected and, significantly, that future discov-
eries can be predicted. 13 Their belief is, then, an inspired madness, the
means by which they leap from the ground prepared by dialectic to a de-
cision about what to believe to be true. In support of this movement, P. B.
Medawar says that a scientist must read and study the basic subject matter
of the field, experiment and observe carefully, and discuss the material
with others in the field, in order to "put himself in the way of luck" with
regard to scientific discovery and creativity. Blind luck does not play a role
because significant indications would be overlooked or misinterpreted (49-
50). Like Medawar's scientist, the "sane" skills of dialectic put us in the
way of an inspired discovery of our "truth" of the issue. Afterward, a de-
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 107

ductive form of dialectic comes into play to verify our truth and to help
develop a structure for its reception by others.
This explanation of the role of dialectic leaves unexplained the process
by which the leap to truth is made possible. Medawar says simply that
scientists must rely on an act of creative imagination, likening it to the act
of poetic creativity and discounting any possibility that such creativity can
be premeditated (52). Weaver's maneuver at this crucial point is similar,
and similarly vague. An honest and persistent Socratic dialectic brings one
to a moment of "divine madness," of inspiration, through which truth is
intuitively realized. It is not to be found only in, or even necessarily at all
in, physical objects and experience; neither is it solipsistic or subject to
change with changing circumstances. Rather, it exists in a realm transcend-
ing empirical observation and analysis, absolute and unchanging. Further,
while it can never be clearly understood or fully articulated, it is to some
degree apprehensible by all people.
Yet we find it inadequate merely to say that the noble rhetorician "is
aware of axiological systems which have on tic status," and "has a soul whose
perceptions are consonant with a divine mind" (ER 17), and so is able to
intuit the truth individually and surely. To understand the process of dis-
covery, one should ask about the nature of that truth that lies beyond what
can be discovered by logic alone. Burke offers the suggestion that we "take
[Plato's] universals out of heaven and situate them in the human mind (a
process begun by Kant), making them not metaphysical but psychological."
Not metaphysical certitude, but certitude nonetheless, psychological uni-
versals that are transpersonal and transexperiential (Counter-Statement 48,
149-50). Jung's theory of the collective unconscious is also less quaint than
the myth of recollected knowledge; it broadens the psychological base of
common assumptions, arguing that we share a "potentiality handed down
to us from primordial times in the specific form of mnemonic images or
inherited in the anatomical structure of the brain." These shared "arche-
types" give us commonality, so that "whoever speaks in primordial images
speaks with a thousand voices; he enthralls and overpowers, while at the
same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional
and the transitory into the realm of the ever-enduring" (817, 818). Not
metaphysical certitude yet, but something perhaps analogous. Burke's me-
tabiology expands upon his attempt to find common ground among all peo-
ple. He holds that social members have similar orientations not only be-
cause they share the biological traits of humanity but also because they
share social experiences and similar ways of thinking and talking. "We dis-
cern situational patterns," Burke contends, "by means of the particular vo-
cabulary of the cultural group into which we are born" (Permanence and
Change 14). In fact, we may give more credence to society's orientations
than to our own sense of what happened because this metabiological aspect
108 The Politics of Rhetoric

is so strong, as for instance, Oedipus's happiness with Jocasta dissolves

when he discovers that she is not only his wife but his mother. People wish
to identify with their social group and tailor their interpretations to fit com-
munal standards. "Any explanation is an attempt at socialization" (Perma-
nence and Change 24), and since socialization is biologically authorized,
that is, "hard-wired" into our makeup, we try to explain our feelings both
to ourselves and to others according to communal standards. Metabiology,
or the collective unconscious, or the doctrine of knowledge by recollection,
is a guarantee that discourse—literature, spacious rhetoric, or other—can
speak to all people to some extent because all people share common ground.
In a complex modern society, the discourse may have to be fairly "primi-
tive," stripped of markers that for one group of people would trigger one
response and for another group trigger another, but the common ground
does exist.14
Weaver supports his position on divine madness by referring to Plato's
myth of the soul and his doctrine of knowledge by recollection, although
he admits it might be considered quaint. But he makes a maneuver similar
to Burke's, supplanting the Platonic with the psychological, when he offers
his conception of the "metaphysical dream." The metaphysical dream is the
"collective consciousness of the group [which] creates a mode of looking at
the world or arrives at some imaginative visual bearing. It 'sees' the world
metaphorically according to some felt need of the group" (VO 10-11). The
noble rhetorician has a mind consonant with divinity (IHC 150; ER 17) and
possesses the power to see truth and present it. 15 Since truth is stable and
partially perceivable, our political and social attitudes and actions should
be guided by it, which means our ethical decisions should be guided by it.
Weaver's critical rationalist approach to truth thus would seem to be an
improvement on the rhetoric as epistemic movement. For instance, Robert
Scott, whose 1967 article is sometimes seen as the beginning of this move-
ment, requires that situational truth consider the "ethical guidelines of tol-
eration, will, and responsibility" ("On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic" 16),
and he asserts that these guidelines "have meaning only in a reality that is
social" ("On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic: Ten Years Later" 266, empha-
sis added). As stated in the second chapter, restricting meaning only to
what can be socially constructed opens up complexities difficult to recon-
cile. A number of rhetorical theorists also see these problems. Richard
Cherwitz criticizes the complexities generated by this theory and concludes
by saying "the claim that rhetoric is epistemic must be markedly atten-
uated" (219). Richard Fulkerson suggests that epistemic rhetoricians, in the
attempt to determine the extent of adherence a truth can claim, insert
between mere relativism and transcendentalism an evaluation based on the
"quantity and quality of audience adherence." However, as Fulkerson con-
tinues, one would have to consider whether this evaluation itself were a
good one, thereby launching a continuing regression that can only end by
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 109

re-establishing the transcendental realm (200). Edward Schiappa notes that

the price we pay for adhering solely to a socially constructed view of reality
is to give up history, and if all history is interpretation, he continues, "then
Ronald Reagan's history of the Vietnam War is as reliable as that of Stanley
Karnow, and his account of the Iran-Contra Affair is as good as that of Bill
Movers." Schiappa then cites Foucault's power/knowledge dynamic and ar-
gues, "Eliminate all vestiges of the will-to-truth, and naught but the will-
to-power remains. If power is all that writes history, then there is no basis
for reclaiming marginalized histories, no basis for critiquing establishment
narratives, and no basis for curing cultural amnesia about past genocide,
misogyny, and racism" (13). A system in power uses whatever is available
to stay in power, and providing it with the right to determine history, as
well as current affairs and our very reality, gives it enormous potential for
harm. Weaver agrees with these observations. "Positivism and relativism,"
he contends, "may have rendered a certain service as devil's advocates if
they have caused us to be more careful about our concepts and predicates,
yet their position in net form is untenable. The battle against general prop-
ositions [Fulkerson's transcendental realm] was lost from the beginning"
(LIS 224). Further, positivism and relativism can lead to social chaos, since
the loss of a constraining transcendent system can tempt one not to adhere
to Scott's sense of responsibility but rather to see what one can get away
with (RC 12); it can also lead, as a corrective to chaos, to a brutal rule by
force rather than the application of Scott's toleration (RC 12; IHC 70).
Scott contends, on the other hand, that belief in transcendent truth "leads
logically to the position that there should be only two modes of discourse:
a neutral presenting of data among equals and a persuasive leading of in-
feriors by the capable" ("On Viewing Rhetoric" 10), with, apparently, the
first used for the philosophers' speech among themselves, and the second
for their speech to the hoi polloi, that is, recte loqui and utiliter loqui,
respectively. However, people who believe they possess some truth, situ-
ationally or not, oftentimes will profess their beliefs in one way to their
colleagues and in another way to "inferiors." They may believe that their
peers can add to or correct their position and so present material in one
way; for those unacquainted with the material and ill-equipped to under-
stand it at the expert level, speakers have another goal, best served by
another form of presentation. Also, and perhaps less reasonably, people
tend to show more respect and deference to their peers than to those they
perceive as their inferiors. It must also be said that some epistemic rheto-
ricians speak and write at times as if they are quite certain of their positions
and quite dismissive of conflicting ones (Fulkerson 200-1). Although it is
too simple to say that even relativists believe in at least the certain truth
of relativism, Weaver cannot ignore the philosophical necessity for some
stable ground for relativistic beliefs and the theory that supports those be-
liefs, for some ground beyond changing situations.16
110 The Politics of Rhetoric

Furthermore, Weaver holds theoretically that the noble rhetorician does

not have full access to the truths residing in the mind of God, only that
those truths exist. The rhetorician is still required to abide by the ethical
guidelines of toleration, will, and responsibility in the pursuit of some un-
derstanding of these truths, just as Socrates abided by these guidelines in
his dialectical pursuit of truth. Thus, Socrates's remark to Phaedrus that
Pericles would be gentle in correcting an erring student suggests the di-
alectician's belief that the true rhetorician does not block thinking and dis-
cussion but encourages it. Indeed, in his analysis of the Phaedrus, G. R. F.
Ferrari maintains that the dialogue argues not for the assertion of certain
truths but for their pursuit and for our necessary reliance on what is prob-
ably true. Socrates even remarks to Phaedrus that "an attempt to reach the
good is probably good for one" (emphasis added). Weaver admits of the
importance of tolerance regarding the opinions of others (LP 60-61; AF 3 -
4), and while neither Plato nor Weaver is willing to say that an individual
can certainly know certain truth, both agree that certain and stable truths
do exist and that some people can have more access to them than others
(RC 11).
Perhaps, given the impossibility of finding metaphysical certitude; or,
finding it, of being able to understand it fully; or, understanding it, of
being able to communicate it completely—perhaps, given all this, we may
need to look elsewhere for what to believe and the extent to which we
should hold it as true. The rise of nominalism, Weaver believes, has left
"no escape from the relativism of'man the measure of all things/ " and it
might have to be accepted that we are the measure—not Nature, not em-
pirical science, not transcendent truth. Perhaps our duty involves, in the
words of Wayne Booth, "discovering warrantable beliefs and improving those
beliefs through shared discourse" (Modern Dogma xiii).
But this chapter is not the place to describe what a "warranted speaking"
would entail. We have described dangers in the modern use of rhetoric of
which Weaver warns us, pointed out problems Weaver himself introduces
in his attempt to overcome these dangers, and showed, despite these prob-
lems, how Weaver makes an important contribution to an understanding
of rhetoric. He warns us away, forcefully and eloquently, from doing un-
thinkingly what we are told is "right" or from doing what is immediately
and selfishly "useful." His conception of rhetoric as axiological, concerned
to restore habits of moral thought and expression essential to a society
founded upon traditional humanistic truths, is a step away from the coer-
cion of scientistic dialectic and the blandishments of its sophistic counter-
part. This much is a good deal of help.
Yet despite Weaver's help in giving us a perspective on the problems of
modern rhetorical use, his theory generates some problems of its own. This
chapters last section investigates these problems.
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 111

SOME PROBLEMS IMPLICIT IN WEAVER'S RHETORICAL

THEORY

Walter H. Beale cites with approval Richard Lanham's remark that "every
serious treatment of rhetoric is at least by implication a study of human
motivation," and continues to say that "thoughtful treatments and programs
of rhetoric . . . are either celebrations of a particular character type and a
particular ideal or—at their most engaging moments—attempts to change
or rehabilitate both character and culture" (626). Weaver quite clearly cel-
ebrates one character and ideal while trying to change another, so as we
examine his understanding of rhetoric we should consider also his under-
standing of character. Beale's observation suggests that rhetorical theoriz-
ing can indicate not just what the theorist thinks of rhetoric but much
more—what the theorist thinks of a culture and of appropriate activities of
the human character. To look at Weaver's rhetorical theory in this way is
to follow also Burke's observations about the creative process, which ap-
plies even though Burke is speaking especially about "fine literature." Burke
says that "a poet will naturally tend to write about that which most deeply
engrosses him—and nothing more deeply engrosses a man than his bur-
dens" (Philosophy of Literary Form 17). Further, the writer "dances an
attitude" toward these burdens, an attitude that can be deciphered in a
manner analogous to how a psychiatrist might decipher the reasons for a
person's facial tics. In light of Burke's observations, our question is: What
does Weaver celebrate?
Certainly he celebrates the existence and practice of noble rhetoric, which,
in a definition that encapsulates the problems arising from his theory, he
calls "truth plus its artful presentation" (LIS 71). A noble rhetorician must
know how to come upon some aspect of the truth, as well as know how to
find the available means of persuading an audience to accept it. As we have
indicated, this definition of rhetoric suggests that the discovery of truth is
prior to rhetoric, that the identification of truth is distinct from its presen-
tation to others. The inclusion of the modifier "artful" creates a further
problem: it suggests that the presentation might be manipulative or exploi-
tative, as well as untrue, since if rhetoric consists of truth plus something
else, the "something else" must be other than truth. In effect, this defini-
tion of rhetoric separates dialectic from presentation and opens the door to
abuses of and through rhetoric.
The separation of dialectic from presentation also diminishes rhetoric's
significance. Rhetoric is bifurcated in Weaver's definition into invention
and style, and in practice, rhetoric as a disciplinary activity is limited to
the latter. 17 This separation of rhetoric into dialectic and style, apparent in
the use of both recte loqui and utiliter loqui, is also apparent in Weaver's
own textbook. This separation could be seen as a curricular or administra-
112 The Politics of Rhetoric

tive matter, with the textbook becoming a handbook for those who already
have something to say and an audience to whom they wish to say it. Yet
such a removal would counter Weaver's own eloquent argument for the
importance of rhetoric, since the means by which students determine val-
ues and ethics, and the means by which they assist in the maintenance of
the democracy, are learned elsewhere. Dialectic, having been theoretically
separated, can be reintroduced into the classroom but its reintroduction
confuses the course of instruction.
Weaver's textbook illustrates this confusion. Despite its prefatory state-
ment that students must first have "the topic and the end in view for the
writing" (ix), it does not offer the means for finding something to say and a
reason for saying it. The result relegates the teaching and study of rhetoric
to a mere skills course. The skills of how (not what) to present effectively—
how to categorize and organize it, how to validate it logically, how to or-
nament it—are quite useful in themselves, but they are abstract, neutral,
removed from particular events. Thus, for instance, education in dialectic
is replaced by education in formal logic, which teaches students to examine
arguments already made but does not show them how to develop their own
arguments; logic is something they learn in order to apply it after they have
a topic, a purpose, and oftentimes, a draft of their argument. Meanwhile,
distancing the skills from particular issues and purposes makes advice on
using the topics to develop content and on using logic to check reasonable-
ness less helpful than it could be. Since questions are substantively sepa-
rated from content, students have less occasion to see reasons and methods
for adjusting to the recalcitrance of an audience or to actual events. On
what basis, a student may ask, can one know what topical material is rea-
sonable and should be kept and used? Good communication is much more
than what is indicated by the text because it involves invention in a much
richer sense. Thus, Weaver's textbook is limited by its artificial separation
of dialectic from rhetoric and the removal of the former from the course of
study. Students must somehow, outside the assistance offered by the text-
book, find contexts in which they can develop "topic and purpose," so that
they can make the abstract skills understandable, practical, and useful.
A more serious implication—one that goes beyond poor pedagogy to so-
cial danger—is the problem voiced implicitly by Scott and Clark. One who
knows the truth and is preparing to present it to others, as distinct from
one who presents a contextual, tentative position for examination by oth-
ers, tends toward manipulation. This latter role is one of the roles of the
rhetorician in Perelman's pluralistic state. For Perelman, the state can ful-
fill its role as the arbiter and guardian of order not through coercion or
manipulation, but only by refusing to identify itself with any ideology. It
must refrain from granting to any individual or group the exorbitant privi-
lege of setting up a single criterion for what is valid and appropriate. It
must respect different individuals and groups, regardless of their ability to
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 113

create or understand metaphysical subtleties, and recognize that the exer-

cise of rights and freedoms may have drawbacks and even cause trouble.
"The state's function is not to suppress these liberties, but to moderate
their most dangerous excesses" (Perelman, "Philosophy of Pluralism" 6 6 -
67, 71).
At times, Weaver's theory agrees with much of this position. He says,
for instance, that "it is wholly unpermissible to censor works of culture for
presenting a subject as less attractive than one would like it to be" (LP 22),
and while he does allow for censorship "where physical and moral survival
raise problems of a more immediate kind" (LP 37), our own country's thorny
censorship problems indicate the difficulty in determining threats to moral
survival in a pluralistic culture. Further, his theory claims "that a free so-
ciety is a pluralistic society, that a pluralistic society is one with countless
propaganda from many sources, and that coping with propaganda requires
a widespread critical intelligence which is largely the product of education"
(RR 82)—not censorship, but education. However, this position is directly
counter to the role of the rhetorician who already knows the truth and is
presenting it to others. In The Republic, Plato saw the role of rhetoric to
be for social control—the only means of social control besides coercion for
those unable to scale the heights of philosophical disputation and look on
truth that way. Some people say that Plato's vision of a political state bor-
ders on fascism because he favors the censorship of politically questionable
discourse, is ill-disposed to democracy and certainly to universal education,
and is uncomfortable with the teaching of rhetoric and the practice of writ-
ing. Weaver, if not as repressive as Plato, is still tradition-bound and even
reactionary. Since he believes that traditional values should guide one's
actions, he sympathizes little with such political and social movements as
liberalism, communism, and radical egalitarianism. In the realm of lan-
guage theory, therefore, he would not sympathize with such recent ideas
as rhetoric as epistemic, the indeterminacy of language, and the process
theory of composition that holds, in the words of Erika Lindemann, that
teachers "cannot be authorities, in the usual sense, transmitting a body of
knowledge to students" (259). However, such views as Weaver mentions
are what Scott has in mind when he scents the "breath of the fanatic" who
is only too willing to engage in the "persuasive leading of inferiors by the
capable" ("On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic" 12, 10).
Further, his hierarchical position on the possession of knowledge opens
up the question of the ethical implications of the communicator. How, for
instance, does such a view define "persuasiveness"? Does it allow rhetoric
a well-intentioned manipulation of inferiors? To what extent does it allow
for deceit—if only "in the best interests of" inferiors? In The Republic, for
instance, Plato condones falsehood and deceit by the rulers for the good of
the people (Book 5, 459D). In Laws (Book 4, 720-22; Book 10, 855), he
says that rhetoric can be used to present a benevolent lie to persuade the
114 The Politics of Rhetoric

populace. Is Weaver very far removed from Plato's positions? To what ex-
tent might his conception of rhetoric allow for censoring what is deemed
untrue and dangerous to the polity? The answers lie to some extent in
Weaver's perception of language's relationship to human nature and to
knowledge.
Unfortunately, Weaver is not clear about how we can know the truth.
As Johannesen, Strickland, and Eubanks note: "What the ultimate Good
was and how it is known through intuition, Weaver never really made clear.
What comprised his ultimate Good was likewise unclear" (LIS 12). Part of
the problem is that, even in Weaver's view, truth is unobtainable, some-
thing to strive for but not to attain. Perhaps poets' legislative function is
unacknowledged not simply because no poet has the artistic grace to make
truths appealing to all but also because their intellects and experiences
limit the way in which truth is perceived. Weaver refers to the quality of
"spaciousness" in rhetoric both as the "resonances" that truth has and as
the "opacity" of its presentation, as including both content and style (ER
169, 175). Setting aside the issue of one's ability to present truths artisti-
cally, there remains the issue of one's ability to perceive the truth: the fact
is, Weaver admits that the truth cannot be clearly, unambiguously per-
ceived. While ideal forms exist in the transcendent realm, we limited hu-
mans can only perceive and create lesser versions here on earth. 18 For
Plato and for Weaver, as well as for the Christian ethos within which Weaver
places himself, there exists an eternal truth that, due to the limitations of
this world, we cannot perceive clearly or fully, and may misperceive. Thus,
despite a "pipeline to the gods," the intellect and set of experiences of the
noble rhetorician invariably filter and, to an extent, distort the truth.
Furthermore, while the audience shares with the speaker a metaphysical
dream—or a collective unconscious, a recollection of the realm of ideas, or
a kinship through God in heaven—societal fragmentation and the speciali-
zation of knowledge increase the possibility that they will not share the
speaker's perception of truth. Despite what remains of their awareness of
the culture's metaphysical dream of the culture they may see the speaker's
"divinely inspired truth" as no more than personal truth, and no more
valid. Many people have perceptions about truth that conflict with those of
their fellows, and some people are even inspired by "intimations of divine
approval" to take socially unpleasant actions. Henry David Thoreau, for
one, held that he should not resign his conscience either to the govern-
ment or to majority opinion when he had divine approval, and Ralph Waldo
Emerson, says Weaver, also claimed authority from divine approval. At-
tacking these Transcendentalists, Weaver says that the former lacked the
sense that individual rights are secured only within and through a social
context (LP 71), and that the latter is guilty of an "arrogant egotism" that
seems to say, "What I am doing is right because I am the one who is doing
it" (SE 52).
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 115

Weaver claims to ground his inspired truth in social contexts and cultural
traditions, a benefit to understanding since at least we all are familiar with
them and understand them. In general, people agree with the truth of the
statement that "life and the world are to be cherished" (IHC 19). And
people can also agree with his sentiment that we should favor the stability
of tradition, meanings, and values, provided they can be altered in the face
of good reasons. But, as Chapter 3 makes clear, the particulars of his vision
of the transcendent realm of truth have problems, as do his means of dis-
covering truth—his belief in divine approval, his "arrogant egotism."
These problems reveal a difficulty in distinguishing between base rheto-
ric and noble rhetoric. Johannesen, Strickland, and Eubanks point out that
"Weaver fails to explain how a critic may determine whether a given line
of argument is a metaphysical choice reflecting a speaker's philosophical
stance or an 'artful' choice necessitated by the practicalities of audience
adaptation" (LIS 26-27). For example, he says that a base rhetorician would
"dress up one alternative in all the cheap finery of immediate hopes and
fears, knowing that if he can thus prevent a masculine exercise of imagi-
nation and will, he can have his way" (ER 12). This rhetorician uses "ex-
aggeration" and "caricature" (ER 19), and "takes advantage of his hearers
by playing upon their feelings and imaginations. He overs tresses the im-
portance of his topics by puffing them up, dwelling on them in great detail,
using an excess of imagery or of modifiers evoking the senses, and so on"
(LIS 218).
The noble rhetorician, however, uses not caricature but "prophecy" (ER
19-20), not exaggeration but emphasis or amplification (LIS 217). The use
of the latter Weaver defends by saying that making an action animated and
a scene vivid merely adds the emotions to the reason for the better moving
of the will. Yet, caricature for one person is prophecy for another, and
exaggeration for one is noble amplification for another. Weaver attempts to
differentiate base from noble rhetoric and exaggeration and caricature from
acceptable amplification and vividness by analyzing Daniel Webster's speech
for the prosecution in the murder trial of John Francis Knapp. Webster,
Weaver contends, engages in "actualizing for the jury the scene of the
murder as he has constructed it from circumstantial evidence" (LIS 218).
While some people, Weaver admits, feel that such dramatization too much
affects the emotions to the detriment of intellectual judgment, we simply
cannot avoid the participation of emotions in our deliberations and, in fact,
must employ such appeals if we are to make our case. In this way Weaver
endorses Webster's use of rhetoric. In theory the point makes sense and is
similar to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's notion of "presence" (New
Rhetoric 115-20): something present to the consciousness assumes thereby
importance, and Antony's waving of Caesar's bloody tunic, or the accused
traitor's showing scars he received in his nation's wars, or the young child's
little red wagon illustrate the concept. In practice, though, it is sometimes
116 The Politics of Rhetoric

difficult to differentiate between noble amplification and the "exaggera-

tion," the "caricature," the "cheap finery" of the base rhetorician. The dif-
ficulty is in fact apparent in Weaver's analysis of Webster's speech. Web-
ster reconstructs the murderer's heinous attack on his sleeping victim,
claiming at the end of the passage Weaver quotes that he got away cleanly:
"The secret is his own, and it is safe!" (LIS 219). Actually, John Crowen-
shield, the man whom the Knapp brothers hired to commit the murder,
committed suicide in prison. John Francis Knapp was on trial for hiring the
murderer and aiding in the commission of the crime, and his brother Jo-
seph was to be tried as an accessory. Webster needed to demonstrate John
Francis Knapp's involvement in the crime and therefore emphasized the
careful planning and the window that had been deliberately opened for the
murderer to enter, presumably for Crowenshield.
Thus, the amplification Webster used to get the audience beyond the
"cold and unmoved" state in which the facts alone might leave them was
effective, but it exceeded the facts of the case to establish John Francis
Knapp's complicity, since he was neither the murderer nor even in the
room when the murder was committed. Knapp was hung, in part because
of Webster's keen ability to visualize the murder scene for the jury and
also because of Webster's immense prestige. However, Weaver does not
tell us that John Francis Knapp was the author of the murder but not the
murderer, thereby leaving the impression that Webster merely described
Knapp's own actions with rhetorical vividness. When we also know that the
case against Knapp was built upon circumstantial evidence, it is even more
difficult to see Weaver's example as somehow different in kind from those
he ascribes to base rhetoricians. 19
Weaver also seems guilty of a few instances of base rhetoric in his cele-
bration of political conservatism, since the charge that the base rhetorician
"seeks to keep the understanding in a passive state by never permitting an
honest examination of alternatives" (ER 12) can be leveled at him. For
instance, he offers the following: "We must avoid, however, the temptation
of trying to teach virtue directly, a dubious proceeding at any time and one
under special handicaps in our day." Following his own advice, apparently,
he argues for the transcendentalist position and against the materialist by
appealing to the right of private property—what he calls the last metaphys-
ical right but what some might see as the first materialist right (IHC 130-
31). He also maintains that the return to principles espoused by the ante-
bellum South would restore the "moral and aesthetic medium" of modern
society. Yet he decides that those who try to bring these principles back
into favor should not employ "symbols of lost causes. There cannot be a
return to the Middle Ages or the Old South under slogans identified with
them. The principles must be studied and used, but in such presentations
that mankind will feel the march is forward" (STB 394-95). This strategy is
manipulative in that it encourages adherents of Weaver's position to pre-
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 117

sent reactionary positions in ways that makes them look progressive. In

fact, the manipulation is condemned by Weaver himself in another context
when, speaking of "rhetorical prevarication," he says, "The users do not
fall back on the excuse that reality has changed and that verbal usage must
change with it; they simply take the word out of one context and put it in
another in order to advance an ideological point of view" (LIS 135). While
one might say that Weaver is only urging adherents to "speak the language
of the tribe," as Burke encouraged the participants of the 1935 American
Writer's Congress to exchange the term proletariat for the more honorific
people, one might perhaps more accurately say that he urges adherents to
mislead the public, because he and they know what is good for the rest of
the country.
Apart from this advice, Weaver employs in his own practical rhetoric a
number of examples of exaggeration and caricature. How else shall one
describe his statement that liberal professors are less interested in the
structure of reality than in supporting and promulgating Marxist theory (AF
8)? Certainly he must admit to exaggeration, in that this description does
not include all liberal professors, and he also should confess to his carica-
ture of liberals as ideological and conservatives as not so. He does admit,
when theorizing, that "every use of speech, oral or written, exhibits an
attitude"—whether the use is by a liberal or a conservative (LIS 221). In-
deed, theoretically he denies the existence of objective discourse, whether
practiced by pure dialecticians (VO 57), social scientists (LIS 145), public
information officers (ER 22; IHC 100), or anyone else. In the pamphlet on
academic freedom, he charges the professoriate with an "almost vitupera-
tive hostility" toward the McCarthy era House Committee on Un-Ameri-
can Activities, "despite the almost unanimous support of this committee by
the membership of the House, the people's elected representatives" (AF
10). However, some congressmen were clearly not in favor of this commit-
tee, which, as Weaver certainly should have known at the time, was muz-
zling free speech and blackballing opposition—hardly appropriate for the
ends of noble rhetoric.
Finally, Weaver celebrates a view of education that places "capable"
teachers and "inferior" students in a clear hierarchical relationship. As Weaver
says: "By what arrogance do we set ourselves up as teachers? There are
two postulates basic to our profession: the first is that one man can know
more than another, and the second is that such knowledge can be im-
parted. Whoever cannot accept both should retire from the profession and
renounce the intention of teaching anyone anything" (LIS 194). Weaver
believes that teachers, and perhaps especially teachers of rhetoric, can and
should teach truth. Goodnight argues that Weaver's classroom lectures and
his numerous talks to the Chicago writing staff, the English department,
and various professional and social groups prove that he attempts to make
the classroom a place where students can develop critical thinking skills
118 The Politics of Rhetoric

and try out alternative positions (655). But despite Goodnight's protesta-
tions, Weaver's theory does argue for teachers' authority in the classroom,
and it seems to him that a true dialectic between teacher and student is
not possible or at least not desirable. For instance, he says that teachers
"know what things really are," and that despite the difficulty of getting
people "to admit the possibility of objective truth," teachers still are "charged
with the awful responsibility of telling a younger generation the true names
of things" (LIS, 194-96). In two letters to Donald Davidson that refer to
the article in which this quotation appears, he notes the "consternation
among the brethren" that it caused and tells Davidson "there is no doubt
in my mind about the essential Tightness of the position."
This position is of a piece with his condemnation of Dewey's statement
that it is more important to make maps than to read them, which Weaver
says means that activity is more important than thinking (VO 126). It seems,
though, that Dewey means we must act, take personal control of and re-
sponsibility for our actions, rather than be moved by the dead hand of
tradition. We cannot say that Weaver was an authoritarian in his class, but
we do say that a rhetoric divorced from dialectic opens the door for such
authoritarianism. It removes truths constructed through a communal di-
alectic and replaces them with what the teacher holds to be received truth.
It makes the teacher believe that she or he is the capable preacher to the
inferior. And it appears to disagree with Plato's statement at the end of the
Phaedrus that suggests students do not gain knowledge by passively "learn-
ing" through book or lecture but make knowledge through the thinking
carried out in a dialectic among equals. 20
As we have said, Weaver holds in theory that rhetoric helps students
engage in "the 'continuing debate' which is democracy" (RCWR vii), yet in
practice he disallows it. He calls the "education for democracy" movement
"totalitarian radicalism," claiming that its proponents have as their aim "the
educationally illicit one of conditioning the young for political purposes"
(VO 132; see also RE 617). Again, he suggests that only his opponents are
guilty of ideological bias: Dewey is wrong to say that education is primarily
political, since "an education in the student's cultural tradition is not polit-
ical; in fact it is the only kind of education that does not presume political
ends" (RE 616-17). If the various attacks on, for instance, the literary canon
have argued for anything, they have argued that all education, even the
traditional education in English departments of the "great books," is ideo-
logical. Just as we must suspect those who "ask us to place our faith in the
neutrality of their discourse" (ER 22), so must we suspect those who ask
us to believe in the neutrality of education.

CONCLUSION
Weaver offers much to the fields of rhetoric and composition. He en-
courages the centrality of argument, he argues for the importance of the
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 119

topics and other tools of invention, and he provides sound advice on stylis-
tic matters. Most importantly, he reintroduces into rhetorical study and
practice an emphasis on ethics, which had been de-emphasized by the pur-
suit of an objective discourse unconcerned with the speaker or the audi-
ence, and by the pursuit of a manipulative rhetoric concerned only with
aggrandizing the speaker at the expense of the audience. He asks us to
consider the importance of an ethical approach to rhetoric, including such
issues as the rhetor's responsibility to search for a truth shared with the
audience, the appropriate goal of rhetorical practice, and the responsibility
of the teacher of rhetoric.
However, whereas his theory provides us with a great deal of value, his
development is problematic, and in two ways. First, it is not necessary, as
argued in the second chapter, to limit an ethical rhetoric to one that sup-
ports absolute truths; in fact, an ethical rhetoric ought to be concerned
with a rhetorician's responsibility toward the audience—not only insofar as
the audience should be presented with the truth as the rhetorician sees it,
but also, and more importantly, insofar as the rhetorician ought to attempt
to present truth that has been constructed in concert with the audience.
Second, in his practical application of his theory—in his rhetorica utens as
opposed to his rhetorica docens—Weaver loses sight of his lofty goals in an
attempt to support his own personal or political position at the cost of some
portion of his credibility. In proverbial terms, he asks us to do as he says,
not as he does.
In part this result comes from his decision, despite his long career in
education, not to center his cultural drama on the teacher. Rather, the
lawmaker, a political philosopher, takes center stage. The shift from edu-
cational emphasis to political emphasis, by putting the politician in charge,
puts rhetoric in a potentially subordinate role, if its effective use is not as
a goal of public action but as a tool for political action. In part the choice
is determined by one's political philosophy. Weaver's conservatism is not
only the dialectical opposite of liberalism but its ultimate opposite as well,
a god term to liberalism's devil term. While his work is full of implicit and
explicit statements about the bad state of rhetoric under liberalism, we
have tried to offer a different story. We have tried to suggest that conserva-
tism offers a greater threat to rhetoric's standing, and we believe this is so
because conservatism understands the threat that a fully developed and
practiced rhetoric holds for it.
Our reading has been predicated in part on Weaver's conservative stance
toward the relationship of rhetoric to knowledge: knowledge is not con-
structed through language but only discovered through it, and then only
partly so. Language is primarily a tool for the transfer of knowledge—either
"objectively" or "manipulatively." His vere loqui becomes a means for
teaching or persuading audiences to understand or at least accept their
received truth. In Weaver's words, it "seeks to perfect men by showing
them better versions of themselves" (ER 25). The political liberal does not
120 The Politics of Rhetoric

accept such a relationship and is more likely to hold that knowledge arises
out of a rhetorical exchange between empowered members of the social
group. Believing in a philosophy of progressive improvement, the liberal
uses rhetoric to learn about the group's values, traditions, and laws but
also to evaluate them and keep a healthy balance between the stability
gained through adherence to them and the change necessary to fit them to
modern situations and to fit modern situations to them. The liberal allows
for and even encourages changes to improve conditions. Certainly, rhetoric
can be misused in a liberal society; the excesses of recte loqui and utiliter
loqui illustrate as much, and Schiappa's comments, discussed above, sug-
gest how in a liberal atmosphere rhetoric in pursuit of knowledge can be
replaced by rhetoric in pursuit of power. However, rhetoric is primarily
useful in developing the critical thinking necessary for analysis and in ad-
ministering the dialogue of social analysis and evaluation to create the dem-
ocratically constructed frame for reality that best abides critiques and changes.
Therefore, liberals study rhetoric.
The conservative knows the group's values, traditions, and laws, and
strongly adheres to them. Theoretically, the conservative believes that
rhetoric is required because we are symbol-using animals (LIS 224); be-
cause it helps to maintain a healthy balance between status and function,
traditions and their refinements (see for instance VO 22-39; AF 3-7); and
because it is a traditionally important discipline. On these grounds it is
worthy of study and effective use. The Greeks thought rhetoric important,
and it has almost always been considered important to good thinking.
Therefore, conservatives study rhetoric. Ironically, however, this sort of
rhetoric sows the seeds of dissent in a conservative climate, since devel-
oping its component of dialectic allows for its use against the traditional
way of seeing and doing (see STB 108). This was, of course, the problem
Socrates brought to the Athenians. 21 As an alternative to this threat, the
tendency is to put rhetoric into the service not of improving society but of
maintaining it. Plato's Republic envisions this role for it and, as we have
attempted to show in the closing section of this chapter, in such a role it is
often employed by Weaver.
The conflict between rhetoric as agent for empowerment and rhetoric as
sustainer of the status quo comes when Weaver turns to teaching. Teachers
can use rhetoric to empower students: They can help students see that
their rhetorical statements are partial interpretations, inherently provi-
sional and ideological; they can help students see that the knowledge they
construct and the actions they take should be products of negotiation, so-
cially constructed and determined through shared conversation among so-
cietal members; they can help students see that communication must
therefore be democratic, with active participation of all the guarantee of
democratic results; and they can help students see that such a democratic
rhetoric must be at the center of a "publicly constitutive, personally liber-
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 121

ating education" (Clark 67).22 The better this kind of rhetoric is taught, the
better students are equipped to take responsibility for their actions and
their society's actions, and the better they are equipped to challenge and
change the status quo. The conservative teacher may decide that, for the
sake of the traditional culture, rhetoric must be turned from its educational
goals and toward the political end of sustaining the status quo. This much
Weaver does.
There remains a final and formidable question: Does Weaver practice his
theory? Goodnight argues that Weaver takes on various roles, of lawgiver,
teacher, and hero; he also says that the hero must take a position and argue
it to its ultimate end, must—as Burke would say—show that the position
is worth dying for. Yet as a hero, as well as a lawmaker, Weaver's extreme
attacks make Goodnight ask "whether he was in any way committed to
dialectical study" (649). We think he is, when he presents himself as the
teacher: he shows himself committed to dialectic as well as to rhetoric, and
to showing a balanced vision of the self that includes truth as well as its
artful presentation. Yet it seems to be poor teaching, in that an observant
student sees that the master does not practice what he teaches; in fact, he
condones the use of what he condemns in theory, and anyone who has
been persuaded by his theory to see a difference between a noble and a
base rhetoric now sees him using the latter.
Weaver remarks that the South lost the Civil War because it was unwill-
ing to act other than in accordance with its principles. He applauds its
decision as much nobler than letting the goal of victory lead to unethical
behavior. As suggested in the third chapter, his analysis of the southern
cause is flawed, but this position is ethically sound: the ends should not
justify the means. Yet in his own practice of rhetoric, he lets ends justify
means: he lets the goals of political conservatism determine the extent to
which and manner in which rhetoric will be used. Can society condone a
rhetoric that is charged with the ethical responsibility to develop people's
critical perception, regardless of where that perception might take them
and society? Either Weaver has created a theory that he cannot put into
practice, and that no one can, or he knows what is right but cannot choose
it in the face of its overwhelming threat to his cause. For the sake of the
possibility of an ethical society, we opt for the second choice.

NOTES
1. Wayne Booth, in a conversation with one of the authors, recalls that Weaver
had wanted the Chicago faculty to contribute chapters to a book on rhetoric and
composition; unfortunately, Booth said, only one other professor knew enough to
contribute.
2. John Bliese says this category of argument is introduced in "Two Types of
American Individualism" ("Richard Weaver's Axiology" 286).
122 The Politics of Rhetoric

3. Lawrence Green, working from a practical more than a philosophical posi-

tion, ranks consequence ahead of definition because the former gives a clearer sense
of movement to an argument, and the latter can be perceived as unduly sensation-
alist. The discussion of fair and unfair sensationalism is taken up later in this chap-
ter.
4. Weaver offers elsewhere another description of descent—from philosophic
doctor, to gentleman, to specialist—that to our minds corresponds (IHC 61).
5. Plato and Cicero make similar points in the Phaedrus (266-72) and the De
Oratore (Book 3, xix). The problems are analogous to those Aristotle wishes to
resolve by changing the teaching of rhetoric from imitation of methods and forms
in particular contexts to a systematic study of the discipline (Art of Rhetoric, Book
1, i). See also LIS 208.
6. In Lila, Robert Pirsig uses anthropology to dramatize this problem. He de-
scribes Franz Boas's anthropology as based on logical positivism and Boas's adher-
ents as existing behind an "inner wall of prejudice," holding that patterns of culture
operate according to the laws of physics (51, 53). They deny the existence of values,
even though values "provide the only basis for fully intelligible comprehension of
culture because the actual organization of all cultures is primarily in terms of their
values" (58).
7. Kenneth Burke notes that writing does not reflect reality; we necessarily
select aspects of reality and strategies of presentation based on our interests and
thereby deflect any representation of "objective" reality (Language as Symbolic Ac-
tion 45).
8. These rhetorical strategies are analogous to perversions that Weaver sees as
the result of modernism's influence on literature. Recte loqui and utiliter loqui
abdicate responsibilities, as do, theoretically, literary naturalism and transcenden-
talism.
9. Whereas these quotations come from Weaver's exegesis of Plato's Phaedrus,
we believe that they represent not just his opinion of Plato's position but his own
position.
10. From the context of the human faculties, positive terms are limited to the
cognitive, dialectic terms extend to the ethical, and ultimate terms include the
religious faculty.
11. This subversiveness is in addition to its ability to be engaged in what Perel-
man calls eristic and critical dialogue—pushing of one's position despite the quality
of an interlocutor's ideas, and attacking another's ideas despite one's own. Perelman
terms the useful form "dialectical dialogue." (See "Dialectical Method" 164-65.)
12. For a discussion of this distinction in composition instruction generally, see
Gage, "On the Relations between Invention and Pre Writing," and Gage, "Why
Write?"
13. In "Systematic Wonder: The Rhetoric of Secular Religions" (690-91), Booth
develops this line of argument at length.
14. The young man in Achebe's No Longer at Ease reads The Heart of the Mat-
ter much differently from his European supervisor; he says first that the book has
a "happy ending" but then qualifies: "Perhaps happy ending is too strong, but there
is no other way I can put it. The police officer is torn between his love of a woman
and his love of God, and he commits suicide. It's much too simple. Tragedy isn't
like that at all" (43). The different reading may result from cultural difference, or
 Rhetorical and Composition Theory 123

modernist fragmentations, or merely differences among individuals. In any event,

in his alternative reading he cites Auden, who argues that some people think that
the great gesture is less tragic than an event, taking place in an untidy corner out
of the way, that makes of life "a bowl of wormwood which one sips a little at a time
world without end" (43-44).
15. Weaver's description is comparable to Eliot's catalyst theory, which main-
tains that the artist, filled with experiences and opinions, undergoes a process whereby
these "data" merge into a truth greater than the parts, making possible Shelley's
"unacknowledged legislators of the world" (Selected Essays 7-8; see also 247).
16. Stanley Fish asserts that philosophers who simplify relativism in this way do
not understand it. Relativists, or what he calls anti-foundationalists, do not say that
there are no foundations, only that they are established by persuasion and are cul-
tural and contextual, and that they must make their way against objections and
counter-examples (Doing What Comes Naturally 29-30).
17. Cicero blames such bifurcation on Socrates, who caused "that divorce, as it
were, of the tongue from the heart, a division certainly absurd, useless, and repre-
hensible, that one class of persons should teach us to think, and another to speak,
rightly" (De Oratore, Book 3, vi). Also, Ramus and Talon are accused of demoting
rhetoric to mere style.
18. Analogously, Jung notes the ambiguity of the archetypes and the impossibil-
ity of "any unilateral formulation" ("Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" 230).
19. Information on this trial can be found in Craig R. Smith's Defender of the
Union: The Oratory of Daniel Webster (22-23).
20. We mention again Socrates' insistence in the Thaeatetus that he does not
teach students; he only facilitates their making of knowledge.
We also note in passing that Weaver should have seen problems with what James
Berlin calls "current-traditional" rhetoric and benefits of a process-oriented ap-
proach. Perhaps he was not involved in the advent of the "process approach" be-
cause his philosophical preference for "being" over "becoming" militates against the
process approach's insistence on the continual "becoming" of a student's writing,
and because bifurcating dialectic and presentation encourages the single-draft ap-
proach.
21. Bruce McComiskey points out that during the tyranny of the Thirty in Ath-
ens, instruction in rhetoric was forbidden, because Critias and the other oligarchic
rulers thought that rhetorical prowess would empower those people without wealth
and high birth. McComiskey argues that Plato, who like Critias was Socrates' stu-
dent, casts rhetoric in such a bad light because he favored a conservative oligarchy
over a liberal democracy (80-81).
22. Such concepts as "education for democracy" and "liberatory education" pro-
mote rhetoric as an agent for social improvement. See Clark (61-72) and Jarratt
(98-112).
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 6
Science, Metaphysics, and
Sectional Culture

Science and scientism are frequent targets of Richard Weaver's social crit-
icism. The negative impact of science and technology upon society has be-
come a familiar theme found in the work of a broad spectrum of intellec-
tuals and social critics, ranging from such liberals as Herbert Marcuse, John
Kenneth Galbraith, and Kenneth Burke to such conservatives as James
Burnham, Friedrich von Hayek, and Richard Weaver. Although many of
the arguments Weaver makes are also expressed by other critics, the
uniqueness of his statement rests in his perspective, which reflects both
his southern identity and his intellectual conservatism.
Throughout Weaver's writings one finds a critique not only of science
and technology but of the pervasiveness of scientific thinking in general
American culture. Weaver consistently expressed his dislike of the mod-
ernist culture that science had ushered in. It underminded the settled val-
ues of the agrarian society he saw as the mainstay of conservative America.
The social commitment to science had unfolded in empiricism, pragma-
tism, logical positivism, materialism, and economic and social scientific
interpretations of man. At the same time it leveled regional distinctions
based upon cultural sentiment and custom. Weaver associated scientific
society with the rise of socialism and modern liberalism, which looked toward
the improvements that could be made to the material circumstances of the
masses while blithely ignoring traditional spiritual concerns. To his way of
thinking, modernist culture threatened the triumph of thing over idea, per-
ception over cognition, fact over proposition, logic over sentiment, and
physics over metaphysics. Weaver was more confident of the values that
derived from the agrarian setting of the nineteenth century than he was of
the new cultural values that science had promoted. He shared with Thomas
126 The Politics of Rhetoric

Jefferson a profound faith in the individual uprightness of the farmer, yet

felt none of Jefferson's enthusiasm for scientific and technological innova-
tion. He believed the American South to be the last stronghold against
modernism:

While the old sources of power and self confidence were being weakened by de-
bunking and scientific investigation, it [the South] clung to the belief that man is
not saved by science alone, that myths and sentiments are part of the constitution
of a nation, and that poetry ultimately decides more issues than economics. In the
choice that had to be made its voice was perhaps decisive; and the choice was
between a world illuminated by religious and poetical concepts made human by
respect for personality, and a world of materialism and technology, of an ever greater
feeding of the physical man, which is nihilism (SE 188).

In "Dialectic and Rhetoric at Dayton Tennesee," Weaver evaluates the

proper role of science in society and reveals his attitudes toward science as
a source of social change. He argues the case of the prosecution, defending
the idea that the state government has the right to make a law that pre-
vents the dissemination of scientific knowledge about evolution in the pub-
lic schools. Science, he insists, ought not to be its own master. The facts
and theories of science must be controlled by the society, no less than
society should determine the morality of using the instruments of modern
warfare.
Weaver offers the Scopes trial as a peculiarly telling example of how
Platonic rhetoric, which he interprets as rhetoric informed by a preceding
dialectic, is superior to its opposite, the "mere rhetoric" Plato lambasted
in the Gorgias. He interprets the trial as a contest between a dialectical
position and a rhetoric that perversely employed scientific factuality as if it
were an ultimate argument and a substitute for moral reasoning. Weaver
maintains that the spheres of science and rhetoric are separate. He objects
eloquently to what he regards as a sacrilegious conception—the idea that
science could be made to replace dialectic or dialectical rhetoric. The idea
that the general culture's faith in and commitment to science could over-
turn a state's policy against the teaching of evolution is simply incompatible
with Weaver's world view. In his mind, the Scopes trial exemplifies the
undermining of dialectic and philosophical rhetoric in an era of mass public
enthusiasm for science. Viewed from a different perspective, it is a mani-
festation of Weaver's deep faith in traditional southern culture, his belief
in the role of philosophical speculation in establishing cultural purpose, and
his commitment to dialectical rhetoric as a means of edifying the people
and leading them to right action.
Weaver's interpretation of the rhetoric of the Scopes trial can be read as
a philosophical justification for a public policy of religious prejudice. To
correct what he sees as an encroachment upon the prerogatives of a re-
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 127

gional and religious subculture in American society, he fosters a confusion

about the nature of dialectic and rhetoric. He makes it appear that he chooses
to discuss the Scopes trial simply because it is a peculiarly good example
for a point he wishes to make about dialectic and rhetoric. But this is un-
doubtedly a bit of subterfuge to enhance the credibility of his analysis. The
trials significance for Weaver exceeds by far its usefulness in providing
examples of dialectic and rhetoric. Weaver, it must be remembered, was
an apologist for southern traditions and mores and for the ideas of the
Southern Agrarians that had influenced him at Vanderbilt. For those who
know Weavers devotion to his agrarian mentors, it is not difficult to see
why he would take up the gauntlet laid down by the northern press in its
reporting of the Scopes trial and attempt to defend the South against its
Yankee detractors. In an essay on the Southern Agrarians Weaver claims
that the "Scopes 'anti-evolution' trial . . . was the decisive factor in turning
the Nashville group against scientific rationalism" (SE 37). In a letter to his
friend, Southern Agrarian Donald Davidson, Weaver, after attempting to
excuse his praise elsewhere in The Ethics of Rhetoric for the principled
argumentation of Abraham Lincoln, told Davidson that his Scopes trial
chapter would "show where I really stand" (DDP). Even without such doc-
umentary evidence of Weaver's motivations, the essay itself reveals that
Weaver's stance against the defense's rhetoric in the Scopes trial was oc-
casioned by sectional interests as well as philosophical and theoretical ones.
Moreover, it is apparent that Weaver saw it as a means to pay homage to
the Southern Agrarians. In this light it becomes clear why Weaver goes to
such lengths to find the logic in the state's position. His analysis is aimed
at rewriting history in the interests of a better outcome than history pro-
vided. If Weaver were a poet he might have been inspired to write an ode
to the right of Tennessee to outlaw the teaching of evolution. Instead, be-
cause he is a rhetorician, he finds rhetorical and philosophical principles to
defend the argumentation of the state and to denigrate the argumentation
for the defense. This is not to say that Weaver is ultimately more interested
in the particular instance than in the general conclusions he draws from it;
on the contrary, the weight of Weaver's philosophy supports the preemi-
nent importance of the universal. Weaver's examination of the argumenta-
tion of the Scopes trial provides confirmation for what he believes are uni-
versal principles about the role of dialectic, rhetoric, and science in society.
It is not difficult to understand why Weaver would have chosen to con-
sider the Scopes trial, quite apart from the nature of its argumentation.
Perhaps more than any other event since the Civil War, the trial shaped a
national perspective on the modern South. Like the Civil War the Scopes
trial defended an institution at the point of its manifest untenability. It
fixed the image of the rural South as doggedly resisting the enticements of
modernism in favor of an archaic system of values. The trial was more than
simply a test case on the teaching of evolution; it was a litmus test of the
725 The Politics of Rhetoric

durability and tenacity of religious tradition in the face of scientific theory

where the urban, industrial, and technologically advanced North was clearly
identified with Darwinism and the rural and agricultural South with reli-
gious fundamentalism. Exploited by the national press, the event riveted
public attention and underscored the cultural chasm that separated North
and South. The Scopes trial was a last-ditch effort to defend the old ways
from the encroachment of the new. It was a dramatic confrontation be-
tween larger-than-life figures, among them William Jennings Bryan, one of
the last silver-tongued orators, and Clarence Darrow, the "attorney for the
damned." It was a contest between the Cod of our forefathers and the new
creed of science and progress.
Weaver uses his understanding of the nature and cultural roles of dialec-
tic, science, and rhetoric to reconsider the argumentation of the Scopes
trial. In "Dialectic and Rhetoric at Dayton Tennessee," he takes the posi-
tion that there is not only an essential difference between the facts and
theories of science and dialectical propositions, but that dialectical propo-
sitions are more significant. Science, he suggests, is not an independent
institution, but is subordinate to the will of the public. Thus, a dialectical
proposition might reject on moral grounds the value of a particular scien-
tific notion, as was the case in Tennessee when the legislature determined
that the theory of evolution should not be taught in the public schools.
Weaver would also have us believe that the status of science in society is,
and should be, purely a matter of public evaluation.
Using his analysis of the Phaedrus as a point of departure, Weaver as-
serts his conviction that rhetoric must make the audience see how the di-
alectical truth relates to "the world of prudential conduct" (ER 27-28).
Echoing Plato, Weaver declares that dialectic must precede rhetoric, if
rhetoric is to be "honest" (ER 25). Dialectic, according to Weaver, is "an
intellectual thing," in which opposites are posited, producing "dry under-
standing"; rhetoric, on the other hand, presents an argument for one of the
contraries (ER 21). In Visions of Order, he explains that "dialectic is ab-
stract reasoning upon the basis of propositions; rhetoric is the relation of
the terms of these to the existential world in which facts are regarded with
sympathy and are treated with the kind of historical understanding and
appreciation which lie outside of the dialectical process" (56). Dialectic, in
Weaver's view, transcends the actual world. In his analysis of the Phae-
drus, Weaver identifies dialectic with pure logic, rationality, and neutral-
ity. Dialectic supplies the "logical positions," while rhetoric attempts to
actualize the possibilities that dialectic provides. He allocates to rhetoric
the Platonic function of "giving wings to truth," or, as he says in Language
Is Sermonic, of providing the actualization that logic by itself cannot pro-
duce (217).
Weaver's understanding of the relationship of dialectic to rhetoric is
problematical. First, one wonders how Weaver regards rhetorical inven-
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 129

tion, for according to his analysis, it would seem to be simply a process of

looking for arguments in the structure of the dialectic that preceded it.
Without a preceding dialectic there would seem to be no basis for rhetori-
cal invention. It is central to Weaver's conception that "there is, then, no
true rhetoric without dialectic, for the dialectic provides that basis of high
speculation about nature' without which rhetoric in the narrower sense has
nothing to work upon." Thus, one ought not to invent arguments simply
on the basis of what an audience might be willing to accept; all genuine
rhetorical arguments must originate in dialectical truth (ER 17). The rest
are simply sophistic in that they make no claim to presenting a resem-
blance of the truth but rely only on appearance. The role Weaver accords
rhetoric is that of making people believe the truth and act upon it, some-
thing that dialectic alone cannot do, as Plato concludes in the Phaedrus
when he has a personified rhetoric proclaim: "Without me, even the man
who is thoroughly familiar with the facts will be not a bit nearer to the art
of persuasion" (ER 28; Phaedrus 260d).
A second problem is that Weaver attempts to find confirmation of the
superiority of dialectical rhetoric over sophistic rhetoric in a historical in-
cident remembered more for its displays of passion than its invocation of
logic. His application of his position on dialectic and rhetoric to the Scopes
trial is procrustean, since Platonic dialectic and the social dialectic that
occurred in the Tennessee state legislature are vastly different. There are
times in the essay when Weaver confuses dialectic with an agreement upon
moral principles, no matter how unexamined; Plato, on the other hand,
saw dialectic as a means of achieving an understanding superior to that
embodied in the opinions of the market place. The Tennessee legislature
did not provide for a level of debate approaching the method of logical
inquiry Plato supported. It is Weaver who articulates the dialectic that he
claims the prosecution is supporting. He recognizes the logic in the pros-
ecution's position because he agrees with it. Like the prosecution, he is
convinced of the importance of the public conscience and the sovereignty
of the state legislature over education in the public schools. Weaver would
doubtless agree with Alcuin's pronouncement that the "voice of the people
is the voice of God."
Throughout his essay Weaver moves facilely between two senses of di-
alectic—social dialectic and dialectic as a process of logical inquiry that
aims at arriving at truth. To most northern observers the Tennessee anti-
evolution act was simply an affirmation of the prejudices of the state's fun-
damentalists, but Weaver perceives in the act a philosophical legitimacy
and accords it an approbation that is not justified by the prosecutions ac-
tual argumentation. Weaver argues for the preeminence of the social di-
alectic and in a second step argues that the prosecution presented its po-
sition with philosophical correctness. But it is Weaver who supplies the
philosophical underpinnings of the state's position, and it often seems that
130 The Politics of Rhetoric

he is creating or at least idealizing the state's rationale rather than simply

interpreting it.
His thesis is that the trial was paradoxical in its argumentation. Accord-
ing to Weaver, "The remarkable aspect of this trial was that almost from
the first the defense, pleading the cause of science, was forced into the role
of rhetorician; whereas the prosecution pleading the cause of the state,
clung stubbornly to a dialectical position" (ER 30). Weaver sees in the
forensic dispute "a unique alignment of dialectical and rhetorical posi-
tions," maintaining that the prosecution's argumentation had dialectic to
commend it, while the defense's argumentation relied solely upon rhetoric.
Weaver would like us to see two kinds of rhetoric, the noble and the base,
the dialectical and the sophistic; that is, rhetoric armed with and in the
service of social truth and rhetoric that aims merely to be ingenious and
effective. In naming the defense's role that of "rhetorician," Weaver is as
much as saying it was that of mere rhetorician, or base rhetorician, while
the prosecution's rhetoric was sanctified by its identification with dialectic.
Weaver would have us see a contest between the dialectical position he
claims for the prosecution and the rhetorical one he says the defense had
to use because it was unable to counter the prosecution's dialectic. There
are several errors in Weaver's analysis. The first is his assumption that
there is but one dialectical position that controls the issue of whether or
not evolution should be taught—the position embraced by the prosecution.
The second is his assumption that the dialectical position supported by the
prosecution somehow bathed its rhetoric with an ethical sanction that the
argumentation of the defense could not attain. The final error is Weaver's
characterization of the prosecution's rhetoric almost solely in terms of its
dialectical position, rather than in terms of its emotionally charged rheto-
ric. Weaver's analysis misses the mark because it examines the Scopes trial
largely from the point of view of the prosecution and, then, largely from
its legal position. His analysis is self-sealing; it confirms his presumption
that the prosecution, not the defense, spoke from a position of ethical right.
Weaver fails to perceive that the defense appealed to cultural assumptions
about the role of science that constituted a dialectical position beyond the
one he identifies in the rhetoric of the prosecution. In sum, the prosecu-
tion did not have a corner on dialectic and the defense used rhetoric no
more than did the prosecution.
Weaver promotes the idea of the rhetorician as the guardian of public
belief, of those emotional commitments that constitute the world view of a
group or a region. Therefore, he prefers the oratory of public encomiast
William Jennings Bryan, who had offered his services for the prosecution,
to the pleading of Dudley Field Malone and Clarence Darrow, who spoke
for the defense. Bryan had made his reputation and, later in life, his live-
lihood through his verbal pyrotechnics, particularly as a stumper for fun-
damentalist religious beliefs. The caustic H. L. Mencken, whose reports of
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 131

the trial are vintage journalism, characterized him as "a tinpot pope in the
Coca-Cola Belt" (Gould 277). Bryan came from the mold of the nineteenth-
century moral leader and vox populi, whose passing from the cultural scene
Weaver laments in "The Spaciousness of Old Rhetoric" (ER 164-85). Al-
though Bryan's oratory made him the darling of the hustings and, later, the
pulpit, Weaver's admiration of him seems grounded in his position rather
than in his oratory. The Scopes trial, in any event, did not find Bryan at
his oratorical best, although he managed to please the crowd with his ora-
torical flourishes and ascerbic comments against evolution and Darrow. Yet,
his dismal performance on the witness stand defending a literalist interpre-
tation of the Bible against the withering logic of Darrow's cross-examination
was a defeat and a humiliation.
When Weaver maintains that the prosecution took the side of dialectic,
he is really saying it took the side of public wisdom, of a truth superior to
any that science could produce. Weaver supports a notion of the unim-
peachability of corporate belief, at least when it is aligned with his vision
of the truth. He insists, as did the prosecution, that this was the only real
issue in the Scopes trial. The prosecution presented the issue as a legal
one: Did John Scopes teach Hunter's Civic Biology in defiance of the Ten-
nessee law that made it illegal to teach any work denying biblical creation
and supporting the abominable theory of evolution? The defense necessar-
ily had a very different interpretation of the status of the case, for purely
upon the basis of the prosecution's case Scopes was guilty. He had, quite
deliberately, assigned the objectionable portion of the text and had re-
quired his students to map the lineage of the human species using Darwin's
theory. With Scopes as a willing victim, the case was intended to test the
constitutionality of the law, and the defense intended ultimately to plead
the case before a higher court. For the purposes of the Dayton trial, the
defense counsel desired little more than to establish the basis for an appeal
by making the case for the scientific accuracy of evolutionary theory. The
defense wished to argue that the law was unjust because an accepted the-
ory of science should not be banned from the classroom. Although Weaver
makes it appear that the prosecution alone could lay claim to dialectic, the
defense simply appealed to a different dialectic from that of the prosecu-
tion—the cultural commitment to scientific knowledge and the agreement
of the community of scientists regarding the truth of evolutionary theory.
Scopes' attorneys had gathered a group of distinguished scientists to testify
on this matter and desired to call them. The prosecution would not hear of
it and waged a protracted battle to confine the issue to the narrow case it
knew it could win. Bryan expressed the prosecution's objection tersely when
he said: "This is not the place to try to prove that the law ought never to
have been passed. The place to prove that, or teach that, was to the legis-
lature" (WMFCT 171). Like Bryan, Weaver believes that the legislature
foreclosed the dialectic and that the defense could not reopen it. What the
132 The Politics of Rhetoric

nation thought of the Tennessee strictures on evolutionary doctrine was

beside the point. But the defense saw that the basis for a rhetorical appeal
to the nation was in the narrow-mindedness and backwardness of the law,
and that the basis for an appeal to a higher court was the law's unconstitu-
tionally.
The exchanges between the prosecution and the defense were truly re-
markable, for they reveal the emotional intensity with which the battle
between two very different sorts of truth was fought. Although the prose-
cution's main strategy was, as Weaver asserts, to claim the right of the
legislature to determine "dialectically" that evolution should not be taught,
the prosecution's rhetorical appeals were frequently ad populum. Despite
Weaver's claim that the strength of the prosecution's case lay in the prin-
ciple of the state's sovereignty over public education, the extent to which
Weaver has idealized the state's position becomes apparent when one ex-
amines Bryan's highly emotional rhetoric. Bryan, the old populist war horse,
played to his strong suit. While attempting to hamstring the defense by
limiting the kinds of evidence and argumentation it could use, the prose-
cution availed itself of every avenue of rhetorical appeal. Bryan's appeals
extended far beyond the dialectical limits Weaver would have us believe
constrained the prosecution. The prosecution wanted to exploit the dra-
matic possibilities of the case. Bryan intended, no less than the defense, to
argue the case as if it were, to quote Darrow, "a death struggle between
two civilizations" (WMFCT 74).
Bryan's rhetoric amounts to a tub-thumping affirmation of religious prej-
udice and an arrogant and anti-intellectual rejection of scientific authority.
Bryan knew full well that, compared with the issues arising from the legal
principles involved, the rhetorical strength of the case lay in the fact that
the teaching of evolution cut at the core of the traditions of home, family,
and child rearing, if not of democracy itself. The legal issue was not essen-
tial to Bryan; it merely presented an opportunity to express what he felt
was in the heart of every God-fearing Tennessean. As he said in his major
court address, "We could have a thousand or a million witnesses [for evo-
lution], but this case as to whether evolution is true or not, is not going to
be tried here, within this city; if it is carried to the state's courts, it will
not be tried there, and if it is taken to the great court at Washington, it
will not be tried there. No, my friends, no court of the law, and no jury,
great or small, is going to destroy the issue between the believer and the
unbeliever" (WMFCT 181). The question raised in Dayton was, essen-
tially, who would control the minds of the next generation—the purveyors
of scientific knowledge or the families in the farming communities of the
rural South. Bryan put the matter bluntly: "They [the evolutionists] de-
mand that we allow them to teach this stuff to our children, that they may
come home with their imaginary family tree and scoff at their mother's and
father's Bible" (177). The fundamentalists of Dayton were poised to defend
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 133

their way of thinking and their way of life, no matter what the status of
scientific knowledge on the question of evolution, and no matter what the
legal position on whether evolution could be taught. The Scopes trial came
at a time when the settled values of the rural South were growing increas-
ingly less tenable, a fact that guaranteed that the debate would be impas-
sioned if not vitriolic (Hofstadter 126). Listen, for example, to Bryan rail
against the scientists: "More than half of the scientists in this country . . .
do not believe there is a God or personal immortality, and they want to
teach that to these children, and take that from them, to take from them
their belief in a God who stands ready to welcome his children" (WMFCT
179). Bryan accurately and ably expressed the fears and anxieties of his
fundamentalist constituency.
A theme that ran throughout the debate and surfaced in a number of spe-
cific issues centered on the primacy of civil authority. The defense pitted the
authority of scientific experts and science itself against the authority of the
citizens of Tennessee, of their legislature, and of the Bible. In the trial the
question focused upon whether or not the defense could introduce scientific
experts to testify to the truth of evolutionary theory and theological experts
who would offer interpretations of the Bible at odds with literal creationism.
Weaver accepts the prosecution's argument that such testimony should be
excluded. He agrees that the point is not whether evolutionary theory or
the creation story are true, but whether the people of Tennessee have
the right to prohibit the teaching of evolution.
Weaver's position is reminiscent of the one Plato expressed in The Re-
public: that the measure of what should be taught should not be its verisi-
militude—its accordance with fact—but rather the effects it has upon the
listener. Thus, fairy tales should be taught to children if they foster belief
in the values of society, despite their being untrue in the subordinate sense
of not being factual. Weaver appears to agree with Plato that the beliefs
and goals of society, not some external objective standard, ought to deter-
mine what should and should not be taught. Weaver's interpretation of
Plato's discussion of the myth of Boreas in the Phaedrus underscores his
diminution of scientific fact (229c-230b). Weaver attaches great importance
to Socrates' comment that he does not care to learn the factual explanation
for how a mythical maiden had been swept off a rock. He applies to his
own times Socrates' proposition that self-knowledge is more important than
reducing myths to verisimilitude, fashioning from it an injunction against
scientific inquiry into matters of religious faith. According to Weaver: "The
scientific criticism of Greek mythology, which may be likened to the sci-
entific criticism of the myths of the Bible in our day, produces at best 'a
boorish sort of wisdom' " (ER 4). In other words, Weaver sees it as pre-
sumptuous for science to evaluate matters of faith. Weaver is also of the
opinion that the place of science is not above but below that of philosophy
and theology. He takes considerable exception to Dudley Malone's expla-
134 The Politics of Rhetoric

nation of science as a modern institution that advanced from the metaphys-

ical reasoning of Plato and Aristotle when Galileo began using the telescope
and microscope. What rankles Weaver about this statement is the idea that
the metaphysics of Aristotle and Plato were inferior to science with its in-
struments for making the empirical "facts" visible. Weaver, justifying Bryan's
position, judges that metaphysics and its dialectical propositions are supe-
rior to modern science and its statements of empirical fact because dialectic
can evaluate the social utility of scientific knowledge. He goes so far as to
suggest that evaluations of science "are science too" (ER 31). In considering
this pronouncement one wonders if Weaver is not misidentifying science
with the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of science with the
judgments about the teaching of evolution expressed by the Tennessee leg-
islature. No one would disagree with Weaver that there is a difference
between dialectical and scientific truth, but his hierarchical arrangement of
these so-called levels of knowledge begs the question.
Weaver objects especially to the defense's attempt to introduce evidence
of the scientific factuality of evolution, since, he argues, this is not proof
that evolution should be taught. In apparent affirmation of Aristotle's dis-
tinction that rhetoric deals with probability and not certainty, Weaver ar-
gues that scientific fact cannot become the subject of rhetoric. The scien-
tific facts of evolution cannot, he maintains, make any claims about whether
evolution should be in the public school curriculum. How, he asks, can
scientific fact "overcome" the dialectical position of the state? The answer
is that it cannot, if the state does not allow it, but one might counter with
the reciprocal question: How can the state overcome the facts and theories
of science? It is a crucial question that Weaver never answers. His argu-
ment assumes that since a dialectical position can evaluate a scientific one,
the state is justified in making laws following from such evaluations. But
he ignores that one dialectical position can also evaluate another dialectical
position; thus the state's own position was evaluated by the defense and
judged to be antagonistic to the cultural significance of evolution and sci-
ence and anathema to the U.S. Constitution.
Weaver asserts that whether or not evolution should be taught must be
decided in light of the society's moral commitments. The prosecution adopted
essentially the same position when it questioned the pertinence of both
scientific and theological witnesses. According to Bryan:

Your honor, we first pointed out that we do not need any experts in science. Here
is one plain fact, and the statute defines itself, and it tells the kind of evolution it
does not want taught, and the evidence says that this is the kind of evolution that
was taught, and no number of scientists could come in here, my friends, and over-
ride the statute or take from the jury its right to decide this question, so that all
the experts that they could bring would mean nothing. And when it comes to Bible
experts, every member of the jury is as good an expert on the Bible as any man
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 135

that they could bring, or that we could bring. The one beauty about the Word of
God is, it does not take an expert to understand it (WMFCT 181).

Bryan opposed what he believed to be the two-flanked attack upon funda-

mentalist belief: science and the higher criticism of the Bible. Both threat-
ened the fundamentalists because they suggested that one needed to look
for the truth beyond the literal Word and the simple beliefs taught at home.
Science and nonliteralist biblical exegesis interposed standards of judgment
that required an acquiesence to intellectual authority. They compelled the
recognition of a larger, dominant culture beyond the rural South with its
small towns and homogeneous values. It is easy to see how Bryan's rhetoric
was well suited to his fundamentalist audience. Bryan appealed not only to
the audience's paranoia, but also to their anti-intellectualism. At one point
he said: "Let me read you what Darwin says, if you will pardon me. If I
have to use some of these long words—I have been trying all my life to
use short words, and it is kind of hard to turn scientist for a moment"
(WMFCT 175-76). Ironically, Weaver concurs with Bryan's anti-intellec-
tual rejection of science and the expert on an intellectual basis, for he saw
in positivism a great threat to the humane aspects of culture.
Of course, the court did not itself have the expertise to decide the ques-
tion of whether or not evolution was a scientifically supportable theory,
and, in a lower court, the question of evolution's factuality could not be
made to decide the outcome of the trial. However, Weaver's argument
transcends the juridical inadmissibility of scientific evidence in the trial.
His point is much more far-reaching. For him the trial is an illustration of
a prevailing tendency in society: "It is plain that those who either expected
or hoped that science would win a sweeping victory in the Tennessee
courtroom were the same people who believe that science can take the
place of speculative wisdom" (ER 53). However, the prosecution did not
have a corner on speculative wisdom in the Scopes trial, as Weaver sug-
gests, nor is there any evidence that the defense devalued speculative wis-
dom or that supporters of science in general seek to substitute it for meta-
physics.
Weaver maintains that the defense avoided the question of whether the
teaching of evolution should be decided dialectically. Rather, it presumed
that because evolution is a scientific fact it should be taught, and argued
its case rhetorically by showing the value of science. But, when one looks
at the trial transcript one finds, for example, that Malone's arguments were
neither presumptuous nor without a dialectical basis, as Weaver would have
us believe. Instead, Malone, whose performance in the trial won more
audience acclaim than Bryan's, according to H. L. Mencken, attempted to
draw a distinction between theology and science (Gould 271-72). One pur-
pose of this line of argument was semantic, for by Malone's perverse inter-
pretation, the Butler antievolution act made it illegal to teach evolution
136 The Politics of Rhetoric

only when an anticreation view was also taught. A second purpose was
philosophical—Malone attempted to argue that since theology and science
w e r e separate, a person could be both true to his or h e r beliefs and edu-
cated in the conclusions of science. The same distinction could also b e used
to support the view that religious beliefs should not be taught in the public
schools. After asking his audience if "I should fall down when Bryan speaks
of theology?" Malone facilely applied his distinction between theology and
science to the psychology of his audience:

But these gentleman [the prosecution] say the Bible contains the truth—"if the
world of science can produce any truth or facts not in the Bible as we understand
it, then destroy science, but keep our Bible," and we say "keep your Bible/' Keep
it as your consolation, keep it as your guide, but keep it where it belongs in the
world of your own conscience, in the world of your individual judgment, in the
world of the Protestant conscience that I heard so much about when I was a boy,
keep your bible in the world of theology where it belongs and do not try to tell an
intelligent world and the intelligence of this country that these books written by
men who knew none of the accepted fundamental facts of science can be put into a
course of science, because what are they doing here? This law says what? It says
that no theory of creation can be taught in a course of science, except one which
conforms with the theory of divine creation as set forth in the Bible. In other
words, it says that only the Bible shall be taken as an authority on the subject of
evolution in a course on biology (WMFCT 185).

Is Malone not acting as a dialectician in the sense that Plato understands

the t e r m ? Has he not defined the key terms in the controversy—science
and theology—and based his argument upon these definitions? H e argues
that theology and science occupy different places in life and that theology
cannot be allowed to judge science. Certainly this is a fitting response to
Weaver's claim that metaphysical truth can be the legitimate arbiter of the
social acceptability of scientific truth (ER 50). There is an essential differ-
ence between religious conviction and scientific knowledge, a fact Weaver
himself makes plain in his analysis, but neither the prosecution nor Weaver
can make metaphysics the inevitable judge of science. They can merely
argue that the state has a right to suppress scientific knowledge, although
it is an argument that must overcome the cultural commitment to scientific
discovery.
Weaver believes that the significance of scientific facts and theories must
be j u d g e d outside of science, a partial universe of discourse. H e sees sci-
ence as an agency that should lay bare the facts of nature, without bringing
any compulsion to teach them or to apply them to the rest of life. It galls
Weaver to think that scientific fact and theory would take the place of
metaphysical evaluation. Weaver argues that the facts produced by scien-
tific investigation ought not to be given cultural value simply because they
are "facts." In defending the dialectic that made the teaching of evolution
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 137

illegal in Tennessee, Weaver fails to recognize that the cultural role of

science is itself the product of a centuries-long dialectic. Weaver would
return civilization to the Middle Ages when the question of whether or not
scientific discoveries would be disseminated was resolved metaphysically.
He would place the evolutionist in the position of Galileo, who was forced
to recant his theory of a sun-centered universe in the face of theological
opposition.
Weaver is correct in observing that the defense assumed the "nonscien-
tific" role of rhetorician in pleading for science, but his claim that their
argumentation was therefore inappropriate makes little sense. As Weaver's
objections to the cultural ascendency of science make plain, even science
needs its spokespersons and defenders. The rhetoric of the defense was, in
fact, part of the continuing social dialectic concerning the role of science in
society. But this is not a dialectic Weaver applauds. While the prosecution
argues that scientific evidence in the trial was legally "incompetent," that
is, inadmissible, Weaver regards it as irrelevant to the metaphysical issue.
He believes science to be outside the sphere of moral debate. "The ur-
gency of the facts," Weaver maintains in the initial paragraph of his essay,
"is not a dialectical concern" (ER 27). Yet, from the point of view of the
defense, calling witnesses for the scientific validity of evolutionary fact and
theory was crucial, for if evolution is a legitimate scientific finding, it should
be taught. This is, of course, a very difficult position to defend in a court-
room, unless there is some prior agreement on the role of science. Without
such agreement the defense needed to argue what was by the 1920s a
foregone conclusion to most of the civilized world: that the dissemination
of scientific fact and theory is of the utmost cultural value. Malone articu-
lated this value with an encomium of truth, which the audience rewarded
with their sustained applause:

There is never a duel with the truth. The truth always wins and we are not afraid
of it. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not
need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is
imperishable, eternal and immortal and needs no human agency to support it. We
are ready to tell the truth as we understand it and we do not fear all the truth that
they can present as facts. We are ready. We are ready. We feel we stand with
progress. We feel we stand with science. We feel we stand with intelligence. We
feel we stand with fundamental freedom in America (WMFCT 187-88).

Weaver quotes a portion of this passage as evidence that Malone, who at

one point equates fact and truth, does not understand the difference be-
tween dialectical truth and scientific fact. For Weaver, scientific fact has
no intrinsic value; it waits for dialectic to give it meaning.
The defense appealed to the cultural dialectic that had led to an accep-
tance of science as an agency of material truth and an instrument of social
138 The Politics of Rhetoric

progress. The attorneys for the prosecution, by contrast, asserted the sig-
nificance of a very different dialectic—a subcultural dialectic in which the
people and the state determine what is worth teaching and what is not. To
answer the question of which argument is more thoroughly grounded in
dialectic, one must first ask, according to whose definition of dialectic? On
the surface it seems odd that Weaver would argue that the commonweal
should be followed in this case, when, given his Platonism, one would
expect him to prefer the wisdom of a philosophical elite. In fact, Weaver
is no democrat, as he makes plain in Visions of Order: "There can be no
such thing as a "democratic" culture in the sense of one open to everybody
at all times on equal terms" (12). Weaver considers cultures aristocratic in
the sense that they discriminate among things of varying importance. He
believes fervently in the right of a culture or a subculture to establish and
preserve its own hierarchy of values. In "The Importance of Cultural Free-
dom," published almost ten years after his essay on the Scopes trial, he
argues at length that cultures have a right to be autonomous. It is a prin-
ciple that Weaver no doubt discovered in his reflections on southern his-
tory and in his own cultural experiences in the South. The fundamentalist
South was a most significant instance of a culture that adopted a reactionary
position against the larger culture. It pugnaciously asserted the sort of cul-
tural uniqueness Weaver believed should be preserved and protected against
the leveling influences of modern mass society. Within this light it is easier
to understand why Weaver would ennoble the right of the legislature to
prevent the teaching of evolution.
The defense believed that, far from representing cultural conviction sup-
ported by dialectic, the people of Tennessee had simply enacted their prej-
udices into law. Weaver determines that the prosecution, the state, and
the people of Tennessee were right because they valued a metaphysical
truth above mere scientific fact and theory. "The legislature," he says, "is
the highest tribunal and no body of religious or scientific doctrine comes
to it with a compulsive authority. In brief, both the Ten Commandments
and the theory of evolution belonged in the class of things which it could
elect to reject, depending on the systematic import of propositions under-
lying the philosophy of the state" (ER 45). Weaver's argument is similar to
one currently used by creationists, namely, that if the state can eliminate
the biblical story of creation from the school, as it had in this case through
a previous act of the Tennessee legislature, it can also eliminate evolution-
ary doctrine. At the time Weaver wrote his essay, and looking back on the
period of the Scopes trial, Weaver could say with somewhat greater assur-
ance than today that "the legislature is the supreme arbiter of education in
the state." But in 1925, as today, there was a higher authority.
Beyond noting that the Butler Act opposed the commitment of the larger
culture to science, the defense, although less insistently, also pointed out
that the act violated the dialectical decisions embodied in the Constitution.
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 139

Weaver and contemporary opponents of evolutionary theory ignore that

the teaching of creation contravenes the Establishment Clause in the First
Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of a
state religion. In fairness to Weaver, however, it should be noted that not
until 1968 did the Supreme Court rule against state laws that banned the
teaching of evolution. The Butler Act and others like it prevented the
teaching of evolution for no other reason than that it was perceived to
oppose the creation story of the Bible. Therefore, the act violated the Con-
stitutional protection against the establishment of religion. According to
John Neal, one of the defense attorneys: "In this law there is an attempt
to pronounce a judgment and conclusion in the realm of science and in the
realm of religion. We contend, may it please your honor, that was not the
purpose for which legislatures were created; under our system they were
created for very definite, limited purposes. . . . But the great domain of
opinion, the great realm of religion, the framers of our constitution . . .
regarded . . . so important that no power, legislative or court, would at-
tempt to lay down and assign a rule to bind conscience and the minds of
the people" (WMFCT 55). The Constitution embodied the larger social
compact—one that involved a much more careful and rigorous dialectic
than that which produced the Butler Act.
In his interpretation of the defense strategy, Weaver focuses not so much
upon what the defense counsels say, but upon the testimony of the scien-
tific experts the defense had brought to Dayton. Although the defense called
only one of the witnesses, before their testimony was excluded, their writ-
ten statements were entered into the record, so that a higher court could
judge its significance. Weaver quotes from the testimony of the only sci-
entific witness, Maynard Metcalf, and from several of the written state-
ments. He detects in them a pervasive line of argument addressing the
consequence of banning evolution from the public schoolroom. Some of the
arguments are much the same as those voiced by scientists today, for ex-
ample, that biology, geology, and other scientific specialties cannot be taught
intelligently if evolutionary doctrine is excluded. Dr. H. E. Murkette, one
of the defense witnesses, stated this point concisely: "Students have a right
to be taught the truth about the whole man rather than a half truth. The
future of human progress demands [it]" (WMFCT 229). Although Weaver
does not quote Murkette, it is obvious that this is, in fine, precisely the
attitude Weaver rejects. Neither science nor progress can, in Weaver's mind,
make demands; there is no scientific imperative. From Weaver's point of
view, the defense had to introduce evidence of the beneficial consequences
of teaching evolution, because the prosecution occupied the high ground
of principle in the debate. Elsewhere, Weaver argues that argument from
consequence is a form subordinate to argument from definition or princi-
ple. Obviously, Weaver regards the arguments of the defense to be philo-
sophically inferior to those of the prosecution.
140 The Politics of Rhetoric

When Weaver asserts that "the pleaders for science were forced into the
non-scientific role of the rhetorician," he is clearly objecting to the idea of
scientists contributing to a social dialectic. He assumes that the role of the
scientist is simply to make discoveries and report them. However, the sci-
entific community does not take a vow to abstain from participating in dia-
logue about the ethical consequences of its own activities. The prosecution
attempted to discredit expert testimony on such questionable grounds as
that experts cannot commit perjury when they are expressing their profes-
sional opinions (WMFCT 150). Weaver, using a similarly illogical argu-
ment, makes it appear that only the nonexpert can properly use rhetoric
or provide moral leadership. Both Weaver's and the prosecution's analyses
reflect a rigid conception of the role of the scientist in society. Weaver
limits the scientist to the discourse of science and sees it as paradoxical that
the scientist should turn rhetorician. In fact, it is the expert who has an
advantage over the nonexpert, for while the nonexpert cannot effectively
argue the conclusions of science, the expert, who is also a member of the
society, can participate in a social dialectic that involves his area of exper-
tise. It would be shortsighted, indeed, to exclude scientists from address-
ing matters of public policy related to science. Only if one accepts Weav-
er's attempt to separate the scientific expert from the dialectical decisions
of the society is it paradoxical that the defense would ask scientists to ex-
press opinions in the Scopes trial regarding the consequences of teaching
evolution. Malone touched upon the problem with the prosecution's out-
look on expert testimony when he said: "I feel that the prosecution here is
filled with a needless fear. I believe that if they withdraw their objection
and hear the evidence of our experts their minds would not only be im-
proved but their souls would be purified. . . . [A]re the teachers and sci-
entists of this country in a combination to destroy the morals of the chil-
dren to whom they have dedicated their lives? Are preachers the only ones
in America who care about the youth? Is the church the only source of
morality in their country?" (WMFCT 187).
On one hand, Weaver argues that the defense was presumptuous in its
argument that evolution should be taught because it is scientifically valid,
and, on the other hand, he argues that the defense was entering into for-
bidden territory when it asked scientific experts to testify to the benefits of
teaching evolution. He cannot have it both ways. If the defense attorneys
were truly presumptuous, then they would not have bothered to argue
their case in the way they did. In fact, the defense attempted to satisfy the
necessity of making an argument on behalf of teaching evolution, though
these arguments, at times, lacked philosophical sophistication. The defense
certainly did not believe that the mere validity of evolutionary theory would
cause the court to find Scopes innocent. The issue raised in the trial far
exceeded the case in its significance. The real purpose of the trial, as we
have said, was to dramatize a significant social conflict regarding the role
 Science, Metaphysics, and Sectional Culture 141

of science and religion in the society and only incidentally to defend Scopes
from the charge.
Weaver is right in believing that the approbation of science in modern
society often gives science and scientific experts a prestige that can be used
to great rhetorical advantage. The commitment of the modern world to
science has brought with it a faith in scientific rationality that makes it
virtually impossible to suppress the dissemination of scientific knowledge
in the interests of preserving a competing view of the world. At times, the
testimony of scientists can be used with annoying presumptuousness. The
defense in the Scopes trial did trade upon the respect society accords the
scientist. It made use of the assumption that scientific truth should be
available to all, but it also argued on behalf of that assumption. The accu-
racy of these observations should not, however, lead one to accept Weav-
er's objection to the scientist speaking on behalf of science or his insistence
that community moral standards should govern which scientific conclusions
are proper to teach in the public schools.
Plainly, Weaver attempts to do more in his essay on the Scopes trial
than comment objectively on the use of scientific values by the defense
and the use of dialectic by the prosecution. His rhetorical analysis is aimed
at criticizing and transvaluing the values that scientific rationality have
brought to the culture. He sees in the skirmish at Dayton a challenge to
traditional culture by a world view that embraces scientific knowledge without
question. His analysis addresses a need he identifies in Visions of Order:
"The need then is great for a revisionist view of what is known as modern-
ism" (6). Culture, as Weaver defines it, "satisfies needs arising from man's
feeling and imagination. . . . The very concept of culture runs counter to
blind progressivism, by which I mean that state of mind which cannot mea-
sure anything except by number and linear extension" (VO 18). In Weav-
er's mind the Scopes trial was an example of how the modern commitment
to scientific thinking can be inimical to culture. Weaver glorifies the reli-
gious biases expressed in the Butler Act because he believes fervently in
the sanctity of cultural discrimination. According to Weaver, "The ways of
a culture are rooted too deep in immemorial bias and feeling to be ana-
lyzed. If a culture appears arbitrary in the preferences it makes and the
lines it draws, this is because it is a willed creation" (VO 12). The defense
counsel's arguments on behalf of teaching evolution undoubtedly repre-
sented for Weaver one of the "erroneous attempts to break down the dis-
criminations of culture," which, he says in Visions of Order, the conserva-
tive has a duty to expose (13). It is paradoxical, yet consistent with his
conservatism, that Weaver fails to see that the devotion to science is cul-
tural and no less ingrained than the biases of competing cultures.
Weaver wishes to retrieve from the dustbin of history the religiously
based culture that fought a symbolic battle for self-preservation in Dayton,
Tennessee. He revels in supporting the lost cause, although he acknowl-
142 The Politics of Rhetoric

edges its difficulty. To oppose modern tendencies, he says, "is to bring in

words that connote half-forgotten beliefs and carry disturbing resonances"
(VO 5). His argumentation supports a position on the teaching of evolution
that most educated people would find completely untenable. Yet, he is
obviously sincere in his belief that the morality of teaching evolution was
an open question that the defense could not answer by proving evolution
correct in light of accepted scientific fact. Weaver demands that the ques-
tion was and is dialectical, and therefore one that admits of opposite views.
In light of his analysis, he confidently, almost smugly, challenges his reader:
"Can you any longer maintain that people of opposing views on the teach-
ing of evolution are simply defiers of truth?" (ER 50). Weaver defends the
right of individual cultures to support dialectical positions that do not con-
form to scientific knowledge. He seeks to restore the primacy of cultural
truths he believes rise above the facts of the material world. At the same
time, he wishes to restore the importance of rhetoric as a force for inte-
grating society through the imaginative and compelling expression of its
values and beliefs.
 7
The Rhetoric of Social Science:
Brute Facts and Created Realities

Richard Weaver's indictments of scientific culture take many forms, includ-

ing a retrospective defense of the right of Tennessee to secede from the
Western scientific tradition in its battle against evolution in the Scopes trial
(ER 27-54). His dissection of social scientific rhetoric, on the other hand,
does not suggest the procrustean cultural views or the southern partisan-
ship of some of his other essays. It runs somewhat above the surface of the
main currents of his philosophical conservatism.
Although Weaver's comments on social scientific rhetoric are scattered
among his works, he wrote two sustained commentaries on the subject:
" 'Concealed Rhetoric' in Scientistic Sociology," first delivered as a lecture
in 1958, and "The Rhetoric of Social Science," a chapter of The Ethics of
Rhetoric (LIS 138). At the time they were written, few rhetoricians, and
certainly few professors of speech or English, had focused upon the sub-
ject. Kenneth Burke had surveyed the contours of this fecund field of rhe-
torical analysis, and the conservative economist Friedrich von Hayek, who
like Weaver was a professor at the University of Chicago, had written his
insightful book on the cultural problem of scientism, The Counter Revolu-
tion of Science. Weaver's view on social scientific rhetoric reflects both von
Hayek's and Burkes thinking. Rhetoricians who feel a kinship to Kenneth
Burke's rhetorical theory find it easy to appreciate Weaver's analysis of the
rhetoric of social science, for it clearly hews to Burke's notions of scientism.
Both Burke and Weaver debunk the pretensions of social scientific rheto-
ric, although Weaver's conservative political views and his disdain of rela-
tivism ordinarily place him in a radically different orbit from the relativistic
and left-leaning Burke.
Weaver's perspective on the rhetoric of social science is not purely Bur-
144 The Politics of Rhetoric

kean, although, as Richard Johannesen has skillfully shown, he made ample

use of Burke's critique and was undoubtedly influenced by Burke, whose
seminar for the English faculty of the undergraduate college at the Univer-
sity of Chicago he attended in 1949.* Weaver wrote his first essay on social
scientific rhetoric, "The Rhetoric of Social Science," as an outgrowth of the
seminar. Initially published in The Journal of General Education in 1950,
it was republished with minor revisions as a chapter of The Ethics of Rhet-
oric (Johannesen, "Uses of Kenneth Burke" 317). Weaver's 1958 essay,
"The Concealed Rhetoric of Scientistic Sociology," reveals an even greater,
although largely and inexplicably unacknowledged, reliance on Burke, (Jo-
hannesen, "Uses of Kenneth Burke" 322-26). In a sense, Weaver's exami-
nation of social scientific rhetoric is a bridge across which several notions
important in his work were transported from Burke's rhetorical theory. One
of these notions, as Johannesen observes, may have been the distinction
between positive and dialectical terms, a concept that informs two other
chapters in The Ethics of Rhetoric: Chapter 1, "The Phaedrus and the Na-
ture of Rhetoric," and Chapter 2, "Rhetoric and Dialectic in Dayton Ten-
nessee." However, as we will see later, Weaver takes this dichotomy out
of its context and gives it a Platonic interpretation, thereby creating a basic
problem in his analysis of social scientific rhetoric.
Weaver's variations on Burke's analysis are scored to resonate his philo-
sophical conservatism and to amplify Burke's original insights. Weaver's
creativity flowed from a desire to rationalize his intuitive opposition to forces
he believed undermined the philosophical and cultural beliefs identified
with traditional southern culture. He is invariably a spokesperson for the
conservative South, even as he speaks against something so apparently un-
related as social scientific rhetoric. His analysis of social scientific discourse
is of particular import in the renewal of interest in rhetoric and the expan-
sion of its purview. The use of rhetoric as a means of understanding social
scientific discourse in terms of its intentions, sociological influences, and
cultural impacts represents a decidedly modern turn in rhetorical theory.
Weaver shows how the "human sciences" strain to establish themselves as
sciences, not only in methodology, but through a discourse stylized to re-
flect the scientific status of their content.
Although the title of his earlier essay, "The Rhetoric of Social Science,"
suggests an analysis of the rhetoric of all the social sciences, Weaver draws
most of his examples from sociology. Indeed, the title of his second essay
dealing with "scientistic sociology" more accurately describes the focus of
both essays. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that all of the social sciences
encounter the same difficulties in attempting to describe the condition of
humanity in the manner that the physicist might describe the structure of
the atom. Donald McCloskey's recent book, The Rhetoric of Economics,
discusses the pervasiveness of rhetoric in economics, and demonstrates the
utility of thinking about the "dismal science" from a rhetorical perspective.
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 145

Like McCloskey's critical reading of economic dogma, Weaver's analysis

of social scientific rhetoric does more than simply criticize the social sci-
ences for their jargon or their defective prose; first it shows their rhetoric
to be motivated by a desire to appear scientific. Only thus, Weaver main-
tains, will they be heard and believed by society and the governmental and
academic establishment that funds their research. Their rhetoric aims at
attaining a more prominent place in an academic and social hierarchy that
awards power and funding to those disciplines flying the banner of science.
Second, Weaver observes that, unlike their counterparts in the physical
sciences, the social sciences require the public to appreciate the problems
their research investigates (ER 186). In short, the social sciences need rhet-
oric not merely to express their findings to one another, but to persuade
the public that their research is significant; through rhetoric the social sci-
entist "passes from facts to values or statements of policy" (LIS 139).
In both of his essays on social science, Weaver, following the critical
method of Kenneth Burke, attempts to establish the motivations behind
the social scientists' self-consciously "scientific" use of language, since, from
a dramatis tic perspective, any use of rhetoric cannot be properly recog-
nized or understood without a conception of what motivates it. In "The
Concealed Rhetoric in Scientistic Sociology" Weaver states plainly that in
his view the decision to be scientific was a rhetorical one, in that it in-
volved a salutary identification with science. The name "social science" by
itself is rhetorically potent (LIS 143-44). In other words, Weaver's analysis
serves to debunk the social sciences in a manner reminiscent of Burke.
Taken as a whole, his analysis not merely makes use of Burke's insights
about social scientific rhetoric but reflects Burke's dramatism, for Weaver
systematically questions the form and argument of social scientific rhetoric
in light of its purposes and motivations. What is unquestionably missing in
Weaver's judgmental, prescriptive, and at times dour critique is Burke's
essential relativism. In fact, Weaver's essays reveal a consistency with his
own neo-Platonism. For example, in explaining the nature of sociology's
identification with science, he maintains that identifications can be judged
ethically on the basis of whether or not they accord with "reason and a
defensible scheme of values" (LIS 144). Weaver's essays also reflect his
antipathy to modernism, which is a central impulse in his writing.

WEAVER'S PURPOSE

As Weaver inquires about the motivations of the social scientist, one

should ask a corresponding question about Weaver's motivations. What in
Weaver's vision of the world would lead him to embrace Burke's position
that the social sciences engage in academic imposture? Weaver's dislike of
the social scientists' attempt to mimic the physical sciences derives, as does
his critique of the preeminent place of science in modern society, from a
146 The Politics of Rhetoric

dialectic in which scientism is contrasted with what it replaces, social phi-

losophy. As Socrates in Plato's Gorgias lambasts rhetoric as a sham art that
takes the place of the true art of justice, Weaver maintains that scientistic
rhetoric, purporting to have the authority of science, replaces a philosoph-
ically grounded rhetoric (Gorgias 464). In the nineteenth century, an age
less committed to a scientific evaluation of problems, the social philosopher
and, at a popular level, the epideictic orator played a commanding role. In
" 'Concealed Rhetoric' in Scientistic Sociology" Weaver says flatly that he
would prefer that social science were renamed social philosophy, a proposal
that flows logically from his argument that the social sciences are misiden-
tified (LIS 158). Weaver's prescription is Platonic in that it attempts a rec-
tification of sociology's name with what Weaver believes its essence to be.
From a Burkean perspective, however, Weaver is himself proposing a rhe-
torical strategy for transforming the social sciences linguistically. Following
Burke's analysis of dialectic, one might say that Weaver pairs the "titular"
terms social science dialectically with social philosophy (Rhetoric of Mo-
tives 184). The term social philosophy, according to Weaver, "would widen
its universe of discourse, freeing it from the positivistic limitations of sci-
ence and associating its followers with the love of wisdom. At the same
time it would enable them to practice the art of noble rhetoric where it is
called for, without unconscious deception and without a feeling that they
are compromising their profession" (LIS 158).
For Weaver a fundamental problem with the social sciences is that they
deprive social philosophy of its influence in society. Social scientific rheto-
rics challenge and undermine philosophically grounded rhetorics. Unwill-
ing to admit that they are involved in value judgments and dialectical de-
cisions, the social sciences fail to make their decisions within a philosophical
system, or with what Weaver calls "an extra-empirical reference" (LIS 157).
Weaver's critique of social scientific rhetoric is a reflection of his philosoph-
ical conservatism. He sees in social science a means of avoiding proper
consideration of essential philosophical questions of value. Instead values
are presumed, such as, for example, the assumption that society is "dem-
ocratic and dynamic," rather than "aristocratic and traditional" (LIS 155).
Weaver's choice of example is, of course, revealing, for it suggests his dis-
agreement with the implicit liberalism of sociologists and with their "me-
liorism," their optimistic belief in the possibilities of social betterment. More
broadly, Weaver's disaffection with social science stems from his recogni-
tion of social science as a competitor to religion and philosophy. L. L. and
Jessie Bernard suggest that in the nineteenth century, Comte's conception
of a science of society established the foundation for the scientific revolu-
tion that is more generally credited to Darwin and Darwin popularizers
like T. H. Huxley (846). A scientific view of the structure of society clearly
challenges the presumption of metaphysics to answer such questions. In
the broadest sense Weaver is concerned with the rhetorical sources for the
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 147

authority of social science in modern society. His essay should not be read
as simply a complaint about the surface features of social scientific dis-
course, but rather as a critical comment about the potency and legitimacy
of social scientific rhetoric as a force in shaping society. In this light, his
essay is a reflection of his fundamental dissatisfaction with the modern ten-
dencies of society, in which the authority to interpret social life has passed
inexorably and unalterably from theologians, philosophers, ethicists, and
orators to a group of social scientific specialists whose factual prose pales in
comparison to the unctuous eloquence of such nineteenth-century luminar-
ies as Emerson, Thoreau, or Webster.
The paradox of the social sciences is that, on one hand, they insist upon
avoiding value judgments and, on the other hand, they make them implic-
itly but uncritically. Weaver sees social scientists using language to main-
tain a pose of scientific objectivity while promoting values sub rosa. His
critique is necessarily two-pronged. First, he argues that the social sciences
engage in a pretense of scientific detachment and a concern for the facts
alone. Second, he shows how the social scientist cannot avoid the values
entailed in his or her research and becomes a "tendentious dialectician"
(ER 195).

DIALECTICAL AND POSITIVE TERMS

Although Weaver does not cite Friedrich von Hayek until his second
essay on social science, he must surely have read his book The Counter-
Revolution of Science before writing "The Rhetoric of Social Science," be-
cause von Hayek discusses the central paradox in Weaver's analysis (LIS
143). Von Hayek's analysis of the methodological problems is more detailed
than Weaver's and pursues a different aim, but his conclusions and Weav-
er's are clearly related. For example, in speaking of the tendency of social
scientists to look at examples of collectives like capitalism, socialism, de-
mocracy, and so on, von Hayek notes that "the scientistic approach . . .
because it is afraid of starting from the subjective concepts determining
individual actions, is . . . regularly led into the very mistake it attempts
to avoid, namely of treating as facts those collectives which are no more
than popular generalizations" (38). Von Hayek argues that examples of so-
cieties, economies, and so forth "are never given to our observation but
are without exception constructions of our minds" (54). Like Weaver, von
Hayek renders the problem as a misleading use of terms. "The terms for
collectives which we all readily use do not designate definite things in the
sense of stable collections of sense attributes which we recognize as alike
after inspection." He explains that terms like "market" or "capital" have
lost their reference to the physical world and refer instead to popular con-
ceptions. Such terms as these have a variety of meanings, which, says von
148 The Politics of Rhetoric

Hayek, "are classed together solely because of a recognized similarity in

the structure of the relationships of men and things" (56).
The theoretical linchpin of Weaver's analysis is the concept of positive
and dialectical terms, which Johannesen suggests Weaver appropriated from
Kenneth Burke, unless both Burke and Weaver discovered it in the Phae-
drus and Euthyphro (Johannesen, "Uses of Kenneth Burke" 318, 320). The
question of how Weaver arrived at this distinction is significant, both be-
cause it makes us aware of the source of Weaver's intellectual notions, and
because it suggests a problem with Weaver's understanding of Plato, from
whom he attempts to derive authority for his analysis. In The Ethics of
Rhetoric Weaver leads us to believe that he has discovered the conceptions
of positive and dialectical terms in the Phaedrus. He first introduces the
dichotomy in Chapter 1, which is partially an analysis of the Phaedrus and
partially an extrapolation from it. Reading the section of the Phaedrus Weaver
cites in his first discussion of the dichotomy it appears that, rather than
discovering the dichotomy in the Phaedrus, Weaver has interpreted the
Phaedrus in light of these notions, undoubtedly first encountered in Burke's
A Rhetoric of Motives or in what Burke said in the Chicago seminar. Plato
speaks of two kinds of words: "those namely in the use of which the mul-
titude are bound to fluctuate, and those in which they are not" (263b). His
examples are the "just" and "good" on the one hand and "gold" and "silver"
on the other (262a). But, as Weaver notes, another of Plato's examples of
disputed terms is the horse, a term with a precise material referent. Weaver
admits from the outset that Plato is "not perfectly clear about the distinc-
tion between positive and dialectical terms." Indeed he is not, and that is
because the distinction Weaver attributes to him is not his. Plato maintains
that to be persuasive the rhetorician must first undertake a dialectic, in
which distinctions among things are made through the coordinate processes
of "division" and "collection." He does not say that value-laden terms are
the only ones requiring a preceding dialectic, or that words like good and
just are dialectical. Nor does he say that words like iron and silver are
positive. These elements of analysis are Weaver's impositions on what Plato
has to say about disputed and undisputed terms. Plainly, terms that are
disputed can be of many kinds, including those involving disputes about
putative facts.
Looked at in another way, it is highly unlikely that Plato would have
accepted a distinction such as the one that Weaver reads into his philoso-
phy. In the first place, Plato fails to come to grips with the distinction
between fact and value, treating values as if they have an existence inde-
pendent from those who possess them. Plato constructs analogies between
the physical and ideational, which imply that ideas have an existence no
less real than material objects. In the Gorgias he equates craftsmen, such
as shipwrights, physicians, architects, and painters, who manipulate phys-
ical realities, with "the true orator" the "moral artist," who similarly fash-
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 149

ions the soul (503-4). According to Plato the true orator's aim is "the en-
gendering of justice in the souls of his fellow citizens and the eradication
of injustice, the planting of self-control and the uprooting of uncontrol, the
entrance of virtue and the exit of vice" (Gorgias 504). In this description
Plato makes it appear that the rhetor can approach the soul with the same
control over his material that the physician has on the body or the architect
on the space he wishes to enclose. Plato's failure to acknowledge the dis-
tinction between material and ideational existence is of a piece with his
philosophical realism, which proposes that ideas have an ideal existence.
Where did Weaver find the distinction between positive and dialectical
terms? He found it no doubt, as Johannesen has concluded, in Burke's A
Rhetoric of Motives, which Weaver read in typescript when he participated
in Burke's seminar at Chicago (317). Burke cites Jeremy Bentham as one
source of the concept of "positive terms," although the name Burke chooses
is not Bentham's "concrete entities" but rather one that is suggestive of the
logical positivism he discusses (183). Similarly, it seems likely that the name
"dialectical term" reflects Burke's appreciation of Hegel and Marx's notion
of dialectic, as much as Plato's (Burke, Rhetoric of Motives 188). Burke
takes the idea that dialectic operates by contrasting opposites and casts it
in terms of his perspectivism, noting that a term like " 'capitalism' would
look different if compared and contrasted with 'feudalism' than if dialecti-
cally paired with 'socialism' " (Rhetoric of Motives 184).2 Moreover, Burke
discusses Mannheim's relativistic conception of dialectic, which serves to
reveal the philosophical biases of Platonic dialectic (197-203). Although the
"positive" and "dialectical" labels probably originated with Burke, Weaver
glossed them in The Ethics of Rhetoric with a reference to the Phaedrus,
thus giving the impression that this critical conceptual tool he uses in his
critique of social science derives from Plato. Similarly, in Weaver's discus-
sion of the general semantics movement, he is prone to find in Plato au-
thority for his criticisms of distinctly modern institutions and social tenden-
cies (e.g., ER 7-9). His interpretation of Plato in this regard is not really
interpretative, but loosely associative. He subjects the rhetoric of social
science to a rhetorical analysis he would like one to believe is Platonic in
inspiration and authority. In fact, Weaver is speculating loosely about what
Plato might have said about the confusion of so-called dialectical and posi-
tive terms in the social sciences.
Weaver makes greater use of Plato's admonitions against rhetoric in the
Phaedrus when he criticizes social scientific rhetoric's tendency to slip from
appearance into disguise. Weaver maintains that the social scientist "crosses
a divide" between positive and dialectical terms, indeed "passes with in-
difference from what is objectively true to what is morally or imaginatively
true." He sees the social scientists engaging in acts of rhetorical slight-of-
hand that they announce neither to their readers nor perhaps even to
themselves (188-89). Thus Weaver criticizes the social scientists for engag-
150 The Politics of Rhetoric

ing in a "primary equivocation" in which they claim to deal in facts alone

while mixing in moral judgments that lack an ontological foundation.
In a letter to Donald Davidson in May 1950, the month after the essay
was published in the Journal of Education, Weaver expressed both his
enthusiasm for the distinction between positive and dialectical terms and
his concern that he had not worked it out fully. Weaver, it would appear,
sensed the difficulties with the dichotomy even as he anticipated the stir
he hoped to create with it. Noting that he had circulated copies of the essay
to social scientists at the university, Weaver complained that he had heard
little from them. "I was," he wrote, "trying to hit them where it would
hurt. You may have the solution: the majority of them are so benighted
that they can't even follow this exposition. I think that the point about
positive and dialectical terms is the dynamite for them; it [sic] this can be
established—and I know that I have not yet done enough to establish it—
they are really going to have to cut out some of their presumptuousness"
(DDP).

HISTORICAL SOURCES OF THE PROBLEM

The terminological and rhetorical problem of the social sciences Weaver
discusses has its roots in the history of sociology's development as a disci-
pline. It is important to remember that American sociology, which became
a discipline in the political milieu of the late nineteenth century, identified
itself with social work and progressive action to improve society. Sociology
is a discipline in which the pragmatic consequences of a particular research
agenda are not merely recognized by the researcher but are at times ac-
tively sought. Moreover, what social scientists choose to study is a function
of their perception of what are the most pressing problems in the society.
The French social psychologist, Serge Moscovici, points out that American
social psychology has consistently drawn its research agenda from the prob-
lems of American society (19). He speaks of the implicit moral assumptions
and maxims in such research ranging from "We like those who support us"
to "Understanding the point of view of another person promotes coopera-
tion." Moscovici's conclusion about social psychology echoes Weaver's the-
sis about social science generally: "Social psychology is not truly a science.
We wish to give it an appearance of science by using mathematical reason-
ing and the refinements of experimental method; but the fact is that social
psychology cannot be described as a discipline with a unitary field of inter-
est, a systematic framework of criteria and requirements, a coherent body
of knowledge or even a set of common perspectives shared by those who
practice it" (32). Of course, what is today freely admitted by some practi-
tioners of social science was far more controversial at the time Weaver was
writing his first essay on social scientific rhetoric.
In their history of American sociology, the Bernards speak of the twin
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 151

ambitions of sociology as "a passion for social reform and an adoration of

science" (845-46). 3 They comment, however, that the interest in science
would overtake the interest in reform, and that in their day, 1943, some
sociologists had repudiated reform altogether. Edward Shils also notes that
sociologists have in various periods been more or less radical in their re-
formism and politics. Shils observes an ebb and flow in the spirit of reform
running high during the Progressive Era; receding during the 1920s, when
sociology became more self-conscious in its desire to be scientific; and re-
turning during the Great Depression, when the omnipresent problems of
poverty again altered the research agenda (392-410). One of the concerns
eloquently addressed by sociologists, the condition of blacks in society, is
particularly telling of the social consciousness of their discipline. Far from
bemoaning the involvement of sociologists in the problems of their society,
Shils asserts, "Sociology has been accepted as an organ of illumination of
opinion, as qualified as journalism or literature to illuminate and criticize
the condition of man and the state of contemporary society" (409). He ac-
knowledges, furthermore, that sociology can "aspire to be a prelude to ac-
tion," in the sense that it contributes to the resolve of those who must
make political decisions (408). None of Shils' statements concerning the
moral involvement of sociologists necessarily denies sociology's aspirations
for scientific status. It is perfectly possible to admit the political uses of
sociology without denying that its findings are objectively accurate. It can
be argued, of course, that despite his abiding interest in the consequences
of his findings, the professional sociologist can hold strictly to a norm of
disinterestedness when collecting and analyzing data.

WEAVER'S RHETORICAL AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE OF

SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC RHETORIC
But quite apart from any doubt concerning social scientists' ability to
hold their biases in check, Weaver argues that social scientific researchers
are doomed to subjectivity by the nature of their object of study and by
their need to define society through abstractions. To develop theories and
principles, social scientists must generalize; they must go beyond what is
measureable in the particular instances. As Aristotle says: "None of the arts
theorize about individual cases" (Rhetoric 1356b, 25). Weaver argues that
the act of defining society leads one to generalization and abstraction of an
entirely different order from generalizations in the physical sciences (ER
190-91). In this, he aligns himself closely with von Hayek, who notes that
what social scientists examine are concepts created by societies themselves
(von Hayek 36-38, 53-54). Furthermore, social scientists are part of the
very society they wish to describe and share in the received conceptions of
the society. The qualities of democracy, capitalism, or poverty are not fixed
in objective reality, as are the qualities of, say, mammals or plutonium; nor
152 The Politics of Rhetoric

von Hayek tells us, are they recognizable through sense perception (55).
Therefore, social scientific researchers deal with concepts whose meanings
are in flux. Weaver suggests that, rather than define through scientific clas-
sification notions such as "slum," social scientists name them. Slum, Weaver
tells us is "contingent upon judgment (and theoretically our standard of
living might move up to where Westchester, Grosse Point, and Winnetka
are regarded as slums)" (ER 191). In sophistic terms, slum is part of the
nomos of society, a concept relative to the individual and to the society
itself. When Weaver says that the social scientist "names" slum, rather
than determines its "genus," he argues, in effect, that social science is in-
volved in nomos, the rhetorical world of created realities, not in physis,
the scientific world of nature.
The rhetorical positioning of the social sciences is concealed in a collec-
tion of stylistic abominations that Weaver says result from a "pedantic em-
piricism" (ER 191). Because social scientists fail to admit the rhetorical
nature of their enterprise, they create arabesques in the attempt to appear
objective. Weaver identifies a ratio between form and purpose. In a sense
the form becomes its own purpose, quite separate from what the study is
meant to communicate. Weaver lampoons the tentativeness of the conclu-
sions in social scientific studies. "Everything," he says, "sounds like a pro-
legomenon to the real thing" (ER 192). He remarks that conclusions are
qualified until the qualifications appear to be "rhetorical contortions" (193).
Analysis and definitional division are conducted apparently for their own
sake; the analysis does not end in any clear statement. He sees social sci-
entific analysis as reflecting "discredit upon the very principle of division
which was employed." What Weaver seems to be saying is that the dialec-
tic of the social sciences discredits a genuine Platonic dialectic, which, rather
than analyzing data, pursues definitions in the realm of ideas alone. He
blames the impoverished style of social scientific rhetoric on a failure of
rhetorical invention. One must have something significant to say to give
life to the prose in which it is expressed. The "harsh and crabbed style"
Weaver discovers in one particularly deathless example of social scientific
rhetoric is of a piece with the insignificance of its content (ER 194-95).
"The object of empirical analysis," Weaver says with blunt irritation, "is
primarily to give the work a scientific aspect and only secondarily to prove
something." And before we can think of contrary examples, he quickly adds:
"In fact, this is almost the pattern of inferior social scientific literature" (ER
195).
What Weaver undoubtedly notices in social scientific discourse is that it
projects the researcher's persona as one detached from the object of inves-
tigation and from the personal and social consequences of the study. It is
as though this rhetorical pose could, in itself, make the discourse objective.
There is, furthermore, the implicit suggestion in social scientific writing
that strict adherence to the method of the social sciences is more important
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 153

than the insight of the individual researcher. Weaver conjectures that it

may be for this reason, in part, that there is such an apparent paucity of
conventional rhetorical invention. The social scientist, qua social scientist,
is judged by his enactment of the role ascribed to him by the community
of social scientists. Every article describing a research study becomes a
vehicle for demonstrating the practitioner's acceptance of the strictures and
sanctions of the discipline, in short, the success of his academic socializa-
tion.4 Disciplinary norms replace individual genius, method takes prece-
dence to content, formal prescription circumscribes rhetorical invention,
and a bloodless, uninspired prose results. Weaver sees the stylistic impo-
sitions placed on social scientific discourse not merely as an impediment to
vigorous and purposeful expression, but as a means to conceal the need of
the social sciences for a Platonic rhetoric informed by dialectic. "If," Weaver
speculates, "a writer feels guilty about his dialectic excercises (his defini-
tions), he may seek to counterweight them with long empirical inquiries"
(ER 195). The notion that social scientists as a group suffer from a common
guilt expurgated by "long empirical inquiries" may seem far-fetched, if
thought about too literally. It is, however, consistent with Weaver's Bur-
kean critique to account for social scientific discourse by delving into its
conscious and unconscious motivations.
Still on the question of motivation, but of a more ideological sort, Weaver
asks if social scientific discourse does not reflect the meliorism of the social
sciences. He connects the Latinate and euphemistic vocabulary of social
science with the predisposition of social scientists to view society as capable
of improvement. Faithful to his political biases, Weaver sees the social
scientist as the handmaiden of liberalism and government bureaucracy. It
is useful to remember that at the time Weaver wrote his first essay on
social science, not only had social science come unto its own, but Demo-
crats had been in office for five terms, and the New Deal had produced a
new army of government bureaucrats, many of whom were charged with
improving the conditions of social life. Throughout the Great Depression
many sociologists dramatized an array of social problems and helped estab-
lish the agenda of social reform. Weaver himself speaks of the importance
of influential social scientific studies such as Middle town, which he regards
as the concrete representation of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (ER 205).
Weaver's response to the Latinate vocabulary of the social sciences is at
once aesthetic and philosophic, as well as ironic, if not mock serious. He
argues that a Latinate vocabulary reflects a desire "to picture things a little
better than they are." "Impecunious," he says, is more optimistic than
"penniless" (ER 199). He claims that Anglo-Saxon diction suggests the "brute
empirical fact, while its Latinate counterpart seems at once to become
ideological, with perhaps a slight aura of hortation about it" (ER 199). An
Anglo-Saxon diction is closer to empirical fact in the same way that, pre-
sumably, the plain or Attic style in classical oratory would be felt closer to
154 The Politics of Rhetoric

the object than the florid or Asiatic. A Latinate vocabulary is foreign, arti-
ficial, less available, and lacking in realism in the sense that it does not
represent the object with crisp accuracy. The hortatory quality of a Latin-
ate vocabulary suggests that there is an ideological position behind what is
said, but it is not one that has been worked out philosophically. Essen-
tially, Weaver asks why social scientists do not use language that is consis-
tent with their expressed aim of objectivity and faithfulness to the object
of inquiry. Weaver, who is convinced that true wisdom is impossible with-
out an acceptance of the tragic nature of human life, maintains that the
Latinate vocabulary lacks the cynicism of truly sagacious writing and there-
fore bespeaks an unhumanistic social science. He cannot, of course, ask
them to use the "semantically purified speech" he criticizes elsewhere as
an accretion of scientism (ER 7-9).
Instead, Weaver counsels that "the limpid prose of the Manchester
Guardian" should be the ideal for social scientific reporting (ER 201). On
one hand, he argues that social scientific rhetoric is a development of an
academic subculture, one that violates his conservative norms for pellucid
descriptive prose comprised of Anglo-Saxon derivatives. This argument is
paired with his notion that the social sciences should make more use of the
resources of metaphor. Weaver argues that the social sciences are mis-
guided in their distrust of metaphor and their preference for a more deno-
tative language. Metaphor, he notes, is not merely a vehicle to stimulate
imagination but "a means of discovery," even within the sciences (ER 203-
04, cf. RC 256). Metaphor codifies conceptual analogies that lie at the heart
of new discoveries and theories. As McCloskey has noted, in economics
one must be aware of the implications of such figures as "the demand curve"
or "human capital," and indeed some metaphors such as "marginal produc-
tivity" are declarations of a mathematical objectivity (78, 82). Although
Weaver cites other authorities on this point, mathematician Jacob Bron-
owski has shown provocatively how scientific conceptions were born in
comparisons such as that between the apple fallen to earth from the tree
and the earth's gravitational pull on the moon (26). To the extent that social
science subscribes to the notion that only a language of pure denotation
will create objectivity, it misinterprets the method of the natural sciences.
More importantly, it establishes an artificial limitation that blinkers and
restrains invention. In Language Is Sermonic Weaver makes plain that he
sees analogy as second in philosophical status to definition. Weaver's com-
plaint that social scientists do not ground their research in dialectical defi-
nition is consistent with his perception that they are reluctant to use anal-
ogy, since, to follow Weaver's argument, analogy may help one perceive
essences (LIS 213).
In contrast to his philosophical analysis, Weaver finally proposes a rela-
tively mundane reason for the character of social scientific rhetoric. It is a
matter of training, clubiness, and elitism, a product of a "caste spirit" (ER
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 155

206-7). Completing the Burkean framework of his analysis, Weaver main-

tains that the rhetoric of social science is motivated by hierarchy; it serves
to establish social scientists as elites (ER 206). Thorstein Veblen might speak
of social scientific rhetoric as a reflection of a "trained incapacity" to see
beyond one's specialty. Weaver acknowledges the insulating or "protec-
tive" effect of social scientific jargon, and bemoans the consequences for
the average person who is mystified by the language of scientism and bu-
reaucracy. Significantly, Weaver sees social science as sharing with other
social institutions a responsibility to educate the public (ER 210). His ideal
for social scientific rhetoric is not, in this important sense, different from
his ideal for all rhetoric. In his first essay on social scientific rhetoric, Weaver
notes that social science is limited in the extent to which it can use the
traditional resources of rhetoric. On the other hand, he is obviously con-
cerned that an obfuscating, jargon-ridden social scientific rhetoric impedes
the working of traditional democracy (ER 208-10). By identifying social
scientific rhetoric with bureaucracy, Weaver implies that it is part of a
technocractic trend in government that insulates government from public
access to the information necessary for making public policy decisions. Al-
though it is ultimately used in the public forum, the specialized and insular
rhetoric of the social sciences attempts to deny what is essential to all rhet-
oric, its intimate connection with ethics.

WEAVER'S SOLUTION
Weaver's restatement of his views on social scientific rhetoric in "Con-
cealed Rhetoric in Scientistic Sociology" provides a clearer picture of his
vision of an acceptable social scientific rhetoric. In this later essay he main-
tains that social scientific rhetoric is a kind of deliberative oratory, in which
the social scientist proffers advice on alternative policies (LIS 152 ff.). So-
cial scientists do more than provide facts that are used in argumentation
about public policy; they inevitably express their perspectives, often with-
out acknowledging the difference between the two.
Weaver does not wish to limit social scientists to the facts alone or to
impose upon them what McCloskey has called "verbal hygiene." This would
be inconsistent with Weaver's complaint that the General Semanticists at-
tempt to sanitize language of its evocations and to create a kind of neuter
speech. Rather, he desires a social scientific rhetoric that is logical and
factual on one hand and propositional and ethical on the other. Moreover,
he agrees with Max Weber that the social scientist must take pains to in-
dicate what is factual and what is evaluative. The overarching problem is
how social scientists can use rhetoric appropriate both to their role as "so-
cial scientists" and to their role as citizens (LIS 156). Weaver wishes to
reunite philosophy and the study of society through a recognition of its
rhetorical and, therefore, ethical character. When social scientific research
156 The Politics of Rhetoric

is used in the formation of public policy, the researcher enters into an

arena of competing rhetorics. Implicitly, Weaver suggests that the argu-
ments of the social scientist should not take precedence to those of non-
scientists who also give counsel on matters of public policy.
Richard Harvey Brown is one of many recent sociologists who laments
the passage of social philosophy. He notes that "classical thinkers such as
Comte and Marx hoped that social theory would convert popular conscious-
ness to new modes of historically redemptive thought. This more synoptic
view—at once philosophical, historical, and sociological—characterized the
makers of modern social thought. Today narrowly professional social sci-
entists seem both incapable and uninterested in this classical pursuit. In
order to reappropriate this larger, classical view we must try to restore the
idea of social science as public philosophy" (7). Weaver, while similarly
asking that social science should take seriously its obligation to establish a
philosophical foundation for its perspectival leanings, would oppose the
positivism of Comte, the materialism of Marx, and the liberalism of other
classical social theorists. The idea of social meliorism itself represents, after
all, a philosophical perspective regarding the improvability of society. As
in much of Weaver's rhetorical criticism, his complaint that a given ex-
ample of rhetoric lacks a philosophical foundation is, upon closer examina-
tion, more a complaint that the philosophical position is not Platonic, con-
servative, or one that accepts the premise of cultural autonomy, especially
the autonomy of the American South against the industrial and technolog-
ical North.
There is, then, some considerable doubt that social scientists, who, as
Weaver notes, tend toward liberalism and the integration of society, would
ever conceive a social philosophy that Weaver would find satisfactory. Ul-
timately, Weaver's suggestion that social scientists should call themselves
social philosophers may be no more than a vain wish that social scientists
recognize the error of their ways and become social philosophers of the
sort he most prefers. Weaver is willing to admit that a "pure subjective
idealism" is an unaffordable luxury, and that hard data and measurement
are necessary (158). But his overarching wish is to re-establish the promi-
nence of philosophy and rhetoric in public deliberation. Weaver is less
impressed with the need for objectivity in the social sciences than he is
with the need for a philosophical ideal against which the social sciences can
measure their findings. Weaver's romantic desire to restore philosophy to
a position of preeminence separates him from Burke, whose analysis of
social scientific rhetoric draws no such conclusion. Weaver is jealous of the
position of the social scientist in society, and his examination of social sci-
entific rhetoric is meant to raise questions about its legitimacy. His essays
on social science express the hierarchy he thinks should exist among branches
of knowledge, just as in another of his essays he attempts to establish a
philosophic hierarchy of argument types (LIS 201-25).
One cannot help but notice the Quixotic nature of Weaver's essays or to
 The Rhetoric of Social Science 157

appreciate their eloquence and humanism, even if one disagrees with their
metaphysics and politics. It must be held in mind that Weaver's rhetorical
views are colored by his resistance to modern culture. His reaction to social
science, although analytical, is first of all visceral. This point is well illus-
trated by his complaint that social science engages in appeals to authority
through "the patter of modern shibboleths." The vocabulary of social sci-
ence annoys him because it suggests "intellectual fashion" and optimistic
programs for change. "Modern, rational, liberal, professional, intergovern-
mental, objectivity, research, disciplines, workshops" are examples of words
he finds objectionable but difficult to oppose "without putting oneself in
the camp of reaction and obscurantism" (LIS 151). He is a man who is
never far from his own prejudices, a quality he would count as a great
virtue. What has been said of Evelyn Waugh may well be said of Richard
Weaver: he was out of place in his generation, disliking most of what sep-
arated it from the past.
Weaver's theoretic perspective on social scientific rhetoric is derivative
of von Hayek's critique of social science and Burke's rhetorical theory.
Weaver has shaped these notions together with his own extrapolations and
fitted them into the mosaic of his rhetorical theory. His use of the dichot-
omy between dialectical and positive terms is problematic because, al-
though borrowed from Burke, it is erroneously presented as consistent with
Plato's views on rhetoric. The idea that there is one universe of discourse
referring to the positive world and one to the dialectical is deceptively
simple and certainly not Platonic in origin. On the contrary, any term,
depending upon its use, can be made dialectical. Nor is it safe to say that
Plato would attribute greater realism to terms that stand for objects in the
natural world than he would to abstract concepts such as justice or beauty.
Perhaps most daunting is Weaver's unwillingness to acknowledge the legit-
imacy of liberal social theory he finds at odds with his own Platonism.
Instead, the notion that society can be improved by social scientific inquir-
ies into social problems is circularly defined as symptomatic of social sci-
ence's tendency to take ethical positions without a preceding dialectic. But
clearly, Comte, the founder of social science, was a social philosopher,
whether or not one accepts his philosophy. The rhetorical charm of Weav-
er's analysis might well keep one from questioning the premises upon which
it is based. Weaver is not merely elaborating on what Kenneth Burke said,
although he uses certain of his notions and is even led to write a critique
that might be characterized as dramatistic. One must realize, however, that
at a more essential level Weaver's conservative partisanship makes him
anything but a Burkean.

NOTES
1. Philip K. Tompkins notes that when Burke was asked about Weaver's Ethics
of Rhetoric at an informal gathering, he maintained that it contained ideas that
158 The Politics of Rhetoric

Weaver had appropriated from him after Weaver attended the seminar Burke held
at the University of Chicago. According to Tompkins, Burke claimed that it was for
this reason that he "lost all interest in writing his own ethic."
2. Compare Weaver's statement that the meanings of dialectical terms "change
according to what they are matched with" (LIS 147). See also Johannesen, "Uses of
Kenneth Burke," 325.
3. Quoted in Howard Washington Odum, American Sociology: The History of
American Sociology through 1950. New York: Longman, Green, 1951, p. 69.
4. According to sociologist Andrew Weigert in "The Immoral Rhetoric of Scien-
tistic Sociology": "The phenomenon of identity transformation in sociology is intel-
ligible in terms of the discipline's own perspectives: the motives of a status group;
class consciousness predicated on the relationship to the means of production such
as research grants, computers, and free time; the objective and constraining quality
of intersubjective forms; the symbolic construction of the objects of knowledge; the
situational conferring and validation of identities" (112).
 8
General Semantics and
Spacious Rhetoric

THE OLD ORATORY AND NEUTER DISCOURSE: POLES OF

WEAVER'S DIALECTIC ON LANGUAGE
The cultural contest between science and rhetoric is for Weaver a very real
one, observable in every corner of intellectual and social life. In Weaver's
mind, modern society, shaped by a faith in the world of sensory experi-
ence, has replaced a society wherein ideas were thought more important
and interesting than facts. In an earlier time oratory summarized the guid-
ing beliefs of the culture. The modern preoccupation with fact, which Weaver
describes in his essay on the Scopes trial, has insidiously undermined tra-
ditional rhetoric and oratory. Weaver maintains that a higher form of rhet-
oric flourished in America in the nineteenth century, an era confident in
the universality of the broad beliefs expressed by the great orators of the
day. He argues that the tendency of modern audiences to judge the facts
for themselves, rather than to rely upon the orator to give the facts their
philosophical and cultural meanings, is a consequence of society's commit-
ment to science. In "The Spaciousness of Old Rhetoric" he blames the
press of modern culture for a public attitude that makes the grandiloquence
and high-minded propositions that resounded in the ceremonial oratory of
the nineteenth century seem quaint and, indeed, irrelevant (ER 164). As
his analysis of the argumentation of the Scopes trial reveals, Weaver be-
lieves the purpose of rhetoric is not to establish fact but to embody meta-
physical propositions that guide human belief and conduct. We are, Weaver
maintains, in the throes of an era in which graphic representations of the
empirical world are preferred to language that captures essences and pro-
motes transcendent beliefs. Lost is the sense of the ideal orator Cicero
760 The Politics of Rhetoric

described in De Oratore—the person whose power resided in an elo-

quence rooted in wisdom. Lost is a rhetoric underlain by dialectic and
expressive of the shared beliefs of the society, what Weaver describes as
the "universal enlightened consensus" (ER 170).
Weaver provides an idealized image of an old oratory, rich in human
significance and in the valuations that unify a culture. Such oratory mani-
fested the positioning of the culture in relation to the world. The nine-
teenth-century orator—really the southern orator, on the strength of Weaver's
examples—invented his arguments from the shared and confident beliefs
of the community. From Weaver's point of view, it is a mark of social
degeneration that the public no longer finds this sort of rhetoric interest-
ing. Under the domination of scientific ways of thinking, modern culture
has become more concerned with what can be seen, rather than what can
be thought. It has looked outward rather than inward for its truths. Pla-
tonic rhetoric, which unites dialectical truth with imagination, seems in-
consistent with the empirical orientation of modern culture. By contrast,
Weaver sees today a discourse that emphasizes logic and fact and engages
in sensationalism, without stimulating the imagination of the audience or
orienting it toward an ethical good. In his analysis of the Scopes trial he
portrays science as lacking a dialectical position, arguing that because sci-
ence is objective it cannot also be rhetorical. As Wayne Booth suggests,
however, the work of recent philosophers of science, such as Michael
Polyani and Thomas Kuhn, has helped us see the rhetorical dimension of
science (Modern Dogma 108-9). Similarly, Weaver criticizes rhetoric that
reveals scientistic tendencies in presenting objective information about the
world without addressing the question of how such information should be
evaluated. "Language is sermonic," Weaver proclaims in an essay of the
same name; it is a carrier of tendency (LIS 115-38). Genuine rhetoric ex-
presses the subjective prejudices of the speaker and provides the means to
move the audience toward good or evil. Rhetoric distilled of its subjectivity
and thus its ethical dimension is not rhetoric at all.
Weaver blames the influence of science for the eclipse of authentic rhet-
oric by an antirhetoric that pursues the false goal of pure objectivity. If
science has pulled rhetoric from its pedestal, profound changes in culture
and in communication have prevented it from returning to its former place
of prominence. Weaver leaves undiscussed a crucial reason for the differ-
ence between nineteenth-century oratory and modern political speech
making—the former was written for print rather than broadcast. This sim-
ple fact, as much as anything, accounts for the existence of the "widths of
sound and meaning" in nineteenth-century oratory that strike modern au-
diences as contrived. The oratory of modern political leaders is intended
for transmission by the electronic media. From Franklin Roosevelt's presi-
dency onward there has been a general recognition that the effectiveness
of popular political oratory resides in its accessibility to the mass audience
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 161

created by radio and television. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" represent a

telling example of the new genre of oratory that values plainness over or-
namentation, simplicity over complexity, and immediate comprehension over
metaphysical reflection. When Weaver expresses regret over the passage
of the old oratory, he is also consciously regretting the passage of an era
when orators spoke to small audiences assembled in remote corners of
American society and sharing a distinct cultural identity that has been eroded
by the massness of modern society. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which
Carl Sandberg aptly called the "great American poem," reached the larger
national audience by means of newspapers and, although Lincoln read the
speech to the small audience assembled for the ceremony, essentially it
was literature.
The spacious rhetoric of the nineteenth century was both more literary
and more propositional than most contemporary public discourse. When
Weaver dusts off the manuscripts of the old oratory he discovers a literary
and philosphical substantiveness, which he says demands our admiration.
Proximal to Weaver's conception of rhetoric based in metaphysical truth,
the grandiloquent speeches of the nineteenth century represent one pole
of Weaver's dialectic on language. At the other pole is what he calls "se-
mantically purified speech," which Weaver believes threatens to become
the modern ideal (ER 7). It is, says Weaver sardonically, "language under
the surveillance of science" (VO 71). In interpreting Plato's Phaedrus,
Weaver, as discussed earlier, compares Lysias' speech praising nonlove with
its businesslike use of language, to the "neuter discourse" he says is pro-
moted by the General Semanticists. General Semantics does not now enjoy
the popularity or notoriety it did at the time Weaver wrote about it, and it
may not be immediately obvious why Weaver's reaction should have been
so intense. However, it is not difficult to find some validity in his claim
that the General Semanticists' program strains to deprive discourse of its
subjectivity. The General Semantics movement, founded by Alfred Kor-
zybski and further popularized by such men as Stuart Chase and S.I. Hay-
akawa, is antirhetorical to the extent that its mission is to make discourse
as faithful to its objective referents as possible. To believe Weaver, the
semanticists, under the spell of the "tyrannizing image" of science, seek to
perfect language to conform to its new cultural milieu. Weaver speaks de-
risively of the semanticists' naive desire to "plane the tropes off language"
(LIS 46), though Chase, for one, denies that this is his intention (Tyranny
17).

LANGUAGE, SCIENCE, AND SOCIAL BETTERMENT

A discussion of the relationship between language and science should
help clarify and focus the issues involved in Weaver's assault upon the
General Semanticists' program. As compared with rhetoric, which attempts
162 The Politics of Rhetoric

to induce belief and action, Kenneth Burke defines science a " 'semantic'
or 'descriptive' terminology for charting the impersonal wishes of nature
from an 'impersonal' point of view regardless of one's wishes or prefer-
ences" (Rhetoric of Motives 41). The scientific attitude, with its dedication
to material truth, inclines to perfect language as an agency of objective
inquiry. Language, John Locke's system of "delegated efficacies," is per-
ceived as imperfect because of its relativism and its subjectivism. Long
before Korzybski, the philosophers of the scientific revolution viewed lan-
guage apprehensively as an imperfect instrument for communicating the
new truths of science. The impress of scientific rationality upon culture
injected a fear of the subjective aspect of language that rhetoric exploited.
Philosophers realized that language, essential to scientific reasoning,
expression, and documentation, if carelessly used, could be a drag upon
the enterprise of science and the acquisition of knowledge.
Sir Francis Bacon helped lay the groundwork for the modern interest in
semantics. The rhetorician Karl Wallace notes that Bacon counseled that
the careful scientific investigator should express his findings in denotative
and unambiguous language (Wallace 388-89). Although Bacon acknowl-
edged the utility of figurative language in scientific discourse, presuming
that the usages faithfully depicted reality, he saw that misused language
was a serious impediment to knowledge (Stephens 216). In the section of
his Novum Organum that deals with the "Idols of the Market Place," Ba-
con, remarks Wallace, "speaks like a present day semanticist" (402). Bacon
believed that words, whose meanings are determined by the agreements
of the common run of humankind, are often too imprecise to deal effi-
ciently and accurately with matters requiring careful intellectual judg-
ments.
John Locke was similarly concerned with language as a means of trans-
ferring knowledge. He devoted a large section of his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding to the abuses of rhetoric and the prospects for a
discourse that would facilitate communication. Locke's interest in language
is cogently summarized by Wilbur Samuel Howell: "Thus he [Locke] indi-
cated that, whether words are intended as argument or exposition, they
are ruled by the same law—a law which would judge the effectiveness of
discourse by its linguistic adequacy in transferring accurate ideas of things
from one man to another without distortion, deceit, or undue difficulty"
(328). Plainly, Locke's insistence that words are not the ideas they repre-
sent anticipates the basic position of the General Semanticists. Interest-
ingly, Korzybski, the father of General Semantics, claimed that his work
was independent of empiricism (Schuelke 220). But the connection that
Korzybski explicitly denies exists nevertheless. For the General Semanti-
cists and for the empiricists, meaning in language is a function of human
perception (Schuelke 222).
The idea that meanings are in the mind rather than in a reality of ideas
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 163

that language represents is one that cuts at the heart of Weaver's philo-
sophical pieties. If meaning is relative to individual perception, it is con-
textual and impermanent, and thus ideal knowledge is impossible. Weaver
believes in the ideality of language, namely, in the notion that essences
can be expressed and preserved in language (LIS 25). In contrast to the
General Semanticists' relativistic outlook on language, Weaver expresses a
commitment to a transcendent "one world of meaning" (LIS 50). "Words,"
he declares, "each containing its universal, are our reminders of knowl-
edge" (IHC 158). He challenges both the General Semanticists' postulates
and their pragmatic aims. He sees in their treatment of language a denial
of the reality of ideas:

They desire language to reflect not conceptions of verities but qualities of percep-
tions, so that man may, by the pragmatic theory of success, live more successfully.
To one completely committed to this realm of becoming, as are the empiricists, the
claim to apprehend verities is a sign of psychopathology. Probably we have here
but a highly sophisticated expression of the doctrine that ideals are hallucinations
and that the only normal, sane person is the healthy extrovert, making instant,
instinctive adjustments to the stimuli of the material world. To such people as
these, Christ as preacher of the Word, is a "homosexual paranoiac." (IHC 37)

One does not need to be an idealist to appreciate Weaver's mordant

criticisms of General Semantics. He is not far from the truth when he sug-
gests that semanticists attempt to deprive language of its tendency. The
linguistic beau ideal of the semanticist derives from the notion that science
and technology can be used to shape most anything into a more rational,
and therefore superior, form.
Korzybski, an engineer by training, saw himself studying language as one
who studied a machine to discover how it "ought to work" (73). In the
depths of the Great Depression he speculated about a Utopian society in
which writers and authors would be compelled to undertake a course of
semantic "training":

When we become more civilized and enlightened no public speaker or writer will
be allowed to operate publicly without demonstrating first that he knows the struc-
ture and semantic functioning of the linguistic capacities. . . . All history shows at
present, and this evidence should not be taken lightly by scientifically enlightened
society, that the majority appears "always wrong," and that all that we call "prog-
ress," "civilization," "science," has been achieved by a very small minority. . . .
[Professional scientific bodies would have to set the standards and perfect the tech-
nique of the linguistic structural examinations. . . . As a result, quite probably, a
great amount of useless, befogging issues, delusional writings and speeches would
not be produced, with great benefit to all concerned (485-87).

In the so-called Machine Age, the public looked to science and technol-
ogy for social panaceas. Korzybski appealed to a naive public optimism
164 The Politics of Rhetoric

about the potential of finding engineering solutions to nonmaterial prob-

lems. The rectification of the use of language with the principles of General
Semantics would, he felt, end public delusion and lead to general social
betterment. As this quotation illustrates, Weaver is right that General Se-
mantics was a perverse application of scientific rationality to language. Kor-
zybski attempted to reduce language to structure and to see meaning as
simply psychological. Weaver, on the contrary, believes that linguistic
meanings are transcendent.

WEAVER'S IDEALISM AS THE FILTER FOR HIS RESPONSE TO

GENERAL SEMANTICS
In his analysis of the Phaedrus, Weaver finds evidence that Plato agrees
with the spirit of his criticisms of the semanticists. His interpretation of the
Phaedrus reveals as much or more of Weaver's philosophy than Plato's (ER
3-26). In a sense, Weaver uses the Phaedrus as a philosophic Rorschach to
which he relates his own perceptions of the problems of modern society
dominated by science. He sees in the dialogue a confirmation of his criti-
cisms of modern positivism. The well-known dialogue, which simulta-
neously concerns love and rhetoric, develops through three speeches, one
in praise of the nonlove, a second in praise of physical love, and a third in
praise of a virtuous love whose satisfactions are intellectual rather than cor-
poreal. The first speech is one that the youth Phaedrus has heard the lo-
gographer Lysias deliver and that he enthusiastically recites to Socrates.
Like much of the rhetorical fare of epideictic oratory presented by the
Sophists, the speech supports a paradoxical theme, the praise of nonlove,
as a display of the speaker's rhetorical virtuosity. Lysias argues that one
should give sexual favors to the nonlover and offers in support the advan-
tages to nonlove and the disadvantages of love. Weaver interprets Lysias'
speech as implicitly arguing for a kind of neuter language, although explic-
itly Lysias praises the nonlover by pointing to the prudence of nonlove
relationships. Consistent with his belief that the entire dialogue compares
love and rhetoric, Weaver sees the nonlove relationship as analagous to
one that is nonrhetorical in the sense that it excludes the affections of the
rhetor and the audience. He speaks of the semanticists who seem to prefer
a "neuter form of speech" or a "semantically purified speech" to one that
excites emotion or involves us in ethical choices. As Weaver explains: "By
'semantically purified speech' we mean the kind of speech approaching pure
notation in the respect that it communicates abstract intelligence without
impulsion. It is simple instrumentality, showing no affection for the object
of its symbolizing and incapable of inducing bias in the hearer. . . . Like
a thrifty burgher, it has no romanticism about it; and it distrusts any de-
parture from the literal and prosaic" (ER 8-9).
Despite Weaver's opposition to the General Semantics movement, it would
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 165

be impossible for him to oppose completely the basic idea that one should
take care in the use of language. To the extent that Weaver is a Platonist,
he cannot deny the philosophical importance of correct names. In the
Phaedrus, Socrates revealingly declares himself to be a lover of words. The
notion that language is ideal is one he inherits from Plato. Not surprisingly,
Plato is ambivalent about the idea of correct names. A more direct and
perhaps more reliable index to Plato's views on semantics than the Phae-
drus is what he says about Prodicus, the Sophist most concerned with cor-
rect language. Unfortunately, Plato's perspective is not wholly clear; he
expresses a good deal of ambivalence about Prodicus, seeing both value
and limitation in Prodicus' one drachma and fifty drachma lectures on dis-
covering correct names among what appear to be synonyms. In contrast to
Weaver's polarization of semantics and rhetoric, it is interesting that Prod-
icus undoubtedly instructed his students in linguistic precision as part of
his course in rhetoric (Guthrie 223). Guthrie speculates that Socrates, who
refers to himself as a pupil of Prodicus, might have incorporated Prodicus'
own method into his, since both ask that names be correctly used, though
for Socrates this idea serves as a foundation for philosophy, while for Prod-
icus it is essential to rhetoric. In Plato's dialogues, Prodicus is indirectly
criticized as one who would teach those of his students who were not preg-
nant with thought and who could then simply be told the facts, rather than
acquiring their own wisdom through the Socratic method (Guthrie 275-
76). Guthrie places Prodicus into the class of orators Plato criticizes in the
Phaedrus—those who "have imagined that it is rhetoric they have discov-
ered when they attained merely the preliminaries to the art" (Phaedrus
269b-c, quoted in Guthrie 276). What they lack, as Guthrie points out, is
an understanding of philosophy.
Predictably, Weaver acknowledges that proper naming is essential to
knowledge. Although he admits to sounding fanciful, Weaver nevertheless
asserts: "A name is not just an accident; neither is it a convention which
can be repealed by majority vote at the next meeting; once a thing has
been given a name, it appears to have a certain autonomous right to that
name, so that it could not be changed without imperiling the foundations
of the world" (LIS 192-93). One cannot educate youth, Weaver maintains,
without teaching them what names mean. It is a task, apparently, for one
who knows their true meaning. Indeed, Weaver claims that the relativist
could not teach meaning, since he "is blind to the unities and pluralities of
the world" (LIS 192-93).
The views of the General Semanticists are really quite far afield from
Prodicus's notion of semantics, or, for that matter, from the semantic analy-
sis undertaken by Ogden and Richards in The Meaning of Meaning. In the
first place, General Semanticists are social reformers while philosophers
such as Prodicus or Ogden and Richards are decidedly not. Korzybski, Chase,
and Hayakawa promote a social agenda tied to the idea that society can be
166 The Politics of Rhetoric

far more rational if only language were understood and used with greater
care. Moreover, Korzybski denies that general semantics can be equated
with traditional semantics. According to Korzybski, who undoubtedly has
the Ogden and Richards book in mind, "The present day theories of mean-
ing are extremely confused and difficult, ultimately hopeless, and probably
harmful to the sanity of the human race." Korzbyski critizes such theories
for a failure to account for human values, and then proceeds to reduce
values to something like psychological homeostasis. In Science and Sanity
he says that General Semantics must "work out a theory of evaluation which
is based on the optimum electro-colloidal action and reaction of the ner-
vous system" (xxx-xxxi). Clearly, the orientation of the General Semanti-
cists is not that of Prodicus or the modern philosophers of meaning. Nor is
it difficult to understand why Weaver would feel such strong antipathy
toward the General Semantics movement.
The General Semanticists are as disdainful of traditional philosophy as
Weaver is of General Semantics. Consider, for example, the exception that
Stuart Chase takes to philosophy: "To say that philosophers avoid facts is
not true. But they are not governed by the facts; they are not humble
before the facts; facts are not central in their concepts" (Tyranny 208).
Weaver, as we have seen in studying his analysis of the Scopes trial, has
no use for facts as arbiters of moral concerns. The question becomes: What
shall be master, the facts of human existence or human sentiment, prefer-
ence, and inclination? There is little reason to wonder why Weaver sees
General Semantics as an expression of the antiphilosophical and antirhetor-
ical perversions of scientistism. The General Semanticists are as unabashed
in criticizing Weaver's intellectual icons as he is in criticizing theirs. The
General Semanticists' pragmatism and their faith in the data of experience
threaten Weaver's romantic and atavistic vision of a society ordered by
philosophical ideals and by sentiment. (See Johannesen, "Conflicting.")
According to Weaver, the semanticists promote the view that linguistic
meaning derives from the extramental world rather than from the society
or the collective consciousness. While the semanticists caution that words
as generalizations might distort the meaning of the individual instance, so
that the word dog might not represent the specific dog, Weaver maintains
that it is in the essence of language to generalize. Like the phenomenolo-
gist Edmund Husserl, Weaver believes that meaning is a function of both
the objects of consciousness and consciousness itself. Thus, according to
Weaver "words do not have a relation to thoughts alone; they have relation
to the real world through thought" (LIS 125). In this way, he navigates a
course through the shoals of subjectivism on the one hand and objectivism
on the other. He recognizes that if there were no relationship between the
material world and language, objective knowledge would be impossible.
Like Bacon, but with a different philosophical purpose, Weaver believes
that the meanings of words go beyond those recognized in their everyday
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 167

usage. He claims that there are true meanings that the common imagina-
tion is incapable of disclosing. Taking an almost mystical turn, Weaver tells
us that meanings reside in imagination which "ideally . . . is commensu-
rate with humanity itself . . . [and] capable of telling us theoretically ex-
actly what every word must mean because it is the imagination that holds
in contemplation all the various meanings that have to remain discrete and
yet have somehow to function together in coherent discourse." It is, Weaver
declares, "the man of greater imagination who helps to raise our imagina-
tion toward the absolute correctness of meaning" (LIS 123). Thus, Weaver
considers the person of uncommon imagination, the poet, the philosopher,
or the rhetorician, to be the one who brings us closest to the "true" mean-
ings of language. This line of thought should not be unfamiliar; it is deeply
embedded in Weaver's philosophy. The individual who uses language with
a unique imagination can give the rest of us a glimpse of the ideal. It is the
same thought that Weaver expresses in his discussion of the Phaedrus (ER
18). Needless to say, the idea suggests a sort of hierarchy of imagination in
which the apprehension of true meaning and, thus, true knowledge, is the
province of the superior intellect or of a "divine madness." Within this
framework rhetoric becomes a way of conveying these meanings to those
who would be unable to discover them on their own. Weaver's belief in
superior imagination accords with his idea that one of the problems with
contemporary society is that it no longer looks to authority for its meanings,
values, and truths. That is but one reason why the tradition of the great
ceremonial orator of the nineteenth century no longer holds sway and why
today's public often distrusts arguments from authority. It would be remiss
not to point out the obvious, namely, that the power to give meaning to
socially significant symbols and to name them is not necessarily the prov-
ince of those with superior wisdom or intellect. An historical analysis would
suggest that all manner of totalitarian regimes, caste systems, and social
hierarchies, no matter how questionable their legitimacy, exert influence
by establishing the meanings of words. Totalitarian political propaganda
characteristically takes ordinary words and redefines them to serve the in-
terests of the state.
Weaver's perspective on meaning, with its emphasis upon inspired imag-
ination, is a far cry from the relativism he detects in the General Semanti-
cists' position. Their position lacks the philosophical authoritarianism ob-
vious in Weaver's, yet Korzybski's ideas for the application of General
Semantics suggest a missionary zeal, if not an intellectual arrogance. Kor-
zybski makes proper language use into something that can be learned only
from his quasi-scientific notions and, as we have seen, he even speculates
about a kind of licensing procedure for professional journalists and writers.
Although not himself an engineer like Korzybski, Stuart Chase is also one
who was imbued with the idea that engineering principles could improve
society. Although he is well known as a popular economist, Stuart Chase
168 The Politics of Rhetoric

was also among the circle interested in Technocracy Inc., a radical organi-
zation that throughout the 1930s promoted the idea of a government run
by technical experts. What Chase would later do for the General Semantics
movement with his Tyranny of Words, he did earlier for technocracy with
Technocracy: An Interpretation: he served as one of the movement's un-
official publicists and interpreters (Duffy, "Technocracy" 18).
General Semantics is, as Weaver recognizes, a movement grafted to an
ideology of social betterment through scientific and technological progress.
It attempts to apply scientific rationality to language to improve society.
Weaver explicitly denies that "the vocabulary of reduced meanings will
solve the problems of mankind," as he would deny categorically that sci-
ence is a means to social salvation (IHC 151; ER 22). He believes it is an
unpardonable sin that language, regarded in mystical terms by the Greeks
and by the Christians, should be debased as a mere instrument for the
transference of objective information. General Semanticists applaud lan-
guage that faithfully represents the particular instance and warn against
language that expresses abstractions. They are suspicious of words that frame
traditional philosophical generalizations. Since Weaver promotes a philo-
sophical rhetoric that embodies ethical ideals, it is no wonder that he should
strike out against semantics. He believes modern rhetors and their audi-
ences should be far less concerned with the particular than with the ge-
neric; less with empirical facts than with propositions that evaluate them.
To Weaver's way of thinking, the General Semanticists seek to diminish
the very qualities of language that make it the means of apprehending,
communicating, and preserving philosophical and cultural ideals.

THE STATUS OF RHETORICAL DISCOURSE AS AN INDEX TO

CULTURAL WELL-BEING
Weaver believes that a culture can be judged by the way it treats dis-
course; the decline of traditional culture can be traced from the rise of
nominalism in the Middle Ages to the final linguistic abuses of General
Semantics. From Weaver's point of view the ultimate consequences of se-
mantic tendencies are grave: "Verbal skepticism is the beginning of moral
nihilism." He argues that if words have no fixed meanings the society has
no means whereby it can make its institutions endure (SE 195-96). Seman-
tics, the most recent expression of Medieval nominalism, begins with the
assumption that word and thing are separate. Characteristically, Weaver
refers to the traditional South for a model of a society less affected by the
modernist tendency to treat language as relative. Only in a society such as
this, where there is a foundation of belief in the word, can unity and order
prevail. Weaver believes that semanticists engage in a vain pursuit when
they attempt to orient society toward a use of language that is more faithful
to its referents; the real task is to discover the true meanings of words and
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 169

then to use them for the sake of preserving the settled beliefs of culture.
He maintains that southerners are virtually made rhetoricians by living in
a culture whose permanence is mirrored in a fixed vocabulary (SE 194-
95). He sees rhetoric as the leaven that binds society; a scientistic society,
suspicious of all rhetoric, is inevitably fragmented. The persuasive appeal
of the old eloquence, Weaver argues, is to the memory of values embed-
ded in history, and a society that does not value rhetoric loses the agency
of its own coherence (VO 55-56, 71-72; see Chapter 1).
Every philosophy must forge its identity by establishing what it is not,
as well as what it is. To this end General Semantics serves Weaver's inter-
ests well because it is a nearly perfect foil for his thinking about the rhe-
torical, as against the scientistic, conception of language. Indeed, Weaver
admits the utility of positivism and relativism as devil's advocates (LIS 224).
General Semantics is science applied to language as Weaver's theory is
ethics applied to rhetoric. General Semantics posits the ideal of a neutral
language, while Weaver insists that the proper role of rhetoric is to be the
bearer of cultural values and truths. Weaver sees General Semantics as
divesting language of its most humane functions: to embody the ideal and
to move audiences toward it, to give voice to passions and sentiments, and
to preserve the cultural beliefs of the past.
In commenting on the rhetorical character of southern literature, Weaver
speaks passionately of the need for words that express and evoke emotion:
"The conviction that feelings are real and that discourse can be a devilish
or divine instrument stands at the farthest remove from the mechanistic
and sterile theory of notation which the modern teachers of 'communica-
tion' are trying to foist upon us" (SE 67). Weaver's ideal of rhetorical dis-
course is founded upon a nearly unequivocal approval of southern oratory,
intimations of which he also finds in the rhetorical quality of southern lit-
erature. To substantiate his assessment of southern literature he quotes a
poignant speech in Robert Penn Warren's At Heavens Gate: "The pore
human man, he ain't nuthin but a handful of dust, but the light of God's
face on him and he shines like a diamint, and blinds the eye of the un-
uprighteous congregation. Dust it lays on the floor, under the goin forth
and the comin in, and ain't nuthin, and gets stirred up under the trompin,
but a sunbeam come in the dark room in that light it will dance and shine
for heart joy" (SE 66). Southerners, Weaver seems to say, use the language
to express their very human responses to a world that produces a welter of
emotions. In this and other examples of southern literature Weaver hears
the "tumbling streams of image-bearing and evocative words [which] create
the speaker's world of value and inclination" (SE 66). In exemplifying
southern literary rhetoric with an example of vernacular eloquence Weaver
demonstrates the ineluctable rhetorical power inherent in the language it-
self. His point is also well made by Kenneth Burke: "We cannot speak the
mother tongue without employing the rhetorical devices of a Roman ora-
170 The Politics of Rhetoric

tor." With particular pertinence to the topic at hand, Burke goes on to

remark that Jeremy Bentham recognized that the "unconscious piety" in-
volved in the use of language is what the "neutral vocabularies of science"
seek to expunge (Permanence and Change 75).
With few exceptions, when Weaver provides an example of oratorical
eloquence it is that of a southerner. Among the southern speakers he praises
are Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, the Kentucky-born Abraham Lin-
coln, and Douglas MacArthur, a Virginian. "In the department of utter-
ance," Weaver concludes, "the South has made its deepest mark" (SE 195,
VO 55). The description of southern oratory that substantiates Weaver's
evaluation is invariably the same. Southern orators, responding to the co-
herent aspects of their own cultural background, prefer argument from def-
inition and move audiences by sentiment—a unity of emotion and settled
belief—and by the legitimate authority associated with their role as expos-
itors of society's values (ER 164-85).
Weaver's discussion of his preference for the argument from definition
in Language Is Sermonic as well as in two chapters in The Ethics of Rhet-
oric helps give dimension to his views on language and rhetoric. Admitting
the theological nature of his views, Weaver expresses a philosophical pre-
dilection for arguments from definition, because in definition there is the
possibility of expressing ideal meanings (LIS 212). Not only does Weaver
note his own faith in a transcendent world of meaning, he assumes that
those who argue from definition imply the existence of an apprehensible
ideal. Although at times orators might simply attempt to articulate settled
belief, such as in ceremonial oratory, at other times their rhetorical inven-
tion carefully weighs the meaning of a priori conceptions, which then con-
trol their arguments. Lincoln, for example, concluded that slavery was wrong
based upon a definition of humankind that stipulated the freedom of all
people. In discussing Lincoln's tendency to argue from definition, Weaver
comments on the powerful originality of his arguments, the anticipation of
which apparently aroused apprehension in his judicial opponents (ER 86).
It is, as we have said, in response to rhetorical exigencies that the great
lights are led to discover meanings that premise arguments, but which may
also become principles that transform society. If, as Weaver suggests, ideal
meanings are immutable, they must also be discovered and expressed by
individual speakers in human discourse within the context of historical events
(LIS 206).
The real world gives rise to the need for persuasion and thus to the
possibility of finding essences that must then be represented rhetorically.
Although a definition of humankind that establishes the principle of indi-
vidual freedom may appear self-evident in the abstract, this definition must
be presented in such a way as to move an audience that is situated in time
and space. Lincoln, though confident in his stance that slavery violated the
essence of humanity, at one point argued his case against the extension of
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 171

slavery by asking his audiences to look at the assumptions that lay behind
their own behavior. In his Peoria speech he pointed out that, although his
audience would not allow its children to play with the children of slave
traders, they would allow them to play with the children of slaves (ER 92).
On a psychological and emotional basis Lincoln's argument provided potent
proof for this audience that slavery violated the essence of humanity. In
other words, Lincoln realized that his definition of humankind and his in-
clusion of the slave in this definition might not be persuasive to some peo-
ple unless they saw how their own behavior and emotions manifested a
prior acceptance of his definition. He appealed to a belief that drew its
force from being already implicit in the minds of the audience and thereby
led the audience to accept its consequences. Lincoln, Weaver would say,
actualized the possibilities of his dialectic on human freedom in an argu-
ment that adapted to the audience's uniqueness and its place in history.
He fulfilled Plato's prescription for a rhetoric that, although substantiated
by truth, adapts to the varying nature of the human soul.
It was not principally Lincoln's intention to assert a definition of human-
kind, although his eloquent arguments on behalf of human freedom are of
universal value. To the contrary he articulated his definition because of the
exigencies of the moment and in reference to problems with political and
ethical scope. Weaver argues that the nature of language is to be found in
its rhetorical uses, and in the richness and complexity of persuasive human
interactions, not in some abstract notion of pure referential meaning con-
ceived in the mind of the General Semanticist. It is the rhetorical or "ser-
monic" nature of language that Weaver regards as its definining character-
istic. Although he admits that language varies in the degree to which it is
objective, he believes nevertheless that the essential nature of language is
to express the speaker's attitude, and from this follows motivation and the
attempt to influence, even in the realm of science (LIS 221-22; ER 22). At
this point one detects obvious convergences between Weaver's insistence
that language is "the carrier of tendency" and Burke's emphasis upon the
motivational aspects of discourse and his view of language as "symbolic
action." Weaver's notion that "men are born into history, with an endow-
ment of passion and a sense of the ought" approximates Burke's conception
of man as the "inventor of the negative," that is, of moral impulse (LIS
221; Burke, Language 9-13). In fact, Weaver cites Burke's A Rhetoric of
Motives in confirmation of his thesis of the attitudinal qualities of language
(LIS 221). In The Ethics of Rhetoric he uses Burke's notion that only in a
very narrow sphere can one make language be made to seem neutral (22).
Although obviously influenced by Burke, Weaver departs from him in as-
serting that there is a superior form of rhetoric that embodies essences and
presents resemblances of truth.
Weaver regards rhetoric Platonically as providing the stimulus to truth,
"actualizing" it, as it were, through form. It creates the linkage between
172 The Politics of Rhetoric

the purely speculative positions of dialectic and their effectiveness in the

real world, affording the means of moving from the possible to the actual.
Weaver represents this notion in terms of a geometric relationship: "Ac-
cordingly when we say that rhetoric instills belief and action, we are saying
that it intersects possibility with the plane of actuality and hence of the
imperative" (ER 28). While dialectic establishes essences, rhetoric, by ren-
dering them persuasive, gives them existence in the world. Rhetorical de-
vices such as, for example, narrative description that appeals to the senses,
allegory, metaphor, metonomy, and epithet help move audiences subjec-
tively and, rather than requiring suppression in the interests of objectivity,
should be valued for their instrumentality. Not only are the rhetorical qual-
ities of language inescapable, they are of utmost social value when used by
people of insight and authority in a good interest. Rather than denouncing
the rhetorical uses of language, we should celebrate the "web of inter-
communication and inter-influence" and attend to evaluating the orator's
insight and ethical purpose (LIS 224). Rhetors are, it would seem, as Gor-
gias proposed, enchanters of souls, who make use of the magical properties
of the language to stimulate belief and move audiences to action. With
some modification of this metaphor, they are what Plato idealized them to
be in the Phaedrus, namely, noble lovers who move souls toward the good
configured in rhetorical language.
Weaver was committed to the idea that scientism applied to language
was destructive of culture. His interest in semantics persisted until the end
of his life. Interestingly, one of two courses he asked to teach at Vanderbilt
was in semantics. A faculty member in the English department commented
at the time that Weaver knew little about semantics. In fact, he knew a
great deal; he had, one might say, a prosecutor's fascination with what he
saw as a kind of intellectual criminality. Since Weaver died before assum-
ing his post at Vanderbilt we can only speculate about the content of the
course, probably a graduate seminar. It seems likely, however, that he
would have used this subject to express the cultural and philosophic signif-
icance of rhetorical discourse and its scientistic antithesis (Young).
The clarity in Weaver's writings invariably results from his tendency to
construct polar opposites and to understand their causes and consequences
in antithetical pairs. As modernism is all that philosophical realism is not,
so neuter discourse is all that rhetorical discourse is not. One can appreci-
ate, therefore, Weaver's long-standing interest in the false ideal of language
profferred by the General Semanticists. In the very sphere of Weaver's
greatest knowledge he had discovered a cancer, a manifestation of the evils
of modern culture in the form of an antirhetoric, devoid of rhetorical evo-
cation, of subjectivity, of historical resonance, and of memory that could
reconstitute lost ideals. The doctrine of General Semantics impiously shat-
tered the unity of word and thing, and in turn the unity brought about by
the communal belief in the significant symbols of culture. In Weaver's mind
 General Semantics and Spacious Rhetoric 173

neuter discourse is to the current century what spacious oratory was to the
last, an index to the character of the culture. It is the low water mark of
modernist culture.
What Weaver would think of current attitudes toward language is not
difficult to predict. Although for a time there was considerable interest in
General Semantics, including popular books and regular college course of-
ferings, as a notion of social improvement through linguistic precision it
has gone the way of all intellectual fads. In this light, Weaver might be
taken as reactionary sounding a false alarm. However, the ideal of an ob-
jective language, particularly in the service of science and social science,
has by no means lost its currency. So long as culture is under the spell of
science, Weaver would argue, such tendencies are inevitable. Society has
certainly not returned to an admiration of spacious rhetoric, and this would
be enough to tell Weaver that culturally all is not well. Nor has rhetoric of
the type Weaver admires returned to greater favor, although the academy
has witnessed some resurgence in the study of rhetoric. In its popular use
the term rhetoric still suggests to media commentators and political pun-
dits an obscuring of reality rather than, as Weaver understood it, a means
to cultural coherence and philosophic revelation. There are also curricular
tendencies that reflect some of the semanticists' themes. Textbooks in com-
munication encourage an interest in eliminating communication barriers
and reducing ambiguity, and likewise courses in technical and business
communication demonstrate how to sanitize, or objectify, practical prose.
These developments would no doubt have confirmed Weaver's fears of the
drift away from a rich rhetoric of evocation and toward an eviscerated "neu-
ter discourse." Thus, despite the loss of interest in General Semantics,
Weaver's analysis still has great pertinence. Like all of Weaver's rhetorical
theory it is self-reflexive, because Weaver's analysis of semantics is also
fundamentally a cultural critique made effective by an eloquent rhetoric
that is the antithesis of neuter discourse.
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 9
Rhetorical Genres

Rhetorical theorists tacitly invite their readers to consider their own rhet-
oric insofar as a rhetorical theory's expression either purposefully or uncon-
sciously reflects the theory itself. Cicero's De Oratore, for example is man-
ifestly self-reflexive, the theory calling attention to its manner of expression
and, in turn, the expression providing confirmation for the theory. Michael
Leff characterizes De Oratore as a work that relies upon "enactment as
well as statement" (121). De Oratore is an eloquent and wise discourse on
eloquence and wisdom, as Plato's Phaedrus is a work of literary imagination
on this, among other, subjects. Richard Weaver's theory is also self-reflex-
ive, although its explicit conclusions and formal implications are different
from either Cicero's or Plato's.
The descriptions of ethical rhetoric Weaver articulates, as well as his own
rhetorical tendencies, can be better understood by viewing them in light
of the Aristotelian categories of epideictic, forensic, and deliberative rhet-
oric. Weaver, himself, finds it telling to categorize social scientific rhetoric
as deliberative, since it helps him argue that social scientists argue for lib-
eral social change (LIS 152-58). By asking what genres of rhetoric Weaver
seems to prefer, we do not intend to arrive at a final and definitive cate-
gorization of his rhetoric but rather to shed light on his method and pur-
pose. Plainly, it is impossible to make Weaver exclusively into one kind of
rhetor or another because, just as the purposes of the three genres are
intertwined, so are his purposes. However, it cannot escape notice that
Weaver frequently occupies himself with honor and dishonor, the goals of
epideictic rhetoric, and with questions of justice and injustice, the goals of
forensic rhetoric. The distance between praise and blame on the one hand
and justice and injustice on the other is not great, nor for that matter is
176 The Politics of Rhetoric

the distance between what is praiseworthy and the deliberative rhetor's

interest in what is advisable (Rhetoric 1368a). Like his rhetorical theory,
Weaver's rhetoric is multidimensional and can be viewed from several av-
enues of approach. What appears epideictic from one perspective may be
more like forensic from another. Indeed, Weaver often wishes us to think
of him as defending the indefensible, a forensic pleader in the court of
history, but he also enlists stylistic resources identified with the epideictic
orator. His defense frequently focuses on the praise of the philosophic vir-
tues he says underlie the actions of those he praises and are absent in those
he condemns. This focus upon values makes his essays appear epideictic.
Yet, in the same essay he may deal with the facts in the partial manner of
the Greek funeral orator, or when viewed differently, in the manner of a
prosecuting attorney overly eager to win a case. Part of the difficulty is
that, although Weaver's primary audience is conservative, a secondary au-
dience comprised of liberals will read him quite differently. From one per-
spective Weaver is writing for the delight and edification of like-minded
conservatives who might well regard his essays on behalf of lost causes as
ingenious displays of the virtues they identify with conservativism. On the
other hand, a liberal audience might recoil from Weaver's exposition of
virtues they do not accept. In this case, his essays, such as his defense of
John Randolph, will appear highly controversial, and arguments that would
strike a conservative audience as cunningly clever will seem sophistical to
audiences not prepared to accept Weaver's conclusions. He is, in our opin-
ion, at his best when seen as an epideictic rhetor and worst when regarded
as a forensic rhetor. Least of all is he a deliberative rhetor, except in that
his ethical evaluations and forensic judgments imply action without stipu-
lating what it should be. Certainly he is not a deliberative orator of the
liberal type, such as the social scientists he criticizes, for he does not offer
specific prescriptions for social change.

THE EPIDEICTIC RHETORICIAN

Weaver's rhetoric is frequently one of praise and blame, relying less upon
the use of inartistic evidence than upon the devices of rhetorical amplifi-
cation. Weaver frequently expresses himself in an epideictic style, and his
discourse embodies the ethical purposes with which serious epideictic rhet-
oric is associated. He is also most approving of epideictic oratory in the
form of the spacious ceremonial speeches of nineteenth-century America,
although he does not mention the epideictic genre in this connection. The
reasons for Weaver's predilection for the epideictic, as we shall see, are as
much philosophic and cultural as they are literary and aesthetic. A discus-
sion of his approval of epideictic oratory provides a useful way of summa-
rizing his notions of what rhetoric should be in the ideal, and how the ideal
has been abandoned. Ideally, rhetoric has a cultural role, and in this em-
 Rhetorical Genres 177

phasis as well as in the kind of role he sees for rhetoric Weaver follows
Plato, though Weaver ultimately arrives at a greater appreciation for rhet-
oric's potential than does Plato.
Weaver's interpretation of the Phaedrus, itself a work on rhetoric that
enlists the epideictic genre, is foundational to his understanding of rheto-
ric. It provides a well of insight to which he frequently returns. Although
we have discussed Weaver's interpretation of the Phaedrus before, it is
important to point out that the three speeches that comprise it are each
epideictic, although each manifests quite a different character. The first
speech, recited by Phaedrus, is Lysias' playful and impious argument on
behalf of the nonlover. The next two speeches, Socrates' own, are also
epideictic; one censuring, the other praising, love. Taken together the three
are model speeches intended for instruction in the use and misuse of rhet-
oric. They are display speeches such as those used by the Sophists as models
to instruct their students, although their philosophical purpose is different.
Several sorts of epideictic rhetoric were practiced in ancient Greece, rang-
ing from amusing displays to serious recitals of Greek history in funeral
orations. The sort illustrated in the third speech in the Phaedrus is well
suited to the presentation of Plato's philosophic notions. It makes use of
epideictic for the purpose of instructing the single interlocutor, a particu-
larly appropriate use given the themes of love and nonlove (Duffy, "Pla-
tonic" 86). l Weaver's appreciation of the third speech in the Phaedrus as a
work of literary afflatus is underlaid by his preference for rhetorical dis-
course that moves audiences toward a truth first discovered through dialec-
tic (ER 17). If, as Plato maintains, knowledge is a recollection of some prior
vision of the truth, then the function of rhetoric is to stimulate the imagi-
nation toward its remembrance. Platonic epideictic rhetoric purports to give
shape to truth rather than being coextensive with its discovery.
By nature epideictic rhetoric is noncontroversial and deals less in fact
than in the means whereby facts are evaluated. This is not to say, of course,
that epideictic rhetors do not make use of logical proofs, but rather that
the premises of their enthymemes tend not to be in dispute. In epideictic
discourse the frequent use of enthymemes, sententia, and maxims contrib-
ute to its stylistic characteristics by providing a means of amplification and
rhetorical accumulation. The major premises of such enthymemes affirm
deeply held and perhaps unconscious audience beliefs. By making use of
these beliefs the rhetor can lead the audience to conclusions that are cred-
ible and psychologically satisfying (ER 174). An illustration will help make
this point. Theodore Roosevelt's famous address "The Man with the Muck-
rake," which sought to restrain the muckraking journalists from their ex-
cesses, made ample use of enthymemes, many of which were variations on
the same theme. The speech did not incorporate a single example of muck-
raking, in part because Roosevelt did not wish to name the muckrakers he
specifically had in mind. Rather, it relied for its effectiveness upon conclu-
178 The Politics of Rhetoric

sions deductively drawn from maxims and the store of conventional wis-
dom. An example of one of Roosevelt's arguments should suffice to give a
flavor of the entire speech: "It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully
to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a
bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon charac-
ter does no good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is
gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel
is untruthfully assailed" (Roosevelt 213). Roosevelt, in the manner of Weaver's
spacious orator, conspicuously avoided the lurid sensationalism of which he
accused the muckrakers, preferring to make his case with arguments that
flowed from moralistic propositions. What one notices in Roosevelt's speech,
therefore, is his ability to attenuate his thoughts with enthymematic proofs
and to embellish them with style.
The chief resource of epideictic is amplification, and its genius subsists
in its formal characteristics. Epideictic relies upon the evocative power of
language to stimulate the memory and imagination, and is therefore the
most literary of the three Aristotelian genres of rhetoric. If truth is pre-
sumed to be prior to its expression, then epideictic rhetoric would seem to
be the genre of rhetoric most appropriate to its representation. Upon con-
cluding the third speech in the Phaedrus, Socrates says the form of the
speech was occasioned by Phaedrus himself: "The poetical figures I was
forced to use, for Phaedrus would have them" (Phaedrus 257a). Plato's at-
tempt to persuade Phaedrus of love's divine nature forced him to use a
sensual and beautiful discourse, although Plato would also want us to rec-
ognize that the speech, while exciting Phaedrus' passions, led him to an
intellectual rather than a physical catharsis. In this way, Plato invites us to
see the possibilities of rhetorical discourse most clearly visible in the epi-
deictic genre.
Weaver comments that: "It is so regularly the method of Plato to follow
a subtle analysis with a striking myth that it is not unreasonable to call him
the master rhetorician" (ER 19). In terms of the dramatic argument of the
Phaedrus this might have been the judgment Plato wished us to reach,
although more broadly he would have preferred us to think him the master
dialectician. At the end of the dialogue he explictly discusses dialectic as
the more serious and noble pursuit (Phaedrus 276d). Why has Weaver so
forcefully commended Plato to us as a rhetorician? He is struck, no doubt,
with Plato's ability to fuse dialectic analysis with a figurative use of lan-
guage, which together produce persuasive discourse. Without naming it as
such what Weaver admires in Plato's use of rhetoric in the third speech of
the Phaedrus is its epideictic character. Indeed, Plato's prose lies closest
to the epideictic genre, a fact upon which Theodore Burgess has com-
mented: "His themes came from philosophy but his style is epideictic in
the best and highest sense" (246). If the role of dialectic is to discover
truth, then it falls to rhetoric to present the result of dialectic in discourse
 Rhetorical Genres 179

that, in Weaver's interpretation of the Phaedrus, is analogous to love. Like

love, rhetoric finds its object in the real world where differing audiences
and situations require artfully adapted modes of presentation (ER 21). In
this conception of rhetoric the truth is not contested, for it has already
been discovered in dialectic. Rhetoric becomes the complementary ele-
ment without which, "even the man who is thoroughly familiar with the
facts will be not a bit nearer to the art of persuasion" (Phaedrus 260d).
The highest form of rhetoric is exemplified by Plato, "the master rheto-
rician," who begins with "convictions and virtues," that is, with a knowl-
edge of what is praiseworthy and what is censurable, to use epideictic ter-
minology (Phaedrus 270b). As Weaver interprets Plato, the art of rhetoric,
therefore, concerns how dialectically secured positions can be "actualized"
by their adaptation to meet differences in the audience and the situation.
If Weaver perceives that rhetoric has a role in dialectic or in the discovery
of truth, he does not discuss it. To the contrary, he upholds the view that
dialectic and rhetoric are separable, while admitting that not everyone would
agree (ER 27). Rhetoric, with the emphasis he gives it, is not heuristic; it
is representational. Rhetorical invention does not dwell upon establishing
the validity of the propositions to be advanced, or in exposing them to
dialectical scrutiny, but in finding the means of making them persuasive in
the real world. For this purpose, Weaver believes, one must look to the
commonplaces, to the fund of accepted opinion that is the wellspring of the
rhetorician's premises (VO 63).
Chaim Perelman observes that epideictic rhetoric, unlike the other two
forms of rhetoric, is uncontroversial because the values it brings to the
forefront are not open to dispute (48). In this he aligns himself with Cicero,
who said in De Partitione Oratoria: "Epideictic does not establish propo-
sitions which are doubtful but amplifies statements that are certain or ac-
cepted as being certain" (21, 71). A. Lehigh Deneef, speaking of epideictic
poetry, agrees: "Epideictic does not prove, it demonstrates" (221). Simi-
larly Weaver sees nineteenth-century oratory as declamatory and as rekin-
dling settled values through a process of "steady inculcation" (ER 181, 172).
There is little wonder that Weaver would acknowledge Plato as the mas-
ter rhetorician. In praising Plato's rhetorical acumen Weaver is implicitly
praising his own ethical notions regarding the proper use of rhetoric. In
the Phaedrus* extraordinary use of epideictic discourse Weaver sees inti-
mations of a rhetoric that illuminates ideals, leads audiences to appreciate
cultural sentiments, and provides a means for social integration. Epideictic
rhetoric of the ceremonial type is distinctive for its appeal to memory, so
it is significant that the Phaedrus purports to deal with, among other things,
the question of written discourse. While Socrates disapproves of writing,
on the grounds that it destroys memory, at the end of the dialogue he
speaks of written discourse as "a treasury of reminders against an old age
of forgetfulness" (Phaedrus 276d). Weaver's conservatism leads him to extol
180 The Politics of Rhetoric

the importance of memory, whether couched in terms of Platonic recollec-

tion or Weaver's notions of the "universal mind" and the "universal en-
lightened consensus" (IHC 181, ER 170). Weaver searches the past for the
enduring values that should be reconstituted in the future. He forcefully
rejects the liberal notion that the future should unfold merely as a response
to the material circumstances of the present (LIS 215).
Plato's other sustained statement about epideictic rhetoric is the Menex-
enus, in which Socrates delivers a model speech, perhaps meant to rival
Pericles' funeral oration. Weaver does not discuss the Menexenus, although
his treatment of nineteenth-century ceremonial oratory suggests his strong
approbation of civic oratory of this type. The funeral oration was an address
to the polus and concerned matters of civic virtue illustrated in the history
of Athens and in the commitments of the Athenians who fell in its battles.
Although Plato seems approving of epideictic rhetoric he does imply that
poetry is preferable for the purposes of the funeral oration. At the begin-
ning of the dialogue Socrates comments that the poets might use his "plain
prose" in "providing material also for others to build into odes and other
forms of poetry in a manner worthy of the doers of these deeds" (Phaedrus
239b).2 In the Menexenus Socrates presents a speech that celebrates Greek
values, instructing the young, offering consolation, and deepening the cul-
tural and political beliefs of the older generation. In Plato's model speech
and in Greek funeral oratory generally, little importance is placed upon the
faithful recounting of factually accurate history. The values illustrated in
heroic deeds are true beyond any sense of the objective verifiability of
deeds themselves. Indeed, George Kennedy notes that in The Republic
Plato accepts the utility of myths and fairy tales as a means of conveying a
truth, where truth is intended to mean that which produces the right effect
upon the audience (162). Although they are fabrications, Socrates still pro-
poses that they can be judged on the basis of how truthfully and beautifully
they convey the appropriate values (Phaedrus 378c-379a). Public epideictic
oratory of the kind represented in the funeral oration of the Menexenus
also performs a philosophically educative function, celebrating values even
while failing to provide an objectively accurate account of the facts.
Weaver's praise of nineteenth-century ceremonial oratory delivered on
occasions such as agricultural fairs and Fourth of July celebrations accounts
for many of the qualities of Greek funeral oratory, the most important form
of epideictic oratory in Greek life. His essay in praise of this atavistic form
of rhetoric is itself an interesting example of epideictic rhetoric. Like so
many of Weaver's essays it attempts, in the tradition of a certain form of
epideictic oratory, to make an argument in support of an improbable posi-
tion. While the Sophists often spoke on paradoxical themes to display their
virtuosity as orators and to delight their audiences, Weaver adds to this the
serious purpose of revealing the values he believes lay behind the old rhet-
oric. In part to establish the difficulty of his rhetorical undertaking, Weaver
 Rhetorical Genres 181

begins with the statement that spacious nineteenth-century speeches cre-

ate in the modern hearer a sense of discomfort. He illustrates how such
speeches represented a homogeneous society, while the discomfort they
bring to modern audiences is a reflection of a society that is fragmented.
What makes the old oratory spacious is not simply its grandiloquence but
its interest in broad statements, in universals, and in essences. Like Plato,
Weaver believes in the importance of subordinating fact to the truth of
general propositions. What is important is the ethical effect such oratory
has on the audience. That society is no longer interested in the old orator's
orotund phrases suggests its cynicism toward the sort of general proposi-
tions they expressed.
Ceremonial rhetoric of the nineteenth century began at the point where
dialectic left off, although in this case, dialectic might be taken to mean
the informal means by which society has arrived at its fundamental pre-
cepts, rather than the painstaking process of careful logical inquiry. Spa-
cious oratory celebrated the very beliefs that gave the culture its coher-
ence. Such rhetoric resubstantiated the ideas that were the heritage of
previous generations. Even in the face of the vicissitudes of the material
world, ceremonial oratory asserted the permanence of ideas. It was a rhet-
oric that symbolically argued against the mutability of the world and against
eulogistic notions of progress. As spacious rhetoric is, by Weavers account,
a splendid example of the right use of the art, others who do not share his
conservative pieties might see in it societal self-congratulation and a smug-
ness leading to complacency. The spacious rhetoric that wins Weaver's ap-
proval nearly always celebrates conservative rather than liberal values, al-
though neither spacious nor epideictic rhetoric is the exclusive province of
conservatism.
In epideictic oratory, the authority of orators results in part from their
identification with the values they praise. Nineteenth-century encomiasts
of religious and civic virtues were bent neither on communicating the facts
nor on interpreting them in the manner of a specialist. They spoke as gen-
eralists rather than as experts, whose training might have created, as Thor-
stein Veblen suggested, an incapacity to see beyond their own provinces
of knowledge (Burke, Permanence and Change 48-49). Weaver's exem-
plary orators spoke ex cathedra, with a presumptive authority. In the
Scopes trial, William Jennings Bryan, the prosecution's spokesperson on
religious matters, opposed the defense's attempt to introduce scientific ex-
perts on the grounds that they would be meaningless, since, concerning
the Bible, there was no need for experts; every jury member could act as
his own expert (WMFCT 181). In the same sense neither an acquaintance
with the facts of evolution nor a formal theological training gave Bryan the
authority credited to him by his Dayton audience. His was the authority of
the Greek funeral orator, derived from a manifest understanding of how
political questions could be resolved by referring them to ethical constants.
182 The Politics of Rhetoric

Epideictic is the most literary of the rhetorical genres and traditionally

the most likely to be written because its invention is circumscribed by its
focus upon pre-existent ideas. Ceremonial orators, as we have said, looked
to style for a means to distinguish their discourse. In the ceremonial ad-
dresses of the nineteenth century, which Weaver uses to exemplify spa-
cious rhetoric, we hear the voice of southern eloquence. Characteristic of
Weaver's affinity for spacious rhetoric is his description of passages in
Faulkner's fiction, "where tumbling streams of image-bearing and evoca-
tive words create the speaker's world of value and inclination" (SE 66). It
is interesting that Weaver commends stylistic vivacity even though he sternly
objects to sensationalism in journalism. The difference, he would argue, is
that lurid sensationalism distastefully magnifies the object at hand, while a
vivid, even sensual style, when used by realist philosophers and spacious
orators, stimulates the imagination toward the apprehension of an ideal or
an essence. Facts alone are inadequate to this task. Thus, Socrates tells
Phaedrus that neither "vision" nor "comprehension," but "imagination" re-
veals the gods (246d). In the Phaedrus, we are shown ideal love in terms
of a brilliant allegory. In Daniel Webster's prosecution of Francis Knapp,
which Weaver uses to exemplify the sermonic nature of language, Webster
used a vivid and necessarily imaginative narration to reveal the full nature
of the crime, with the result being Knapp's conviction, although no one
actually witnessed the murder and Knapp was not the assassin but an ac-
complice (LIS 218-19). What links these two examples, which are from
quite different spheres of discourse, is that in neither are the facts made
the central concern: both exceed what can be known from the facts. The
truth about love and the truth about the wickedness of the Knapp-White
murder conspiracy could be said to exist in a realm above mere facts and
verisimilitude. The presentation of such truths requires the rhetorician's
nonliteralist approach to language. Through rhetorical appeals to the affec-
tions of the audience, both Plato and Webster ask that objective reality be
subjectively transcended. Weaver's ideal rhetorician, whether as philoso-
pher, encomiast, or jurist, subordinates the facts to the higher truths, which
rhetoric can illuminate.
This focus upon value and truth, rather than upon fact and verisimili-
tude, defines the epideictic genre. The Greek funeral orator Plato emulates
in the Menexenus similarly had little regard for the unembellished narra-
tion of Greek history; his fundamental purpose was to celebrate the historic
values of Greek society. Consonantly Weaver describes the role of spacious
rhetoric as bringing "the past into a meditative relationship with the pres-
ent" (ER 178). In preferring the qualities of rhetoric best seen in the epi-
deictic genre, Weaver situates himself with ideas and history rather than
with ambient reality, a reasonable choice given his disdain for the modern
world under the spell of science and technology. Weaver prefers to con-
template the world through the lens of spacious rhetoric rather than gaze
 Rhetorical Genres 183

directly at the morally neutral facts uncovered by science. He appreciates

the "aesthetic distance" the old oratory achieved, for it filtered from view
all that was not pertinent to the occasion (ER 175). Epideictic is the genre
of rhetoric in which form is most conspicuous, and Weaver believes it is
modern culture's renunciation of form that has taken it away from ideals.
"Forms and conventions," he tells us, "are the ladders of ascent." Next to
poetry, epideictic discourse is the form of discourse most likely to serve as
what Weaver calls a "veil" that is "half adornment, half concealment," yet
through which truth can be discerned (IHC 26). Indeed, it is only through
such a veil that truth is discernible.
Not all epideictic discourse is of equal value, of course. Appeals to moral
imagination may fall short either for want of inspiration or for want of art,
although in practice the two are indivisible. Of them inspiration is the more
crucial, as Socrates makes plain when he says that without inspiration the
poet "will find that he is found wanting and that the verse he writes in his
sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen." Not all discourse
is the product of divine madness, which Plato says is "nobler than sanity"
(244d). Some is insanity, without being divine, and some, according to
Weaver, pursues the scientistic ideal of a "language of purion" (
7). The aesthetic and philosophic value of Socrates' second speech in the
Phaedrus is its figurative expression of an ideal that could not be otherwise e
described. The purpose of rhetoric, Weaver maintains, is to make the log-
ical analogical, in the sense that figurative language can represent an ideal
without fully embodying it (ER 18). Put in Platonic terms, rhetoric deals
in resemblances of the truth. As a prelude to describing the immortality of
the soul in terms of the allegory of the winged charioteer, Socrates main-
tains that only a divine discourse could reveal it completely, but that "what
it resembles, however, may be expressed more briefly and in human lan-
guage" (Phaedrus 246a). Contemplating this image, Wallace Stevens re
marked: "A poet's words are of things that do not exist without words. Thus
the image of the charioteer and the winged horses . . . was created by
words of things that never existed without the words" (33). In its use of
figurative language and symbolism, epideictic rhetoric is most congenial
with Platonic philosophy and with Weaver's conservative notions of how
truth is best represented. Epideictic rhetoric is thus a convenient bridge
spanning idealistic philosophy and rhetoric.
We cannot help but notice that Weaver is himself often the epideictic
rhetorician whom he describes. First one must consider his themes, which,
like those of the ancient Sophists' display speeches, are frequently paradox-
ical. Weaver relishes making a compelling argument for what on the sur-
face appears exceedingly difficult to argue. He even at times takes pains to
point out that presumption is against his argument, such as when he dis-
cusses spacious rhetoric. He delights in overturning presumption, in lead-
ing the reader down forgotten paths of conservative philosophy. That Weaver
184 The Politics of Rhetoric

states explictly that this is his intention makes yet more interesting his use
of the genre of rhetoric first shaped by the Sophists (LP 140). He lays out
for himself the formidable tasks of showing John Randolph's individualism
better than Thoreau's, and Hayne's historically based rhetoric better than
Webster's "dialectic of power." He reveals Lincoln to be a conservative in
his argumentation, and Edmund Burke, the great conservative, to be a
liberal. He disputes a list of terms like progress that carry social sanction,
and shows social scientific discourse to be rhetorical and subjective. He
opposes the usurpation of the word prejudice into the lexicon of social dis-
approbation, arguing that before it was freighted with pejorative connota-
tions it could mean simply "prejudgment," an act consistent with a con-
servative belief in the existence of universal standards of valuation and the
capacity to apply such standards unerringly (LP 1). He demonstrates the
preferability of spacious rhetoric to reportage and, analyzing the Scopes
trial, he argues that in controversies between science and cultural truth,
science must yield to metaphysics.
Weavers persona is of one struggling against the new order from the
disadvantaged position of the old. At times he defends a culture, particu-
larly southern culture, and its right to autonomy; at other times he defends
the past against liberal presumptions of scientific and technological prog-
ress. Still more abstractly he evaluates argument types and praises argu-
ment from definition, analogy, and genuine authority and questions argu-
ment from circumstance, which he ascribes to his liberal adversaries. In all
he supports philosophical realism as against positivism and relativism. It is
not enough to call Weaver a critic. More specifically, he has the Sophist's
eye for the rhetorical theme that will best display the concealed vitality of
atavistic positions while also demonstrating the power of traditional rheto-
ric and his own brilliance as a rhetorician. It is not far-fetched to think of
Weaver as a Sophist with the critical difference that, unlike the Greek
Sophists, he was anything but a relativist. However, from one perspective,
Weaver's essays can be read as confirmations of relativism, because they
often succeed in creating doubt about beliefs thought not to be in question.
In praising the manifestations of the values he believes in, whether they
apply to people, types of discourse and argumentation, ideas of language,
philosophical constructs, or such notions as the gentleman class or chivalry,
Weaver keeps to the purposes of epideictic rhetoric. His focus is upon the
ethics of rhetoric, and for him epideictic is the genre by which virtue and
vice are best revealed. It might be argued that, unlike the audience of
Greek funeral oratory, Weaver's readers might not be celebrants of the
values that underlie his discourse. However, Johannesen has concluded
that his primary audience was made up of conservatives such as Weaver
himself ("A Reconsideration" 4-6). Weaver indicates that he intends to show
how the conservative position could best be argued, not that he plans on
changing the minds of liberals (LP 139-40). If anything, he intends to ran-
 Rhetorical Genres 185

kle liberals. He is engaged, then, in a kind of rhetorical demonstration,

although one in which there are often unexpected turns of argument and
in which the themes themselves are difficult to anticipate. His argumenta-
tion shines most brilliantly as he attempts to illuminate universal princi-
ples. As we might expect of the epideictic speaker, his essays prove him to
be a masterful prose stylist. Weaver's purpose was, broadly speaking, what
he ascribes to the old orator, namely, to "place the past in a meditative
relationship with the present." The conclusions he reaches frequently hinge
upon the acceptance of philosophical and cultural notions identified with
the past. His revisionism suggests an attitude toward history comparable
to that of the Greek funeral orator or the American ceremonial orator.
Weaver's rhetoric, like that which he consistently praises, provides the ve-
hicle whereby the past is transmitted to the present. It is most appro-
priately Weaver's way of expressing his "poetic and ethical vision of life"
(LP 135). The rich linguistic and philosophical textures of spacious rhetoric,
as we point out in discussing Weaver's analysis of language, is the very
opposite of the linguistic brutalism he decries. It amplifies rhetorically what
sensationalism intensifies by exposure. At one level of irony, the rhetorical
facility Weaver says is being lost to modernism is richly represented in the
discourse of this modern rhetorician. At another level, his rhetoric, the
very sort Weaver claims is unpersuasive in a culture such as ours, entreats
us to be persuaded of this very truth.
It is Weaver's self-confessed passion to argue for the lost cause. How-
ever, the "transvaluation of values" he attempts goes beyond traditional
epideictic rhetoric. At least on the surface, essays with such intent do not
attempt to move audiences in the direction implicated by their own beliefs
but to dislodge them from beliefs they already hold. When for instance
Weaver indicts northern liberals and defends southern conservatives, he
has shifted from the purely declamatory intentions of display rhetoric to a
plea for alternative historical interpretations and evaluations. Those pre-
pared to agree with his conservatism might see such rhetoric as epideictic,
since they hold people like Hayne and Randolph to be heroes; since the
audience is already prepared to grant him victory, Weaver can be seen as
simply posing, for rhetorical effect, as one who has chosen to argue an
impossible position. But the people who make up such an audience do not
accurately reflect the dominant culture as Weaver describes it.
A broader audience may still see Weaver as engaging in epideictic, just
as the Athenians might have understood Gorgias' Encomium of Helen. Both
the Greeks and moderns could say that rhetors rely, in theory and practice,
on the magic of words to help them carry their arguments. Whereas Gor-
gias* reliance on the "irrationality" (what Burke says is "nonrationality") of
a powerful rhetoric is of a piece with his epistemology, Weaver, like Plato,
stresses more the importance of dialectic, although he too makes a place
for a nonrational understanding provided by and through the leap to the
186 The Politics of Rhetoric

literary, mythic, and prophetic realm. Further, both Gorgias and Weaver
make untenable assumptions: Gorgias' audience would not necessarily agree
that Helen's being overwhelmed by the god of love should in turn over-
whelm her duty to justice, as well as her duty to and love of family and
country; Weaver's larger audience does not accept that education should
be subordinate to the state in the way and to the extent Weaver states in
Academic Freedom: The Principle and the Problems.
Both Gorgias and Weaver argue paradoxical issues, both rely on nonra-
tional leaps to truths that cannot be empirically verified, and both rely on
the "magic" of rhetoric to induce or seduce others. One difference, how-
ever, between the two men is Gorgias' contention that since nothing can
be "known," we are free to believe what we wish—which for Gorgias means
what we find reasonable to believe. Weaver, of course, derides this posi-
tion, holding instead that some things can be known and that the noble
rhetor is obliged to discern them and present them to the public. This first
difference brings us to a second one: we can imagine that Gorgias did not
care overly much if he persuaded his audience of Helen's innocence, only
that he persuaded them of his virtuosity; Weaver, though, is serious about
his positions, problematic though they may be for his audience. His seri-
ousness sets his paradoxical arguments apart from the display rhetoric prac-
ticed under the banner of epideictic and categorizes it more appropriately
as forensic.
All historical writing requires, as George Kennedy points out, the talents
of the rhetorician: the evaluation of evidence, the making of a case, the
determination of justice (7). When Weaver looks at history, the method of
the forensic orator is particularly apparent. Like every historian, Weaver
does more than recount a chronology of events; he argues for an interpre-
tation—one not occasioned by the facts alone but by the filter of Weaver's
a priori conceptions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, regarding
past events and figures aligned with historically controversial positions.
Weaver's first rhetorical tactic is to show that we cannot trust the received
opinion of history and that apparently unimpeachable and unrepealable
verdicts should be reviewed in a court where Weaver's metaphysics is law.

WEAVER AS FORENSIC RHETORICIAN

The confusions of intention and audience show that Weaver is neither
one whose statements can always be taken at face value nor one without
contradictions. To explore these confusions a bit more deeply, we want to
expand our analysis of Weaver as epideictic rhetorician to consider him also
as a forensic rhetorician, beginning with a summary of the characteristics
of epideictic rhetoric Weaver employs. He uses shared assumptions and a
vivid style to endorse or apply shared cultural values. These characteristics
can be examined more specifically by considering the three appeals of pa-
 Rhetorical Genres 187

thos, logos, and ethos, which overlap just as the kinds of rhetoric overlap.
Weaver develops ethos by exhibiting his knowledge of classical rhetoric
and applying its lessons in his prose, his wide knowledge about Western
and specifically American history, and his clearly expressed desire to un-
derstand and create what most people would see as "better versions of
themselves" (ER 25). Concerning pathos as an appeal to audience affec-
tions, it goes nearly without saying that his is one of the more evocative
styles exhibited by twentieth-century American rhetorical theorists, with
the result that his theoretical position is more easily apprehensible since,
as Aristotle notes, "we all take a natural pleasure in learning easily" (Rhet-
oric, Book 3, 10). Compared with Kenneth Burke, for instance, Weaver is
much more easily read, because he uses a clearer, more conventional or-
ganizational structure, more carefully selected words and images, and more
carefully crafted sentences. Added to this emotional appeal is his frequent
use of assumptions and values to which his audience has strong emotional
attachment. Further still, he sometimes uses an approach he describes as
common to such master rhetoricians as John Randolph of Roanoke, who
"did not pass through methodical trains of reasoning, but dived at once to
his concluding propositions and tried to make it vivid with illustration. That
is, he does not rely upon drawn-out logic for his persuasiveness, but rather
upon 'the world's body' made real and impressive through concrete depic-
tion" (LP 81).
Our discussion has overlapped into the domain of logical appeal. Weaver
contends that there can be "no true rhetoric without dialectic" (ER 17),
but his preference is not the "drawn-out" and distancing syllogistic ap-
proach but the briefer and engaging enthymematic approach. Like the syl-
logism, the enthymeme contains an assumption, or major premise; proof,
or minor premise; and an assertion, or conclusion. Unlike the syllogism, its
context constrains its development in that it also includes a specific ques-
tion at issue, that is, a point of disagreement that gives rise to the rhetorical
context of which the enthymeme is a part. In epideictic rhetoric the dis-
agreement is either nonexistent or based on something like a paradox, which
is to say that it functions less as a question at issue than as a motive for
displaying rhetorical skill. The enthymeme is further distinguished from
the syllogism by two related characteristics (Bitzer 147-48). First, instead
of using major premises without a concern for the audience's agreement, it
requires assumptions that the audience not only accepts but can be said to
"ask for"; that is, determining an adequate solution to a particular question
at issue begins by finding some common ground on which to base the de-
velopment of the solution (see LIS 154-55; ER 173-74; VO 63). It is this
common ground that the audience asks for, or supplies, in that it needs it
to understand the development of the solution, and in that it accepts the
writer's solution when it can see that it has been reasonably developed out
of an assumption it already holds. In this sense, the rhetorician is required
183 The Politics of Rhetoric

to include the audience's participation in the framing of an argument (Lay

12). The second distinguishing characteristic of the enthymeme is that, in-
stead of presenting empirically verified truths, it builds on shared assump-
tions to offer probable and generally accepted assertions (which, in the case
of epideictic rhetoric, are generally accepted even without concomitant
proofs. The enthymeme uses all three appeals: it employs logos in its logi-
cal structure, pathos in its appeal to and reliance on audience values, and
ethos in its presentation of a rhetor who knows and works with the audi-
ence in the pursuit of shared truths.
Enthymematic reasoning is even more important in forensic than in ep-
ideictic rhetoric. Since epideictic rhetoric is concerned with endorsing al-
ready accepted positions, the development of a line of reasoning is second-
ary to the force of the stylistic presentation, whereas forensic rhetoric, while
still needing a forceful and engaging style, must be much more careful to
make a logical case for its assertions. We have already discussed some com-
plications involved in a forceful, vivid style—how, for instance, it is some-
times difficult to distinguish noble amplification from caricature and exag-
geration. One way of distinguishing is to analyze logical underpinnings,
specifically, an argument's ability to stay out of the excluded middle to
develop true and valid enthymemes: when an argument is not supported
by logic and clear definitions, what might otherwise be regarded as legiti-
mate stylistic amplification assumes the appearance of stylistic exaggeration
and caricature. 3 Of logics importance we assume no disagreement. We
include definition not only because it is identified as crucially important by
Weaver, but also because it is one of the statuses directly identified by
Roman rhetoricians and indirectly by Aristotle as crucial for forensic rhet-
oric. As these means serve to determine whether a vivid style is base or
noble and to evaluate the worth of forensic arguments generally, we turn
now to their fuller examination.
We begin with a lengthy illustration. During a 1988 presidential cam-
paign debate, many political analysts believed that Michael Dukakis had
caught George Bush in a trap by asking whether Bush was prepared to call
everyone who had an abortion a criminal. While Bush admitted during the
debate that he had not thought through the matter of crime and punish-
ment as regards the abortion issue, he nevertheless claimed that people
who participate in abortions are murderers since they take the lives of in-
nocent people. This claim constituted supporting evidence for his thinking
and Dukakis's question was an attempt to make him articulate the full ar-
gument. The assumption of Bush's argument, with which an American au-
dience in a forensic situation would undoubtedly agree, is that murderers
should be punished; thus, with the supporting contention that people who
participate in abortions are murderers, he needed, logically, to answer Du-
kakis's question in the affirmative. Indeed, to recall our discussion of an
earlier chapter, Dukakis might also have observed that those who engage
 Rhetorical Genres 189

in abortions do so with premeditation and that Bush, who had previously

stated belief in the death penalty, must know what punishment they should
receive.
The next day, Jim Baker, then serving as Bush's campaign advisor, an-
nounced that overnight the candidate had thought through the issue and
now believed that doctors who perform abortions should be punished and
women who have abortions should be helped, not punished. Bush's new
argument now turned on the assumption that either a whole class of people
who contract for murders and deliver their victims to the killer should not
be punished but rather given help, or that those who contract for a mur-
der, deliver the victim to the murderer, but do not physically commit the
murder are not murderers. Either assumption is unacceptable to the same
audience concerned with justice and injustice.4 The assumption that mur-
derers need help, not punishment, is normally associated with liberals, not
conservatives. In fact, Bush had derided the criminal furlough plan of his
opponent's home state because it was just such a liberal idea: politicians
and criminologists who want to help rather than punish criminals are, ac-
cording to Bush, "soft on crime." Thus, Bush was employing what Aristotle
calls sham enthymemes, enthymemes that either are built on unacceptable
assumptions or produce invalid conclusions; he also falls into the excluded
middle by saying that a fetus both is and is not defined as a human being,
and that murder both is and is not defined as contracting for the taking of
innocent human lives.
These two same flaws of forensic rhetoric are visible in some of Weaver's
arguments. In one argument against the injustices of the academic profes-
soriate, he charges that academic tenure "has been converted into a kind
of advanced barricade in an offensive campaign against the traditional foun-
dations of our country" (AF 12). Weaver elsewhere castigates these same
agents of political upheaval as a "cabal" that has carried out a "virtual ed-
ucational coup d'etat," using schools to actualize a concept of society at
odds with its traditions and beliefs (VO 114). The teacher who supports
society's traditions and beliefs is not engaged in political acts at all, for
Weaver says that an "education in the student's cultural tradition is not
political; in fact it is the only kind of education that does not presume
political ends (RE 616). Thus, he can claim of our nation's founders that
they "were prepared for great political achievement by an education which
was not political in the overt sense. They had been educated in the long
tradition of Western culture. It is my contention that this kind of education
is non-political because the tradition has presumption in its favor. It is an
accomplished settlement, not perfect in any case, but again not trying to
put over anything. It is those programs which are trying to put over some-
thing which have to be inspected for their political motives" (RE 618-19).
Burke's response to such an argument is illuminating as well as educative
as regards the academy's current concern with "political correctness" and
190 The Politics of Rhetoric

"canon busting." Burke says: "So much progressive and radical criticism in
recent years has been concerned with the social implications of art, that
affirmations of art's autonomy can often become, by antithesis, a round-
about way of identifying oneself with the interests of political conservatism.
In accordance with the rhetorical principle of identification, whenever you
find a doctrine of 'nonpolitical' esthetics affirmed with fervor, look for its
politics" (Rhetoric of Motives 28). Burke's comments seem particularly ap-
posite when we find Weaver saying, in "To Write the T r u t h , " that teachers
must be prepared to "lead the dangerous life," ready to "stand guard against
the relativism which has played havoc with so many things" in our society,
prepared to take "part in the redemption of society" (LIS 197-98). Such a
stand is political to be sure, but not reflective or supportive of our society's
traditions; rather, it sounds a call for teachers to subvert social traditions
that have been developing since William of Occam. His logical flaw is that
he defines education and educators in one way at one time and another
way at another time.
A more serious descent into the excluded middle, because more central
to his importance as a rhetorical theorist, is the problem he has with the
term dialectic. Those not expert are befuddled while the more knowledge-
able see him to be confused; worse, it seems Weaver, like Lewis Carroll's
H u m p t y D u m p t y , believes that a word can mean whatever he wants it to
mean, no more and no less. At times he says that dialectic is "the counter-
part in expression in language of the activity of science . . . because they
are both rational and they are both neutral" (VO 56). The dialectician is in
the position of the nonlover, the user of neuter rhetoric, who induces no
bias in an audience, at least not from the use of an affecting style; the
"characteristic of this language is the absence of anything like affection.
. . . Instead of passion, it offers the serviceability of objectivity. . . . Like
a thrifty burgher, it has no romanticism about it; and it distrusts any de-
parture from the literal and prosaic" (ER 7-8).
However, such a definition of dialectic does not comport well with the
definition used when he describes H e n r y David Thoreau as dialectician,
for certainly Thoreau's essays on civil disobedience and John Brown, to
name only two pieces, cannot be called purposefully unaffecting, even if
limited only to consideration of their style; they are rather quite ob-
viously—and purposefully, one must say—attempting to induce bias in an
audience through, among other tactics, numerous and vivid departures from
the literal and prosaic. Much the same case can be made for Socrates, who,
again, Weaver sees as too much the dialectician (VO 66), even though his
presentation is hardly neutral and unaffecting to his audience. W e are aware
that Weaver links the scientist and Thoreau on the basis that both develop
a line of reasoning based on abstractions and generalities, even though the
scientist would rather develop arguments inductively, from particular in-
stances observed in nature or the laboratory. Further, his distinction b e -
 Rhetorical Genres 191

tween "dialecticians," like Thoreau and Webster, who argue from abstract
principles, and "rhetoricians," like Randolph and Hayne, who argue from
history, just does not hold up. Weaver has violated the law of the excluded
middle: one cannot say both that dialectic is neutral discourse without the
intention of biasing an audience, and that it is highly charged discourse
with an explicit intention to bias an audience.
Weaver also sometimes employs unacceptable assumptions and some-
times produces invalid conclusions. To begin our look at these problems,
we distinguish between epideictic rhetoric's occasional use of "display pieces"
and something quite different. As we have said, epideictic rhetoric recasts
essential truths of a society already accepted by the audience, but some-
times the genre is exemplified quite differently, by the attempt to display
intellectual cleverness and rhetorical skill through the development of par-
adoxical or otherwise nonstandard topics. Such attempts are similar in a
way to Weaver's attempts at a "transvaluation of values" (LP 65). At such
times he is engaged in the attempt to overthrow the accepted values of his
society, values that have their origin as early as the fourteenth-century
defeat of realism by nominalism and that he aptly describes and condemns
in numerous chapters and essays. He is interested in presenting himself as
a "sponsor of lost causes and impossible loyalties" rather than as the de-
fender of our current society's way of life. Thus, while these attempts may
have the superficial appearance of epideictic display pieces, they differ in
intention: his is the serious attempt to argue for the justice or injustice of
particular acts, ideas, or stances—which is to say, he has the intention of a
forensic rhetorician.
He argues that past actions considered just may not be. Two pieces that
most explicitly attempt such a transvaluation of values are "Two Orators"
(SE 104-33), which contrasts Daniel Webster and Robert Hayne, and "Two
Types of American Individualism" (LP 65-98), which contrasts Henry Da-
vid Thoreau and John Randolph of Roanoke. In the former, Weaver wishes
to rescue from the injustice visited upon it Hayne's argument for states'
rights, while in the latter he argues that, as regards American individual-
ism, Thoreau has been elevated unjustly by common consensus and that
Randolph much more deserves the honor. In the latter piece, Weaver
maintains that Thoreau is a dialectician because, while he stands for isola-
tionism, he takes an untenable position (LP 86) and so fails to consider the
consequences of his stand (LP 66). One of the major proofs with which
Weaver attempts to clinch his contention concerns the two men's position
on slavery. Thoreau demands that the slaves be freed, but, says Weaver,
"One looks in vain for a single syllable [in Thoreau's writing] about how or
on what the freedmen were to live" (LP 94).5 Randolph, on the other hand,
prepared a will in which he not only freed his slaves but also provided
means for their support. Let us consider more carefully these supports to
Weaver's determination of justice and injustice.
192 The Politics of Rhetoric

First of all, the rhetorical situations producing these documents are dis-
tinctly different. Randolph's was a will, not made public or even executed
until his death. Furthermore, although he admitted in this document to
knowing that his slaves were "justly entitled" to their freedom and to "heartily
regretting that I have ever been the owner of one" (LP 76), they remained
enslaved until he died, some dozen years after his confession of guilt and
injustice. Thoreau's writings, on the other hand, were public, intended,
we suspect, to move audiences to change their stand on slavery and even
to act to remove it as an institution allowed under law in the country. As
such, it is reasonable to say that burdening his presentation with particulars
about the means of livelihood of freed slaves would have detracted from its
main purpose. We at least say that if we were enslaved, we would be more
interested in gaining our freedom than in delaying it until a master who
had made provisions for us passed to a better place.
Thus, regarding which man "failed to see the consequences"—or failed
to act on them—we disagree with Weaver. After all, what are the conse-
quences of knowing that one's slaves ought to be free but keeping them
enslaved for years afterward? Further, while Weaver approvingly refers to
Randolph's scorn of dialecticians (LP 79-80), he should ask if Randolph is
blind to the controlling assumption and subsequent line of reasoning any
decent dialectician would see in the argument, an assumption and line of
reasoning, by the way, that Weaver elsewhere praises: he notes Lincoln's
"argument from definition," which contends that "since the Declaration of
Independence had interdicted slavery for man, slavery was interdicted for
the negro in principle" (ER 95). The second clause of this quotation is the
conclusion that escapes Randolph, even though the unstated minor prem-
ise—that the negro is a human being—seems to have been granted with
his remorse at having owned slaves and his belief in their just entitlement
to freedom. Either Randolph does not agree with the assumption validated
by the Declaration, which would be unfortunate for a U.S. representative,
or he is guilty of invalid reasoning, which could be the result of his lack of
interest in dialectic. Lincoln's argument from definition is presented by
Weaver in the most positive light, with never a hint that such a dialectical
drive to the abstract principle was somehow not to be countenanced. In
short, Lincoln, and we must assume Thoreau as well, relied not on the
"instinctive insight" and "intuition" praised in Randolph (LP 81-82), but
rather on the logical process with which Weaver said Randolph had so little
patience—a process that produces the following reasoning: men deserve
liberty, slaves are men, therefore, slaves deserve their liberty. Once one
grants the assumption that all human beings have a right to be free, then
Randolph's position—far from being the preferred rhetorical position—be-
comes untenable.
The other major argument Weaver levels against Thoreau is inconsis-
tency. He notes that at the beginning of "Civil Disobedience" Thoreau says
 Rhetorical Genres 193

he is not a no-government man but only wants a better government, but

says later in the same essay that he wants government simply to vanish. A
more sympathetic reader sees the latter sentiment as amplification, a poetic
"vision" like Churchill's "broad sunlit uplands," cited approvingly by Weaver
(ER 20), or like one of the leaps into myth that occur so often in Plato.
Thoreau states his "realistic" rhetorical position, that he is not a no-govern-
ment man, and later states his mythic position, that it would be fine if we
needed no government to live happily together. In any event, with Tho-
reau's sentiment that the federal government is altogether too intrusive,
both Randolph and Weaver agree.
Weaver's preference for Randolph over Thoreau, then, seems poor, based
on the confused and confusing charge that Thoreau is too dialectical. He
decries in Thoreau the very action that for Lincoln he says is the "price of
honesty, as well as of success in the long run . . . to stay out of the ex-
cluded middle" (ER 95). Lincoln is nothing if not dialectical in Weaver's
description of his arguments. Weaver's preference is also based on his own
weak dialectic. He fails to make a convincing case that Randolph's "social
bond individualism" is preferable to Thoreau's "anarchic individualism,"
or, better, he fails even to make a case that these are acceptable terms to
use for the two men's thoughts on the relationship between individuals and
society.
Problems with definitions and enthymemes are also apparent in the at-
tempt at a "transvaluation of values" in "Two Orators." Again in this essay,
Weaver wishes to show that the rhetorician is justly seen as superior to the
dialectician, and that Hayne is justly seen as superior to Webster in his
method of argument, his adherence to the Constitution, and, it would seem,
his innate morality. Early in this essay, Weaver notes that Hayne responds
to the charge that slavery was harmful to the character by referring to
slaveholders such as "Washington and other illustrious sons of Virginia"
(SE 116). He asks his audience to assume that the Founding Fathers are
illustrious, which at that time was most probably a valid assumption. How-
ever, his argument does not straightforwardly address the charge that
slaveholding harms the character unless he is also asking that the audience
see the sons of Virginia as perfect: logically speaking, since slave holding
was said to be detrimental to character, not destructive of it, they may have
been more illustrious had they not owned slaves.6
Yet Weaver approves of this strategy because it is an appeal to history
(SE 114-15) and is more telling than the dialectician's appeal to abstrac-
tions. However, this method of argument, which "deals in the realm of the
phenomenal" (LIS 215), Weaver identifies as cause and effect and of a lower
order than an argument from definition, which uses "what is most perma-
nent in existence, or what transcends the world of change and accident"
(LIS 212). It is interesting to note that, in describing the superior form of
argument, Weaver uses an illustration that undercuts Hayne's position: he
194 The Politics of Rhetoric

says, "If a speaker should define man as a creature with an indefeasible

right to freedom and should upon this base an argument that a certain man
or group of men are entitled to freedom, he would be arguing from defi-
nition" (LIS 212-13). Insofar as Webster argues from definition—whether
acceptable or not—and Hayne argues from consequence, Weaver finds
himself in a contradiction: as rhetorical theorist he ranks the more abstract
argument from definition above the more "pragmatic" argument from con-
sequence; as practicing forensic rhetorician he prefers "a less exalted source
of argument" (LIS 214). Furthermore, it is fair to say that the great exper-
iment in democracy undertaken by our nation's founders was not supported
by history but by an abstraction, and also important to note that whereas,
according to Hayne, historical situations may condition the right to claim a
privilege, Webster says that certain rights and obligations are above or
independent of historical situations (SE 123). Using history rather than
principles to support one's position means that liberals have a better argu-
ment than Weaver, since he claims that from at least the fourteenth cen-
tury things have been going the liberals' way.
Distinguishing the men on the basis of dialectic and rhetoric is finally
disingenuous. After all, Webster does appeal to historical facts, and Hayne,
whose "method was to bring forth certain broad historical truths" (SE 120),
can be said thereby to argue dialectically, since broad historical truths are
themselves abstractions. The argument for preferring Hayne to Webster
turns rather on which man is seen as the more just. Weaver notes that
Hayne "injected into the exchange one word about which the whole argu-
ment may revolve logically—the word 'liberty' " (SE 111). Yet, since Hayne
supports the South's right to own slaves, we wonder whether he has any
ground left on which to argue, any reason to be considered just in his
defense of states' rights. An argument can be made for preferring the rights
of the individual states over federal power, but when the states' represen-
tatives who prefer states' rights are found to use it for the enslavement of
their people, the argument seems weak. Similarly, Weaver argues that
Tennessee legislators acted justly in passing its antievolution statute, since
it fell to states and localities to determine what children should be taught
in the public schools. But the narrow legal issue is neither as persuasive
nor as pertinent as that introduced by the defense. To censor evolutionary
theory, they maintained, was to surrender to a religious position the prog-
ress made by modern science.
In sum, these forensic arguments employ flawed enthymemes. One could
say that his reasoning is invalid, but it seems more reasonable, for two
reasons, to say that his assumptions are flawed. First, Weaver is unques-
tionably intelligent and well versed in logic, and while anyone might rea-
son invalidly, it is unlikely that he did so repeatedly. Second, some of his
assumptions find little agreement from modern audiences. To return for a
moment to the system of classical status with slavery as the example, Weaver
 Rhetorical Genres 195

would agree with his audience as regards the status of conjecture: slavery
did exist. He would also agree on the status of definition: slavery is the
bondage of certain people by others. But he would disagree on the status
of quality. Cicero divides this status point into nature and law and subdi-
vides these into divine rights and human rights, within which, he says, it
is possible to argue from written rules of conduct and from unwritten cus-
toms of the nation. Insofar as Weaver leans toward slavery as an acceptable
institution or at least insofar as he countenances Randolph's and Hayne's
acceptance of it, the justice or injustice of the case turns on this status of
quality. Yet in neither essay does he develop a line of argument to support
this position, even though one can assume that, without it, he will be at
odds with the assumptions of almost everyone reading the pieces. In short,
the transvaluation has not been effected.
We close our critique of Weavers methods of argument with a final ex-
ample. As mentioned in the third chapter, Weaver claims to favor free
speech and oppose censorship. However, in an essay that Goodnight be-
lieves is meant to be an advisory piece for the incipient conservative polit-
ical movement, Weaver seems to support censorship. He claims that the
British and American governments are not concerned with the expression
of alternative views that challenge their positions because "with them log-
ical demonstration is never the decisive force" in determining a course of
action (PEM 403-4). Regarding what he thinks is an appropriate attitude
toward freedom of speech, he has this to say: "If you know something be-
yond a doubt, and if this thing you know is the surest guarantee of all you
hold valuable, what can you possible [sic] gain by permitting opposition?
All that opposition could do would be to afford constant annoyance, or to
weaken your confidence and in this way impair your efficiency" (PEM 403).
The hypothetical form into which he casts his assumption suggests the pos-
sibility that one can know "beyond a doubt"; yet, as we have argued, his
theoretical position holds that we cannot, and that we ought therefore to
allow, even encourage, opposing voices. It seems he overstates his case to
make a partisan argument. Further, such a line of argument should chill
anyone who takes it seriously, since Weaver proposes that the conserva-
tives, should they find themselves in power, should pursue this fascistic
disregard of opposition. In this example, then, as with those cited earlier,
his theoretical position gives way once more to pragmatic ends.

NOTES
1. The analysis of Plato's use of epideictic rhetoric summarizes and applies to
Weaver's rhetorical theory the argument in Bernard K. Duffy, "The Platonic Func-
tion of Epideictic Rhetoric," 79-83.
2. Weaver goes so far as to say that poetry, rather than dialectic, "provides ac-
cess to higher realms of truth" (IHC 167). He comments that "poetry offers the
196 The Politics of Rhetoric

fairest hope of restoring our lost unity of mind" (IHC 53). In discussing the Phae-
drus, he emphasizes the poetic resources available to the rhetorician, noting that it
is Plato's use of figuration that makes his second speech in the Phaedrus effective
rhetoric (ER 18).
3. To illustrate: just before Operation Desert Storm, President Bush called Iraq's
Saddam Hussein a "Hitler." The line of reasoning for this statement assumes that
people like Hitler should be removed from power and punished, and concludes
that Hussein should therefore be removed from power and punished. That he was
not suggests that Bush employed not amplification but exaggeration.
4. Bush's other qualification, that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or
incest, is also problematic. While still assuming that abortion is the murder of an
innocent human being, he asserts that the sins of the father should be visited on
the children—they should be murdered because their biological fathers were crim-
inals. Two possibilities could stand as the missing support for this reasoning: a fetus
who is the product of rape or incest is not human, or it is not innocent. In either
case it may be executed. Either premise would be problematic for the forensic
audience.
5. While Thoreau does not address these particulars, Weaver has little cause for
complaint: we mentioned that the editors of Language Is Sermonic note Weaver's
similar vagueness about an ultimate good (LIS 12). More significantly, he condemns
progressive education but does not offer even a syllable about how he would pre-
pare all citizens for their political, cultural, and vocational futures. He is concerned
only with the forensic argument of establishing problems with our educational sys-
tem; such an argument is a necessary step to a deliberative argument concerning
what policy to institute to remove these problems, once we agree on their existence
and nature.
6. If Hayne's audience knew, for instance, that Thomas Jefferson thought blacks
biologically foreordained to have "a very strong and disagreeable odor" and to be
unable to follow Euclid's theorems or write poetry (Robinson 42), but that he
nevertheless took a black mistress (possibly without seeking her agreement) who
bore children whom he did not acknowledge, they might have considered him less
illustrious than did Hayne.
 10
Conclusion

We have two issues to address in this closing discussion. First, we want to

round out our analysis of the genres of Weavers rhetoric by commenting
briefly on his stance as a deliberative rhetorician; second, we want to offer
a summarizing evaluation of his significance as a rhetorical theorist.
As regards the first issue: Weaver says, "So successful have the Liberals
been in establishing [their] dogma through education, publishing, and pol-
itics that people today are literally unable to understand the language of
the conservative point of view. They can conceive neither the meaning of
its term nor the spirit of it" (RL 543). He also says, "You cannot talk with
a person whose basic premises are completely incompatible with your own.
The words that are exchanged are without meaning, so that in the real
sense there has not been discourse" (SW 557). Two pieces in which Weaver
professes to preach neither to the opposition nor to the uncommitted but
only to those who agree with him are "The Strategy of Words" (564) and
"Rhetorical Strategies of the Conservative Cause" (598-99), both in Good-
night. In considering these arguments, John Bliese argues for the "general
merit" of conservatives' directing their appeals to those who already agree:
the strategy will help the group "to build up its own enthusiasm and main-
tain its cohesion and commitment. It will then be ready to take the offen-
sive if events open up opportunities for it" ("Richard M. Weaver and the
Rhetoric of a Lost Cause" 324). However, it seems to us that this approach
encourages conservatives—and by extension, any group using this strat-
egy—to wait until some outside force brings it back into power. This seems
defeatist, or at least isolationist, and it seems to make rhetoric and rhetor-
ical persuasion extremely limited. Such a position might be understandable
for an activist who, for example, favors a woman's right to abortion and
198 The Politics of Rhetoric

feels it has become impossible to speak to a militant antiabortionist, but

she or he ought to address also the uncommitted. It is particularly prob-
lematic for a person whose stock-in-trade is rhetoric to avoid the opposi-
tion. Certainly it leaves conservatives at the mercy of hoping that change
will come through circumstances outside their control—not a position into
which Weaver would want to place himself.
We imagine, therefore, that Weaver is being extreme for effect. As re-
gards the first quotation (RL 543), American politics attests to the fact that
people have shown themselves able to understand the conservative point
of view well enough to elect the conservatives' standard-bearer, Ronald
Reagan, twice. And while it would be true that a person could not com-
municate with another when the basic premises of each are completely
incompatible, such is of course never the case. Two people may disagree
enormously, but there is always common ground on which to build. Thus,
Stanley Fish argues, we can take a person from one context of understand-
ing to another, even if that person does not share the assumptions of the
second context, by backing up "to some point at which there was a shared
agreement as to what was reasonable to say so that a new and wider basis
for agreement could be fashioned" (Is There a Text in this Class? 315). This
is a strategy similar to Toulmin's "backing" for "warrants" ("warrant" being
his term for assumption) that are not accepted or understood by the audi-
ence; it is also similar to the dialectical process of Socrates, who attempts
to back up discussions until he and his interlocutor(s) can find common
ground. Perhaps, Fish says, one can identify some category of the person's
understanding that could serve as analogue. In time, this person will come
to understand the new context, at which point she or he will be able to
understand—at the same time—its assumptions and its meaning (315). At
that point a collaborative discourse or overtly persuasive attempt could be
undertaken.
Given his awareness of Socrates' methodology and his belief in his own
dialectical competence, it seems reasonable, despite his occasional com-
ments to the contrary, that Weaver does not address his discourse only to
those who already believe in the position he is espousing. But it is also fair
to say that he is not overly interested, in his published pieces at least, to
offer particular strategies for the future. Since he does not offer, for ex-
ample, a specific alternative for the current educational system's attempt
to prepare all young people for a variety of occupations, or, for another
example, a strategy for dealing with the high arrest rate and low academic
achievements of African-Americans, we would say that he is not a deliber-
ative rhetor of the traditional, or of the liberal, type. He is, in practice and
seemingly by nature, a naysayer and a gadfly, more comfortable pointing
out the many problems we face and identifying their causes than telling us
what he thinks should be done to resolve them. While it is reasonable to
say that all conservatives are interested in reclaiming the virtues of the
 Conclusion 199

past, a deliberative rhetorician would give specific programs to accomplish

this end.
Now to our second, and final, point. Considering Weaver's significance
as a rhetorical theorist, we want to answer a question that may be on many
readers' minds, and was certainly on ours as we progressed in our study.
Given the many problems we have indicated with Weaver's rhetorical the-
ory and practice, how is it that he has gained the prominent role he enjoys
in the discipline of rhetoric? Three answers seem to present themselves for
consideration. The first might be called an accident of history. The postwar
United States saw a rapid and large growth in courses in written composi-
tion and in communication courses in general, in part at least because of
the rapid and large increase in college students. Since Weaver was one of
the few theorists after World War II to offer a sustained discussion on
rhetorical theory, and one of the only writers whose theory was informed
by an understanding of the classical origins of the discipline, he undoubt-
edly proved useful for English department literature faculty pressed into
service as composition teachers. The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953), for instance,
had some use as a textbook and certainly offered many faculty good theory
as well as some practical pedagogical ideas: it explicitly addresses issues of
grammar ("Some Historical Aspects of Grammatical Categories"); it ties
composition to matters of disciplinary interest and familiarity for English
professors ("Milton's Heroic Prose"); and it discusses fundamental issues of
communication—such as the relation of ethics to rhetoric—clearly and un-
derstandably ('Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric"). His article on the
role of the composition teacher, "To Write the Truth," appeared in College
English in 1948, and his composition textbook was published in 1957; by
the first half of the 1960s faculty could also refer to such thoughtful discus-
sions of the discipline as "Language Is Sermonic" (first appearing in 1963)
and "The Cultural Role of Rhetoric" (appearing in VO 1964). Further, in a
number of pieces he took on General Semantics, which itself gained some
prominence, at least among some teachers of composition, and attempted
a "transvaluation of values," arguing for its replacement by a fully articu-
lated and classically based theory of rhetoric. In brief, purely on disciplin-
ary grounds Weaver found himself to be the right person at the right time,
offering to a needy or interested clientele helpful ideas and advice.
The second reason for Weaver's prominence, and an admittedly specu-
lative one, is that he honors cultural verities, promises a society that has
order and harmony and justice, and also, and not insignificantly, promises
to his primary academic readers a privileged place in that society. Regard-
less of the contributions he makes to rhetorical theory and the disciplines
of public speaking and composition, and despite the vagueness of his vi-
sion, there is something compelling about his alternative to people who see
the world around them crumbling—who believe that higher education suf-
fers from open admissions and subsequent underqualified or unqualified
200 The Politics of Rhetoric

students, suffers from the increasing influence of "vocational" instruction

both inside and outside their departments, and suffers from the beginning
stages of the dismantling of the core curriculum and those incipient ideas
and concerns that were to lead to postmodern literary theories and criti-
cisms, ethnic and women's studies programs, and other questionings of the
traditional canon. And, although many of the professoriate were more po-
litically liberal than was Weaver, many might have found compelling his
analysis of the decline of Western culture, with its paean to the liberal arts
generally and to literature and rhetoric specifically. As American adults in
the early 1950s, they also may have appreciated his comments on the threat
from the Soviet bloc. Couched in less incendiary fashion in his writings on
rhetorical theory than in his political tracts, Weaver's comments could have
made a good deal of sense to a great number of people, people who had
not yet or never would read his more overtly political and partisan pieces.
All of this is to say that Weaver might have been the right person at the
right time in a venue larger than communication pedagogy; and once a
person and his ideas have gained prominence, something like momentum
keeps them somewhat in place. This reason is really also an accident—if
not of history, at least of misapplication. Weaver's worth as a rhetorical
theorist should not be dependent only on the value of his political philos-
ophy and cultural theory, whatever that may be. And our first reason like-
wise does not provide enough reason to place Weaver as one of the most
important figures in twentieth-century American rhetorical theory.
Thus, our third reason: by most accounts he does belong in the category
of important rhetorical theorists, and our attempt in this book has been to
evaluate his contributions to decide if his placement is justified. We have
tried to argue that his political philosophy and especially his cultural theory
are important contributors to his rhetorical theory, that an understanding
of them is necessary to understand the complexities and the implications
of his rhetorical theory, and so we have offered in this book a thorough
analysis of his complete oeuvre. His most enduring insights are his rhetor-
ical ones, even when it is plain that he makes use of rhetorical theory as a
device by which, for example, to vindicate the South from the national
humiliation of the Scopes trial, to indict the rhetoric of liberal-minded so-
cial scientists, or to decry the antihumanistic tendencies of the General
Semanticists. His comments on the General Semantics movement in par-
ticular and on the nature and problems of neutral, objective discourse in
general are incisive. Teachers in the humanities quite understandably felt
some discomfort with the kind of writing and the assumptions that lay be-
hind the choices made by communicators in the hard and social sciences,
in business, and in government, and Weaver provides a means for seeing
the essential Tightness of these feelings of discomfort. Also, both for people
of Weavers time and for teachers and theorists today, Weaver offers an-
other and important benefit. Perhaps the best way to indicate this benefit
 Conclusion 201

is to note Johannesens and Tompkins's articles on the debt Weaver owes

to Kenneth Burke: while we believe that Weaver's theory needs Burke's,
we also believe that Burke's theory, and the theories of those rhetorical
"relativists" categorized under such headings as social construction or anti-
foundationalism or rhetoric of inquiry or rhetoric as epistemic, need Weav-
er's. If he had not existed, they would have had to invent him. While there
is a good deal of value in the position taken by those who hold that rhetoric
creates truth, a counterstatement is necessary. As discussed in the second
chapter, a more reasonable position assumes the existence of objective real-
ity, and insofar as theorists deny its existence they cause themselves logical
and theoretical problems. That is, in addition to what Weaver offers on his
own ground, he also presents a forceful and eloquent caution to the ex-
cesses of certain schools of thought that have gained some prominence in
(and because of, Weaver would add) modernist times.

Given the description sketched in the previous chapter and at the begin-
ning of this conclusion, it seems best to call Weaver a paradoxical figure.
He reveals much of himself when he says, concluding on the career of
Albert Taylor Bledsoe: "Where would one look to find another such spon-
sor of lost causes and impossible loyalties? Can anything be salvaged from
the thought of a mind which ran so perfectly counter to the path of history?
The easy verdict will be that Bledsoe was another gifted southerner con-
demned by the tumult of his age and the defeat of his people 'to keep with
phantoms and unprofitable strife' " (SE 158). But we would not want to
render so easy a verdict about Weaver. He was, to be sure, Quixotic, and
certainly one whom many would perceive to be characteristically on the
wrong side of the questions he addressed. However, there is an advantage,
both psychological and tactical, to arguing the lost cause. If it is expected
that one will lose, the more is the gain in the unlikely event that one
should win, even if the victory is partial or pyrrhic. Weaver brandished his
rhetoric against ideas that many believed could not be defeated, not least
of which was the presumption that scientific discovery and material prog-
ress were suitable modern substitutes for religious faith and metaphysical
reflection, or that the South was correct to value the latter, even though
in doing so it exhibited an embarrassing backwardness compared to the
commercially, industrially, and technologically superior North. Weaver
supported the Southern Agrarians and perhaps he would like to be seen in
something of the same light as he saw them. He describes them as engaged
in verbal combat: "Penetrations were made and flanks were threatened;
and the enemy was alerted to a degree he had not experienced in decades"
(SE 8). Weavers first book, Ideas Have Consequences, created enough vi-
tuperative outpourings from his opponents to qualify as a second-wave
agrarian assault on northern materialist culture (Nash 41-42). l Howard
Mumford Jones, for example, in a lengthy review in the New York Times,
202 The Politics of Rhetoric

proposed that, in contrast to Weaver's assessment, "one of the most de-

pressing aspects of the tragedy of the West . . . is the irresponsibility of
intellectuals who condemn without comprehension in the name of an aus-
tere intellectualism the total life of our time" (Jones 4:1). In a particularly
acerbic review, George R. Geiger commented, "The reviews have by now
been many, and the reviewers have been neatly divided—those who have
been baptized on Chicago's Midway and the gentiles." Geiger's own ver-
dict was that it is "essentially an evil book" (251).
From the first, Weaver was a partisan and his support lay with those
who occupied the same intellectual ground as he did. He gave dimension
to ideas that many conservatives intuitively accepted but that were more
compelling for his artful presentation of them. He was, according to Frank
Meyer, an "irreplaceable . . . champion" of conservatives (243). The ex-
tent of Weaver's influence upon conservatism is difficult to gauge, and Frank
Meyer's often-quoted comment that Ideas Have Consequences was modern
conservatism's "fons et origo" (a term he likely appropriated from Weaver,
who used it to describe rhetoric), may be an exaggeration (243; see ER 25).
Weaver was, as Meyer notes, among the first to reconstruct the conserva-
tive position during the years immediately following World War II, yet,
according to another conservative, Willmoore Kendall, Weaver was more
eulogized than heard (79-80).
Whatever may be the judgment of Weaver's influence as a neoconser-
vative political theorist, his place as a rhetorician seems secure. Henry
Regnery wrote that Weaver thought of The Ethics of Rhetoric as his best
book ("Review" 438). From our perspective we are inclined to agree. De-
spite criticisms of his political theory, including our own misgivings, his
rhetorical theory is extraordinarily valuable. Finally, it may be to rhetoric
that Weaver contributed most. Conservatives have commented on Weav-
er's prescience in recognizing cultural problems. In the same vein, it is
interesting to recall Wayne Booth's judgment that Weaver and Kenneth
Burke were the two leading rhetorical theorists in the 1950s. Weaver wrote
about rhetoric long before the day when English and speech professors
decided that a renaissance in rhetoric was underway. It is to our profes-
sion's great benefit that Weaver fused his passion to formulate the basis of
conservative ideas with his vocational interest in rhetoric. As he helped
revive conservatism from the perceived stranglehold of New Deal liberal-
ism, his celebration of conservative rhetoric helped renew interest in a
discipline that had suffered from neglect in the academy and abuse in the
forums of public opinion. Rhetoric, Weaver sought to tell the world, was
not elementary composition technique, nor was it propaganda. While we
may disagree with his conservatism and thereby question his perspective
on rhetoric, it is impossible to deny that his essays and books take positions
that, if unfashionable, are nevertheless provocative. Whether one sees
Weaver as the devil's or the angel's advocate, he deserves a hearing, for
 Conclusion 203

he speaks with unusual grace and insight about the power of the word and
the importance of rhetoric.

NOTE
1. For consideration of Weaver in relation to the Southern Agrarians, see Brad-
ford.
This page intentionally left blank
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RESEARCH COLLECTIONS

Donald Davidson Papers. The Jean and Alexander Heard Library. Vanderbilt Uni-
versity. Nashville, Tenn.
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Index
Abortion, 22, 23, 39 n.3, 188-89, 196
n.4, 197-98
Achebe, Chinua, 122 n.14
Actualization, rhetoric as, 14, 15, 128,
171-72, 179
Advertising, 32, 70, 86, 98, 100, 101
Aesthetic, 25
Aesthetic faculty, 24-25, 52
Alger, Horatio, 105
Analogy, 154. See Argument types
Anglo-Saxon diction, 153-54
Archetypes, 71-72
Argument types, 1; analogy, 154; con-
sequence, 139; definition, 139, 170-
171; hierarchy among, 156, 184
Aristotle, xii, 122 n.5, 151, 175-76,
187, 188; on catharsis, 70; on trag-
edy, 82
Arnold, Matthew, 99
Asiatic style, 154
Attic style, 153
Auden, W. H., 123 n. 14
Babbitt, Irving, 12
Bacon, Sir Francis, 162, 166-67
Bagdikian, Ben, 40 n.8
Baker, James, 189
Beale, Walter, 94, 103, 111
Beaton, Kendall, 4
Beaton, Polly Weaver, 4 - 5
Belenky, Mary, 65 n.10
Bentham, Jeremy, 149, 170
Berlin, James, 123 n.10
Bernard, L. L., 146, 150-51
Bernard, Jessie, 146, 150-51
Bitzer, Lloyd, 187
Bledsoe, Albert Taylor, 44, 201
Bliese, John, 121 n.2, 197
Booth, Wayne, xv, 86, 121 n . l , 122
n. 13, 160, 202; literature's effects,
70; modernism's effects, 27, 100,
101; role of rhetoric, 110; social test
of truth, 38, 39 n.2
Boreas, myth of, 133
Bradford, M. E., 5
British Empire, 60-61
Broadhead, Glenn, and Richard Freed,
104
Bronowski, Jacob, 154
Brown, Richard Harvey, 156
Bryan, William Jennings, 128, 130-35,
181
Bureaucracy, governmental, 153, 155
Burgess, Anthony, 75
Burke, Edmund, 184
Burke, Kenneth, xii, 1, 10, 71, 89, 95,
100, 107, 117, 121, 125, 143-45,
148-49, 155, 156, 157-58 n.l, 181,
2 / 4 index
Burke, Kenneth (continued)
187, 202; on attitudinal qualities of lan-
guage, 171; on definition, 95; on fas-
cism, 46, 53; on hierarchy, 53; on
literature, 68, 73, 75, 82, 90 n.3,
105-6, 111; on metabiology, 107-8;
on motion and action, 90 n.4, 103;
on orientation, 20, 63; on piety, 26,
72; on political conservatism, 189-90;
on recalcitrance, 34; as rhetorical rel-
ativist, 201; on semantic terminology,
161-62, 169; on terministic screens,
36, 122 n.7; on tragedy, 78, 81, 82
Bush, George, 188-89, 196 n.3
Business, 11, 59-61; effect on art, 60;
Benjamin Franklin on, 87; govern-
ment and, 60, 64 n.5
Canterbury Tales, The, 76
Censorship, 56-57, 113
Charisma, 21, 83, 85-89; charismatic
terms, 84-85
Chase, Stuart, 161, 166, 167-68
Cherwitz, Richard, 108
Chestnut, Mary, 50
Chivalry, code of, 42, 47-48
Chomsky, Noam, 40 n.8
Chopin, Kate, 75
Christ, Jesus, 163
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, xiii, 13, 122
n.5, 123 n.17, 159-60, 175, 179, 195
Ciceronian humanism, 16
Civil War, 6, 41-52, 127
Clark, Gregory, 58, 106, 112, 123 n.22
Communism, xv
Composition, 93-121; related to logic,
94, 95
Comte, Auguste, 146, 156, 157
Conservatism, xii, xiv, 5, 116, 119,
120, 123 n.21, 146, 156, 157, 179-
81, 189, 197-98, 202
Conservative movement, 7, 202
Constitution, U.S., 134, 138-39
Coolidge, Calvin, 64 n.7
Cooper, James Fenimore, 87
Corbett, Edward P. J., 93
Crane, Stephen, 81
Culture: autonomy, 156; doctor of, 8,
18, 24, 43, 45; integrity of, 21; lan-
guage and, 168-73; literature's ad-
verse effects on, 70-71; literature's
positive effects on, 71-77; origin of,
20, 141; society and, 22-23; south-
ern, 127-28, 144; stability of, 21-24,
29-30, 55; unified by oratory, 160
Darrow, Clarence, 6, 128, 130, 131
Darwin, Charles, 135, 146
Davidson, Donald, 80, 118, 127, 150
Deliberative rhetoric, 155, 175-76, 196
n.5, 197, 198-99
Democracy, 10-11, 53, 55, 57, 112,
123 n.21, 138
Deneef, A. Lehigh, 179
DesPres, Terrance, 90 n.5
Devil terms, 83-84
Dewey, John, 56, 64 n.4, 69, 118
Dialectic, 24-25, 55, 95, 191-93; com-
peting dialectics, 131; confusion of
social and Platonic, 129; education
and, 57, 58; inspiration and, 105-7;
literature and, 69, 71, 76, 90; as neu-
tral tool, 104; relation to motive im-
pulse, 103; rhetoric and, 1, 13—16,
98, 102, 103-6, 111-12, 118, 126,
127, 128-29, 135-42, 160, 170-72,
177-79, 181, 184; science and, 134;
social science and, 157; as social sci-
entific, 152, 153; as subversive agent,
103-4; Weaver's, 161
Dialectical and positive terms, 38, 103,
122 n.10, 144, 147-49, 157
Dialectical opposites, 3, 142, 146, 158
n.2; Weaver's tendency to use, 172
Dialectician, tendentious, 147
Division and collection, 148, 152
Douglass, Frederick, 43
Dramatism, 145
Dreiser, Theodore, 81, 87
Duffy, Bernard K., 195 n.l
Dukakis, Michael, 188-89
Ebbitt, Wilma, 3
Economics, rhetoric of, 144-45, 154
Education, 45, 53, 55; affected by mod-
ernism, 54-56; as agent of subver-

sion, 189-90; as counter to propa-
ganda, 113; for democratic living,
56-58, 118, 123 n.22; hierarchical
relationship in, 117-18; literature
and, 71; mass media and, 31; philo-
sophic, 180; progressive education,
56-59; use of rhetoric for, 120-21; as
societal propaganda, 70; southern
gentleman's attitude toward, 49-50
Egalitarianism, 11. See Democracy
Eisenhower, Dwight, 64 n.7
Eliot, Thomas Sterns, 31, 79; catalyst
theory of poetry, 123 n. 15; poetic
process, 73, 76-77; religion and lit-
erature, 40 n.10, 75
Elizabeth I, 54
Ellul, Jacques, 17, 54
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 16, 147
Empiricism, 151-53
Empiricists, British, 162
Enthymeme, 105, 177-78, 187-88;
sham, 189
Epideictic rhetoric, xiii, 16-17, 58,
146, 159-61, 164, 186, 187, 188,
191; characterizing Weaver's prose,
184-86; most appropriate for presen-
tation of truth, xiv-xv, 175-86
Equal rights, 45
Ethical faculty, 24-25, 52, 103
Ethics, 33, 36, 37, 38, 62, 155, 160,
168; ethical constants, 181; literature
and, 71; rhetoric and, 113-18, 119;
systems, 20, 27, 29, 30; Weaver's fo-
cus on, 179, 184
Ethos, 58, 86, 114, 187, 188
Eubanks, Ralph, 4, 9
Evolutionary theory, 127-28, 131-42,
194
Expediency, 47, 60
Fact, interest in, 159-60, 166, 177-81
Factual history, 180
Faculties of human nature, 24-25, 30,
52
Fascism, 46, 64 n.5, 113, 195
Faulkner, William, 182
Feminism, xv, 54. See Equal rights
Ferrari, G.R.F., 110
Index 215
Feudalism, 42-44, 46; fascism and, 46
Fish, Stanley, 123 n.16, 198
Forensic rhetoric, xiii, 175-76, 186,
187-95
Foucault, Michel, 109
Franklin, Benjamin, 80, 87
Freire, Paulo, 58
Frost, Robert, 88-89
Fulkerson, Richard, 108-9
Fundamentalism, religious, 128, 130,
132-36, 138
Funeral oratory, Greek, 16, 180, 181,
184
Gage, John, 122 n.12
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 125
Geiger, George, xiii, 202
General Semantics, 69, 93, 155, 159-
73, 199, 200
Gentleman, 4, 16-17, 42, 46, 48-50,
122 n.4, 184. See also Specialist
"Gettysburg Address," 161
God terms, 83-84
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 43-44,
78
Goodnight, Gerald Thomas, 117-18,
121, 195
Gorgias, 73, 90 n.2, 172; Helen, xiii,
185-86
Great Depression, 151, 163
Green, Lawrence, 122 n.3
Guthrie, W.K.C., 165
Hagge, John, 104
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 75, 80
Hayakawa, S. I., 161, 165-66
Hayek, Friedrich von, 125, 143, 147-
48, 151-52, 157
Hayne, Robert, 191, 193-94
Hegel, Georg, 149
Hemingway, Ernest, 87
Herman, Edward, 40 n.8
Hierarchy, 20, 24, 42, 43, 52-54, 55
History, 127, 180, 182; Weaver's atti-
tude toward, 185, 186
Hofstadter, Richard, 133
Hoover, Herbert, 90-91 n.7
Howell, Wilbur Samuel, 162
2/6 Index
Humanism, literary, 12; social science's
lack of, 154
Hussein, Saddam, 196 n.3
Husserl, Edmund, 166
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 146
Idealism. See Plato
Ideology, 38, 41, 44, 45, 53, 54, 55,
117; education and, 57, 118, 120
Imagination, 167, 177
Industrialism, 2
Invention, rhetorical, 90, 96, 112, 119,
128-29, 152-54, 179
Jackson, Shirley, 75
Jacobs, Harriet Brent (Linda Brent), 43
James, Henry, Sr., 79
Jarratt, Susan, 123 n.22
Jefferson, Thomas, 125-26, 196 n.6
Johannesen, Richard, 114, 115, 144,
148, 149, 184, 201
Jones, Howard Mumford, 201-2
Journalism, 30-32, 83, 98; muckrakers,
177-78
Kant, Immanuel, 71, 107
Kendall, Willmoore, 4, 202
Kennedy, George, 180, 186
Kerferd, G. B., 14-15
Kirk, Russell, 2, 4, 7, 9
Knapp, John Francis, 115, 182
Korzybski, Alfred, 161-64, 166-67
Kuhn, Thomas, 160
Language: denotative, 154, 162; es-
sences, 159, 163, 170-72, 181-82;
figurative language, 171-72, 178,
182-83; General Semantics, 159-73;
ideality of, 163, 165; meanings tran-
scendent, 15, 163, 164-66; meta-
phoric, 153-54; mythic image, 10,
178, 183; of "pure notation," 183;
rectification of names, 146, 165; rhe-
torician's nonliteralist approach to,
182; and science, 161-62; semanti-
cally purified speech, 164. See also
General Semantics
Lanham, Richard, 111
Latinate vocabulary, 153
Law: natural, 22, 43; nomos and, 22
Lay, Mary, 188
Lee, Robert E., 47
LeFevre, Karen Burke, 105
Leigh, Frances Butler, 44
Lewis, C. S., 27
Lewis, Sinclair, 75, 153
Liberalism, 5-6, 9, 81, 84, 113, 119,
125, 146, 153, 156, 157, 175, 176,
180, 189, 194, 197, 202
Lincoln, Abraham, 127, 161, 170, 192,
193
Lindemann, Erika, 113
Literature: ethical function of, 75-76;
gentleman's lack of interest in, 49;
"Gettysburg Address" as, 161; means
for cultural cooperation, 74; modern-
ism's effect on, 72, 76; oratory as,
160-61; religious, 75; repository for
metaphysical dream, 20, 49; rhetoric
and, 67, ,74; southern, rhetorical
character of, 169, 182; virtuous soci-
ety and, 63
Locke, John, 162
Logic, 16-17, 20-21, 24, 29, 38, 51,
128, 160; composition's relation to,
94, 95, 112; epideictic and, 177;
metaphysical dream as basis for, 21;
motive impulse's relation to, 103;
neutral tool, 103. See also Dialectic
Logos, 58, 103, 187, 188
Lost cause, 7, 141-42, 176, 201
Lysias, 164
McCloskey, Donald, 144-45, 154, 155
McComiskey, Bruce, 123 n.21
Machiavelli, Nicollo, xiv
Malone, Dudley Field, 130
Mannheim, Karl, 149
Marcuse, Herbert, 125
Marx, Karl, 149, 156
Mass media, 11, 30-32, 160-61
Medawar, P. B., 106-7
Meliorism, social, 146, 153, 156
Melville, Herman, 80
Memory, 15-16; epideictic rhetoric

and, 177-80, 182; "half-forgotten be-
liefs," 141; of values, 169, 172
Mencken, Henry Lewis, 130, 135
Metaphor, 154, 162
Metaphysical dream, 10, 11, 14, 85,
104, 114; effects on rhetorical theory,
97; formed by cultural beliefs, 20,
39; literature and, 72, 74, 78; means
for understanding experience, 20,
108; modernism's effects on, 32, 81,
114; nomos and, 22; religious faculty
and, 25, 30, 103
Metaphysical propositions, 159-61
Meyer, Frank, 7, 202
Middletown, 153
Mill, John Stuart, 5
Miller, Arthur, 87
Modern Age, 7, 8
Modernism, 19, 27-33, 54, 59, 88,
125, 127, 141, 145, 159-60, 185; ef-
fects on composition, 96-102; effects
on literature and rhetoric, 72, 76; ef-
fects on tragedy, 77, 80, 82; ethical
responsibility and, 99, 102
Moffett, James, 93
Moore, Paul Elmer, 12
Moscovici, Serge, 150
Mythic image, 10, 178, 183
Naturalism, literary, 79, 81
Neal, John, 13
"Neuter discourse," 161, 164, 173, 183
New Deal, 6, 153
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 10
Nominalism, 6, 19, 25-26, 33-34, 110,
168, 191
Nomos, 21-25, 35-36, 38, 43, 152; nat-
ural law and, 22
Norris, Frank, 81
Occam, William of, 19, 190
Ogden, Charles, 165-66
Orator, 13; idealized, 148-49; Roman,
importance of, 17
Oratory, 16-18; nineteenth century,
13, 17, 159-61, 167, 170-71, 176,
179-82, 185; political, 160-61; Theo-
dore Roosevelt and, 177-78; "spa-
Index 217
cious," 159-61, 167-73, 176, 180-
81. See also Rhetoric; Webster-
Hayne debate
Order, 9-10, 13
Orientation, 20, 25, 26, 44, 70; scien-
tism and, 27-28
Orr, C. Jack, 35-37
Orwell, George, 106
Pathos, 45, 58, 78, 79, 187, 188
Perelman, Chaim, 38, 64 n.2, 112-13,
122 n. 11, 179
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 115
Pericles' Funeral Oration, 180
Perry, William, 62-63, 65 n.10
Perspectivism, 149
Philosophy, social, 146
Physis, 152
Piety, 9, 12, 26-27
Pirsig, Robert, 122 n.6
Plato, xii, xiv, xv, 6, 13-16, 33, 54, 71,
107, 110, 128, 156, 157, 160, 171,
175, 195 n.l
—on correct names, 165
—epideictic rhetoric and, 177-83
—Emerson on, 87
—on imitation, 85
—on literary theory, 67-71, 76, 88
—myth of the soul, 108
—on rhetoric, 94, 95, 113, 120, 123
n.21
—on rhetoric adapted to soul, 171,
178-79
—on sophistry, 101-2
—on truth, 36, 114
—on writing, 37, 105, 113
—Works: Euthyphro, 148; Gorgias, 1,
15, 24, 126,146, 148-49; Ion, 69;
Laws, 113-14; Menexenus, 180;
Phaedrus, 1, 10, 13-16, 37, 40 n . l l ,
58, 69, 70, 90 n.2, 104, 105, 110,
118, 122 nn.5, 9, 128-29, 133, 148-
49, 161, 164-65, 167, 172, 175, 177-
83, 196 n.2; Republic, xv, 68, 70,
113, 129, 133; Theaetetus, 58, 123
n.20
Poetry, 179, 180, 183; Gettysburg Ad-
dress as, 161; Christian, 13
218 Index
Polanyi, Michael, 160
Positivism, 135. See Scientism
Postman, Neil, 40 n.9, 54 n.8
Primary equivocation, 150
Prodicus, 165, 166
Progress, 28
Progressive Era, 151
Protagoras, xiv
Quintilian, 99
Rabelais, Francois, xv
Race, 151
Ramus, Peter, 123 n.17
Randolph, John, 7, 176, 184, 185, 187,
191-93
Ransom, John Crowe, 5
Reagan, Ronald, 61, 64 n.8, 84, 109,
198
Realism, philosophical, 12, 15, 19, 25,
33-39, 42, 47, 148-49, 157, 191
Recte loqui, 97, 98-100, 101, 102, 103,
109, 111, 120, 122 n.8
Regnery, Henry, 2, 3, 6, 202
Relativism, 33-39, 42, 47, 162-63, 165;
of Weaver's essays, 184
Religion, 34, 42; fundamentalism, 128,
130, 132-36, 138; ritual, 20; south-
ern religiousness, 42, 51; tragedy
and, 77, 78
Religious faculty, 24-25, 26, 30, 52;
metaphysical dream and, 25, 30
Rhetoric: artistic production and, 68;
definition of, H I ; deliberative, 155,
175-176, 196 n.5, 197, 198-99; de-
mocracy aided by, 120-21; dialectic
and, 1, 13-16, 55, 98, 102, 103-6,
111-12, 118, 126, 127, 128-29, 135-
42, 160, 170-72, 177-79, 181, 184;
duty of, 103, 119; education and, 5 7 -
58, 67-68, 120-21; epideictic, xiii,
16-17, 58, 146, 159-61, 164, 186,
187, 188, 191, epistemic, 34, 73-74,
94, 113; forensic, xiii, 175-176, 186,
187-95; genre characterizing Weav-
er's prose, 184-86; goal of, 33, 90,
102, 110; ideal meanings and, 170-
72; inspiration and, 105-7; literature
and, 67, 68, 70, 74; love and, com-
pared, 164, 177-79; modernism's ef-
fects on, 72; most appropriate genre
for presentation of truth, xiv-xv,
175-86; Platonic, 160; related to eth-
ics, 95, 110, 113-18, 119, 155, 160,
168, 179, 181, 184; role of, 12-18,
102, 167; science and, 126, 127, 128,
145; social science, 143-58; sophistic
rhetoric, 69, 101-2, 110; spacious,
159-73, 176, 180-81. See also Lan-
guage; Oratory; Style
Rhetorica docens, xii, 119
Rhetorica utens, xii-xiii, 119
Rhetorician, noble, 107, 108, 110, 111,
114, 115
Richards, Ivor A., 78, 79, 80, 83, 165-
66
Roe v. Wade, 23, 39 n.3
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 160-61
Roosevelt, Theodore, 177-78
Royer, Daniel, 34-36
Rubens, Paul, 100
"Rugged individualism," 86-89, 101
Sandberg, Carl, 161
Schiappa, Edward, 109, 120
Science, 26-28, 34, 97-98, 108, 126,
127, 128, 145, 184; effects on rheto-
ric and oratory, 159-61; evolution-
ary, 131-42
Scientism, 9, 27-28, 98, 125, 143-58;
in language, 166-73, 184
Scopes, John, 131, 200
Scopes trial, 2, 7, 125-43, 160, 166,
181, 184, 200
Scott, Robert, xiv, 93, 108, 109, 112,
113
Segregation, racial, 11
Selzer, Jack, 104
Sermonic nature of language, 171
Shakespeare, William, 75, 78
Shelley, Percy, 73
Shils, Edward, 151
Simms, William Gilmore, 53
Slavery, 43, 44-47, 49, 57, 170-71,
191-92, 193-94; natural law and, 22
Sledd, James, 93
Social science, rhetoric of, 143-58,
175, 176

Social scientific discourse as public phi-
losophy, 156
Sociology: discipline of, 150; rhetoric
in, 158 n.4; social reform and, 150-
51, 153
Socrates, 165
Sophists, 183-84
Sophocles, 75, 78
Southern Agrarians, 5, 127, 201, 203
n.l
Specialist, 16, 135, 147, 181
Specialization, 29-30, 46, 49, 55, 82,
97, 122 n.4
Sprat, Thomas, 98-99
Sproule, J. Michael, 95
Starling, Marion, 43
Steinbeck, John, 74-75, 106
Stevens, Wallace, 183
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 44-45
Strickland, Rennard, 114-15
Style, 152-54, 159-61, 177-83. See
also Language; Oratory
Talon, Omar, 123 n.17
Technocracy, 155, 168
Texas A & M University, 5-6
Thomas, Clarence, 22, 43
Thoreau, Henry David, 6, 7, 75, 87,
114, 147, 184, 190-93, 196 n.5
Tompkins, Philip, 157-58 n.l, 201
Topics, rhetorical, 13, 93, 95, 119, 179;
related to ethics, 95
Toulmin, Stephen, 198
Tragedy, 77-82; modernism's effect on,
77-82; religion's effect on, 77-78
Tragic condition, 9, 154
Transcendentalism, literary, 79-81, 114
Transvaluation of values, 10, 141, 185
Tyrannizing image, 10, 20, 68, 72, 161
Ultimate terms, 103, 122 n.10
Unconscious, collective, 72, 85
University of Chicago, 2, 3, 143, 144,
149, 157-58 n.l
University of Kentucky, 5
Utiliter loqui, 97, 98, 100-102, 103,
109, 111, 120, 122 n.8
Index 219
Vanderbilt University, 3, 127, 172
Veblen, Thorstein, 155, 181
Vere loqui, 97, 98, 119
Vickers, Brian, 13
Vivas, Eliseo, 2, 4
Wallace, Karl, 162
Warren, Robert Penn, 169
Washington, Mary Helen, 64 n.l
Waugh, Evelyn, 157
Weaver, Richard: art, definition of, 86;
asceticism, 8-9; compared to Soph-
ists and epideictic orators, xiii, 184-
86; conservatism, xii, xiv, 5, 93, 119,
121, 146, 156, 157, 179-81, 202;
conservative movement and, 7, 61;
critic, role of, 8-9; death, 2; devel-
opment of ethos, 187; education, na-
ture of, 117-18; education, role of,
55, 190; education of, 4-5; persona,
18, 183-84; place of literature and
rhetoric, 67; Platonism, 13, 15, 34,
145-46; prominence explained, 199-
201; relation of rhetoric to knowl-
edge, 119; religious viewpoint, 9, 12;
rhetoric, definition of, 86, 111; rhe-
torician, nature of, 89-90, 107, 108,
110; Southern partisanship, 127, 144;
tragedy, nature of, 77; use of logic,
187; use of pathos, 187; use of term
"dialectic," 190-91
Weber, Max, 155
Webster, Daniel, 115-16, 147, 182,
191, 193-94
Webster-Hayne debate, 7, 104, 184,
185
Weigert, Andrew, 158 n.4
Wells, H. G., 4 0 n . l 2
Whitman, Walt, 87
Wicher, Stephen, 80
Wilde, Oscar, 70
Winged charioteer, 183
Women: effect of modernism on, 54;
and suffrage, 57
Writing, destruction of memory
through, 179
Yeats, William Butler, 61-62
Young, Daniel, 2, 4
About the Authors

BERNARD K. DUFFY is Professor of Speech Communication at California

Polytechnic State University. He is coeditor, with Halford Ross Ryan, of
American Orators of the Twentieth Century: Critical Studies and Sources
and American Orators before 1900: Critical Studies and Sources (both
Greenwood Press, 1987) and, with Ryan serves as adviser for Greenwood's
Great American Orators series. His articles have appeared in various jour-
nals relating to rhetoric, philosophy, and history.

MARTIN JACOBI is Associate Professor of English at Clemson University.

He is coeditor with Michael G. Moran, of Research in Basic Writing: A
Bibliographic Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 1990) and has published nu-
merous articles on composition and writing as well as literary criticism.