THE SOUTHERN TRADITION AT BAY was Weaver's doctoral dissertation but did not see publication until after his early death in 1963. Not a few critics regard it as his best book, surpassing even his classic and influential IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.

Here Weaver surveys the literature of the South from the postbellum era and shows how a variety of writers, from soldiers,journalists, and lady diarists to poets, novelists, and scholars, regarded the traditions of civility, gentility, piety, natural order and individualistic self-sufficiency the South so valiantly defended in the War Between the States. Weaver, though he expresses a discernible point of view in this matter, does not let partisanship hamper his responsibilties as an honest scholar. If he sees some logical fissure in the thinking of one of his featured writers, he notes such unflinchingly. He also permits the voices of dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in his study, most notably those of Walter Hines Page, George Washington Cable, and Henry Grady, among others, who would, to one extent or another, qualify as Southern liberals. Yet Weaver concludes that even these apostates found much to commend and preserve in the Southern tradition and thus did not denounce it totally.

This is a fascinating study, eminently and surprisingly readable, exhaustive but never exhausting, and well worth the time and attention of anyone truly and seriously interested in the "mind of the South."

Richard Weaver was one of the best philosopher/writers of this century. This book is far-reaching in scope and theme starting with his first section, The Heritage, which encompasses - The Feudal System, the Code of Chivalry, the Education of the Gentleman and the Older Religiousness - to describe how the world view of the old South came to be.

He illuminates the Southern literary renaissance better than any of the poor attempts I've read by others.

Using a vast amount of material, published and unpublished, he presents in a very well organized fashion the South's own portrait of itself, as accurately as it has ever been presented.

Listen to Win is a foundational book for your library. It offers a wealth of detailed information that will take a lifetime to apply. It is not a workbook, but it provides material that is transferable into the workplace on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis. It is very useful as a tool to improve your own listening skills and those of your subordinates. Currently it is out of print and not easy to find, but it is well worth the effort.

This is the first of the superb two-volume treatment of classical social theory written by the famous French Professor and philosopher Raymond Aron. This first volume centers around the theories of a number of early sociological theorist, ranging from the eccentric theorist and philosopher Auguste Comte, to Alexis deToqueville, to Montesquieu, and finally to Karl Marx. Professor Aron traces how the contribution of each helped to create the foundation of modern social theory, and he masterfully threads these collective contributions together into a narrative of theory that later masters of sociological thought like Durkheim, Pareto, and Max Weber then built upon. This is an acclaimed and masterful treatment not only of each theorist's ideas but also how each fits into the overall growth in understanding the structure and function of modern industrial society and what makes it work. Thus, his text strings together the various aspects of each theorist's work into a common thread that links them to their successors.

This approach works brilliantly, largely because of Aron's contribution. His treatment of Karl Marx is particularly masterful, and is perhaps the standard against which other, and much more detailed treatments are judged. The same is true of his treatment Durkheim and Max Weber in the second volume. The two books, which originally were created as part of a yearlong graduate seminar Aron taught at the University of Paris, are an artful combination of scholarship and repartee. Aron's tone is suitable scholarly and thoughtful, and yet is also eminently readable and accessible to the average reader. This two volume set, first printed in hardcover in the mid 1960s, has never been long out of print in the forty years since, and has long been the standard text for use in graduate courses in classical sociological theory.

One caution is appropriate, however. These books are not for Everyman, although they are written in a style and a language that makes them quite accessible and easy to comprehend and understand. Rather, the two volume set is more apt reading material for those readers who are seriously interested in the western tradition of classical social thought, and it acts as a suitable introduction to the heritage of critical thought and intellectual insight extending back hundreds of years in western thought. Enjoy!

This book is an excellent practical guide for assisting managers in accomplishing work through their people. As the manager's role becomes more of a facilitative one, this book can help individuals learn useful skills they can pull off the pages and put immediately into practice. The abundant tables and figures clearly illustrate the principles. The Quick Fix guide at the end of the book offers pragmatic solutions to common problems at work. I recommend this book to all my clients!! Dennis S. Reina, Ph.D. Principal, Chagnon & Reina Associates, Inc. Organizational Development Consultants dsreina@pwshift.com

Weaver was a professor of rhetoric at the University of Chicago. Ideas Have Consequences, like Weaver's other books, is small but deep. It brilliantly diagnoses what ails modern man, tracing the illness to its root, the flight from faith.

        According to Weaver's friend Russell Kirk, the publisher imposed the title, which Weaver hated, on this book.

        My one problem with the book is that its title is used as an incantation by some conservative intellectuals who insist that being right, in the sense of being correct, is sufficient to win. To support their position, they utter the words: "Ideas have consequences," thinking that by so doing they have enlisted Richard Weaver on their side and thereby obsolved themselves of any obligation to take effective actions.

        Once you have read the book, you will know that Weaver didn't believe that ideas in and of themselves have consequences. He believed that skillful actions, when based on good ideas, have good consequences.

The Great Stereopticon is not the latest in digital CD player technology, but the latter is a medium of the former. Prof. Weaver's book, written in the late 1940s, with a Muse of fire, is still current, because the crisis in our civilization continues, and of that he wrote. The 'Great Stereopticon' is the term that Richard Weaver uses to describe the prevading noise generated by our culture, which nearly drowns out the still, small voice of truth, goodness, and virtue. The main point of the book is that ideas, in this case bad ones, can start in motion a train of events, which as they emerge from the world of thought, produce nasty and often unintended consequences. The author traces the decline of the core vision of Western civilization to the progressive divorce of Man and Nature that began with Bacon, and which has continued, as Scientism replaced Science. The momentum of the centuries has given this set of ideas great power and unthought acceptance that is prevasive in our society. The result is the rising tide of barbarism that is engulfing us. Technological progress has done great good, but has not made us better. Without wanting to summarize the author's arguments further, this is one of the seminal works in the Conservative canon, in the Southern Agrarian tradition. The book is not long, and is arranged in stand-alone chapters, which advance Prof. Weaver's argument and form a coherent whole. It is also a quick read, and is done in a superb, flowing style that does the treasurehouse of ideas contained in it justice.

Professor Weaver, writing in the late 1940's, clearly analyzes the cultural trends of his day. Furthermore, he translates the form of those trends into the logical consequences they would embody if left unchecked. Read this book;you will find yourself pausing ever so often to ponder the current state of our culture, as it mirrors these words written over 50 years ago. His writing and style are clear and profound. I often would find myself trying to strectch my reading times because the ideas expressed were so compelling.

If you have ever tried to persuade anyone of anything, you have probably had to confront the truism that Russell Kirk added to his pillars of conservatism: Man is not moved by reason alone.

Richard Weaver wrote that Plato was preoccupied throughout his life by the problem of rhetoric: if truth alone was insufficient to persuade, what could be added to assist it? In The Ethics of Rhetoric, Weaver examined these additions -- the tools of rhetoric -- and how they might be used. His topics included the argument from circumstance and definition as they applied to Burke and Lincoln respectively, Milton's prose, the Scopes trial, the language of social science, the spaciousness of old oratory, the parts of speech, and the use of "god-" and "devil-terms."

The two chapters that deal with Lincoln are among Weaver's best. Despite his sympathies with the old South, he does a fine job of proving Lincoln's profound conservatism, his imaginative, literary, and rhetorical abilities, his courageous leadership and deep integrity.

On the other hand, I think Weaver misreads Burke, falling prey to the legalistic absolutism which divides reality into either/or constructs. I do not consider Burke a liberal simply because he occasionally argued from circumstance. What number of uses of the argument from circumstance confer upon one the status of conservative or liberal? Seven arguments from circumstance versus five from definition? Here we see Weaver trying to divide the world into rows and columns.

I am inclined to agree with Disraeli that a statesman is a practical man, to some degree the creature of his age, who determines what is needful at a given time and place. Robert Nisbet has written that only a revolutionary like Robespierre would say "perish the colonies rather than a principle." In politics expediency and principle perform an intricate dance. There need not be all one or the other. One of the reasons Kirk eschewed the label of ideology for conservatism, and preferred the notion of prudence, was that conservatism took into account the actual rather than trying to impose upon the world a manifesto of what was theoretically possible. Many of the mistakes I see in political debate are a result of the tendency to absolutize something which is not absolute and thereby substitute for thought some ready formula.

Criticisms aside, I found The Ethics of Rhetoric to be Weaver's most useful book, with little of the old Southern jeremiad and loathing of modernity which characterize much of his work. Many strong passages illuminate the way in which language is used and misused. That subject grows more pertinent when we are deluged with information by ever more complex means. More pressure is exerted on us to separate the true from the false, the rhetorically ethical from the unethical.

Except for the final entry in this masterly collection of essays, "Ultimate Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric," which has been widely reprinted in anthologies, the contributions of Weaver, a late professor of rhetoric at the University of Chicago, are not generally known. Yet at his best, Weaver's essays bear comparison with those of his favorite George Orwell. Like Orwell, Weaver was one of the truest humanists of our age and hence really cannot be accurately described with our labels of left-wing, centrist, or right-wing. Exposing the vicious or stupid to champion the humanly valuable was his forte; having a seemingly unerring sensibility for doing this, Weaver is always able to surprise his readers, forcing them to hold little dialectics with themselves to discover their ultimate beliefs and terms of persuasion. Whether he is restoring to a central place in the educational experience and in political speech the role of Eros, or explaining why Edmund Burke was a liberal but Abraham Lincoln a conservative, Weaver is always both a shock and a joy to read.

As this posthumous collection of essays suggests, Weaver felt most at home writing about the old South, which was his birthplace, the topic of his dissertation, and the subject for which he reserved his highest praise.

To Weaver the evils of the world were rooted in modernism, industrialism, materialism, and nationalism, all of which he blamed on Union victory. At one point Weaver even asserted that total war -- war unrestrained by chivalry or other ethical restraints -- was a northern custom which had led to the rise of National Socialism in Germany.

The stark line Weaver drew between South and North, with divergent and logical worldviews ascribed to each, was for him the line between good and evil. In reducing every issue to either-or, Weaver oversimplified his subjects, so that his essays resemble legal arguments: Haynes v. Webster, Thoreau v. Randolph, Lee v. Sherman, Emerson v. Warren. In each case, Weaver's preference is obvious.

I found the strongest essays to be in section one, about southern literature and the Agrarian writers. Here are many useful and profound insights that time has not diminished. When Weaver leaves his specialty, however, his comments are less persuasive, amounting to sweeping sociological observations and cheerleading for the old South.

The converse of Weaver's feeling at home in an imagined South is feeling alienated in an imagined North. Although he spent most of his career teaching literature at the University of Chicago, he isolated himself from the city both physically and intellectually. Perhaps if Weaver had made more effort to adapt, he would have left us a richer legacy, one less marked by decline and defeat.

I admire Weaver's work a great deal. He should be praised for showing, from a conservative perspective, the limitations of capitalism, industrialism, and modernism, limitations which are more often the outcry of the radical left and dismissed as anti American. He would have been wise to consider also the limitations of the old South. I am less willing to blame today's discontents on Union victory. In Weaver's rigid arguments, moreover, there is little to be learned about the vital American principles of acceptance, pluralism, and compromise.

Sometimes it is difficult to sort out the contradictions in Weaver's work, but I prefer to keep in mind his comments from Ideas Have Consequences: Piety accepts the right of others to exist, and it affirms an objective order, not created by man, that is independent of the human ego.

In short, if you are a friend of the South, or would like to read the words of a man who can explain the conservative axiology, this book is for you. The contents are essential for anyone seeking a neoclassical education. For me, reading Richard Weaver's Southern Essays brings together the final sentences of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."

"Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair."

The book is a monument to Lee and Jackson. Anyone who wants to understand Picket's charge needs to read this excellent book.

This is a marvelous book, and a marvelous collection of essays, written by a clear and conscientious southern conservative. Richard Weaver was heir to the Southern Agrarian tradition of protest and opposition to the directions modern American society and politics was taking, particularly in the New Deal and post WW II eras. Writers like John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allan Tate, Caroline Gordon and Robert Penn Warren, were caustic critics of modernity, of the decline in community, and a sense of the common good. Weaver, an english professor who might better be described as an intellectual, lived, learned, and worked in this tradition. Of all the essays in this collection, all of which are well written and thoughtful, two stand out in my mind. His essay on 'Lee the Philosopher' captures the pragmatic and common-sense spirit of southern political and social thought. Southerners felt little need for abstract theorizing, or great theoretical and philosophical models. Simple, everyday ideas, the ideals of common sense and everyday life, were more than enough for the down-to-earth farmers and planters of the American South. Weaver does a brilliant job of portraying Genl Lee as the epitome of the southern ideal of both gentlemanly duty and social thought. The second wonderful piece is 'The Two Types of American Individualism'. Weaver contrasts the individualism of a character like John Randolph of Roanoke, a fixture on the Virginia political scene in the early 1800's, with the individualism of Thoreau (and by implication the North). Randolph was a supreme example of an eccentric indivdual. He had bouts of insanity throughout his like, fought duels, appeared on the floor of Congress with his hunting dogs, jug of hard cider and his slave attendant, and refused to toe the party line. Yet, when the needs of his community demanded, or the society in which he lived was threatened, he was willing- even eager- to rally to the cause and defend it, despite his personal believes and misgivings. Weaver felt that Thoreau, on the other hand, with is notions of civil disobedience and voluntary taxation, put the individual ahead of the community, and would refuse to defend anything that was not justified according to his principles and beliefs. This was recipe for chaos and disorder, and disintegration. Weaver leaves no doubt as to which he preferes. The division between community and tradition, and individual liberty is a fault line that continues to run through American political and social ideas. Weaver, in powerfully defending tradition and community, has been one of the men shaping current political discourse, particularly among the social conservatives and in the religious right. He deserves to be read.

We use this book at the Florida State University to teach a Freshman/Sophmore level Public Speaking class. It's a great book because it's simple and straight-forward. It approaches the student with real-world examples and presents solutions for the individual to overcome fears/roadblocks to public speaking.

I recommend this book as a textbook for any student of public speaking. It's also written so it can be read cover to cover so it can be used out of the classroom!

Weaver began Ideas Have Consequences with "This is another book about the dissolution of the west," but the line could just as easily have introduced Visions of Order, his take on cultural crisis. For Weaver, what was at stake in civilization was intellect, specifically an idea system called a world view. Because he saw intellect as the driving force, he directed his efforts at defining what ideas sustained a civilization and what ideas set it on decline.

In this book, Weaver set up polar opposites that often resulted in oversimplification and false dichotomy. He preferred "either-or" to "both-and" thinking. Thus he divided the world into two competing world views -- spiritual versus material -- and as he approached a topic, he placed it under the appropriate column. That kind of thinking may work for the accountant or lawyer but for the "doctor of culture" that he imagined himself to be it meant all kinds of omissions.

After defining culture, Weaver outlined some of its enemies: overemphasis of function over status, immanentizing of social forms, total war, public education, and evolution. The real enemy, though, appears to be science, which Weaver believed diminished man and his sense of himself as a spiritual being. A proponent of mind over matter, he feared science put limits on man's free will, and on his spreadsheet of values free will was a purely spiritual attribute. This sounds like the libertarian fallacy that freedom is absolute and ought never to be circumscribed. Perhaps there exists a utopia where one can do and say whatever one pleases, but I have not seen such a place.

Weaver the English professor was wrong to oppose literature to science because science is as much a part of the classical quest "to know thyself" as Pope's statement that the proper study of mankind is man. While genetics determines that there will be only one Michael Jordan, it still leaves one free to become a decent basketball player. While astronomy has judged that man is no longer the center of the universe, it has left untouched the notion that life on Earth is unique and mysterious. While neurobiology has uncovered the influence of brain chemistry on behavior, it has by no means relegated man to the status of pawn; man remains free to seek treatment and to live according to the knowledge of his limitations. Science (but not only science) could have proved to Weaver the narrowness of his entire approach: Man is not merely the sum of his ideas. Even rarer is that person who holds a rational and coherent world view.

Anyone who thinks that mystery and complexity have been diminished by science needs to take a look at the discoveries made during the past several decades in both the micro- and macro scale. Astronomy, quantum physics, and neurobiology have re-affirmed a pluralistic, mysterious universe. Rather than signal decline, these affirmations of variety could just as easily encourage prudence and humility -- and cultural invigoration. Yet Weaver remained pessimistic, convinced that every gain in science meant a corresponding loss in religion.

Weaver's dread of "machine culture" overlooked environmentalism, which existed since the turn of the century as a measured response to industrialization. Theodore Roosevelt created the national park system, Eisenhower created ANWR, Nixon created the EPA, Russell Kirk praised Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and lamented the loss of countryside ("what an age without veneration does to itself"). These were acts by conservative Republicans, but Weaver missed them too.

There is much to admire in this book: the need for equilibrium between rhetoric and dialectic; his dislike of war without limitation; and his description of the role that memory and sense of place play in identity and culture. He would have benefitted from applying the conservative's sense of proportion to his superficial critique of science.

Weaver blamed cultural decline on ideas, among them scientism, progressive education, the decline of rhetoric, and the rise of total war. For Weaver, ideas were the roots of culture, if not reality; bad ideas were the disease, good ones the cure.

The problem with this view is in mistaking the part for the whole. Although it is true that ideas have consequences, it is not true that only ideas have consequences. Every person is a kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings, and experiences which often resist the rational ordering of intellectuals. Weaver repeatedly demonstrated the limitations of reason, logic, and dialectic, and the need for their counterparts, belief, feeling, and rhetoric. But when he tried to graft idea systems onto everyday life his conclusions seemed hasty and unconvincing.

For example, Weaver saw the automobile as another attempt by man to conquer nature. Accidents and deaths on the road were considered acceptable sacrifices to the machine god. Somewhere in this melodramatic point of view there is some truth. Speed, power, utility, and an exclusively economic view of man are not enough to sustain a culture or to fill a life with meaning. But where Weaver saw the dangers of "machine culture," and exaggerated them, he failed to see that there was a growing human response to his fears, specifically an entire movement that wanted to balance the needs of industry with conserving the environment. One indication was Russell Kirk's favorable review of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Regardless, the automobile is here to stay and to argue otherwise is to take up a hopelessly lost cause.

Henry Regnery described the University of Chicago professor as something of a gnome, holed up in his hotel quarters, emerging only to work. Perhaps a little more experience in the world would have tempered Weaver's intransigence and stark contrasts, such as his claim that educational progressives were the reincarnation of the ancient gnostics. I understand the point he is trying to make, but surely this is an operatic attitude to take. Here again I think Weaver got lost in a Platonic world of ideas.

Last, Weaver tended to turn any scientific gain into another advance by scientism. Granted, he lacked the benefit of the knowledge acquired during the past five decades in, for example, physics, astronomy, and neurobiology. But I would argue that these fields, rather than diminishing man and the universe, can lead to greater prudence, humility, and self-knowledge, all virtues which Weaver cherished. In addition to their obvious practical gains, decades of scientific discovery have reaffirmed man's complex individuality and opened the door to a universe of unimaginable variety. Their affirmation of pluralism and mystery could just as easily lead to cultural invigoration than to the cultural decay Weaver equated with man's conquest of nature.

Caveats aside, there is much here to admire, such as Weaver's discussion of rhetoric and dialectic and the need for equilibrium between them. He is persuasive on the point that the modern version of war is total in its methods while nebulous and unlimited in its aims. Although I don't share Weaver's sense of a grandiose battle between good and evil in the realm of ideas, I do share his sense of the need, in warfare and other matters, for a return to a proper sense of scale and proportion.

The previous reviewer writes that Weaver overlooks the fact that there are other factors besides ideas that influence culture. However, when the reviewer goes on the list these other things, it appears that they are just aspects or even synonyms of what "ideas" mean. His review, therefore, overlooks the fact that ideas have various aspects, but they are still ideas, and thus although his review betrays a lack of understanding in this area, it does not challenge Weaver's book at all.