Richard M. Weaver’s Vision of Education for Liberty

Brian Douglass

Richard M. Weaver was a man who understood the West, its decline, and what is

required for a rebuilding of our culture. Central to his vision for shaping a future marked by

liberty is education. To fully appreciate the value of Weaver’s recommendations requires an

examination of his views of where society is compared with where our civilization should be.

Weaver’s perspective on the world is distinctly Southern. As Weaver saw it, the South

was characterized by a rejection of materialism and instead looks to “things of higher value.”1

For Weaver, the rhetorician and philosopher, the important distinction between this Southern

view and that which seems to have conquered the modern world are the concepts of

transcendence, universals, and revealed Truth.2 In contrast to Southern culture, steeped as it was

in tradition, the modern world has abolished the past and the transcendent. We see this clearly in

the widespread acceptance of moral relativism and the larger phenomenon against which Weaver

so strongly objected: nominalism.

Nominalism, by which Weaver identified the set of ideas more typically known as

empiricism or materialism, “holds that only the individual is real.”3 Any conception of the

universal is seen simply as a “mental fiction” and as such has no reality.4 The consequence of

nominalism is the rejection of an objective truth and the rejection of meaningful reality.5 It is this

revolution, set in motion by William of Ockham and steadily expanded up through the modern

era, which replaced objective truth and the universal in the minds of our culture.6

The consequences of this reversal of the traditional order is a breakdown of society, such

as we have seen in modern times. Society has a natural hierarchy, as evidenced by the order seen

in a family. Weaver notes that every man has become “not only his own priest but his own

professor of ethics” and society has become a state of anarchy, which “threatens even that

minimum consensus of value necessary to the political life.”7 Man has tossed out the reality of

sin, along with his rejection of the transcendent, Weaver continues.8 The consequence of this, of

course, is that a man’s defects must now be explained away as a consequence of “his simple

ignorance or to some kind of social deprivation.”9 How often are the acts of a criminal explained

away as his being a “victim of the system” or a “product of his environment.” This is exactly the

type of shirking of responsibility and social breakdown that Weaver says follows from

nominalism.

Another consequence of nominalism is the so-called “Whig theory of history.” Weaver

cites this view as seriously flawed and perhaps the greatest limit on any attempt to rebuild

society. As he notes, “we cannot combat those who have fallen prey to hysterical optimism.”10

The first step in education for a restored civilization will be to “establish the fact of decadence”

according to Weaver.11 He admits that this is a serious challenge. Modern man is unwilling to

admit such an unsettling thought. He lacks the humility needed for self-criticism.12 There is a

rather interesting corollary to this in the Athonite tradition of the Christian East. Elder Paisios

states that Satan and the fallen angels would be able to reenter heaven if they would only obtain

the humility to ask forgiveness.13 However, the elder states that this would be virtually

impossible for them, blinded as they are by pride and selfishness.14 Hopefully, it will not be the

same for mankind and we can develop the humility needed to admit that we have erred.

Society, properly ordered, is a “mirror of the logos” according to Weaver.15 From this it

follows that society has a “formal structure” which we can apprehend.16 Weaver concludes that

this implies that the “preservation of society” requires “recovery of true knowledge.”17

Knowledge, along with virtue, another key for Weaver, both require transcendence.18 Otherwise,

society is a reflection of nothing, or at least nothing higher than itself. This is the great divide

that splits modern society from that of the days before Ockham. It also explains why the notion

of transcendence is so “obnoxious,” as Weaver puts it, the nominalist “Jacobins.”19

Perhaps the best summary of Weaver’s view of the role of education is that it is to “make

the human being more human.”20 Weaver’s view of “being more human” is tied to his very

distinct view of individualism, which he termed “social-bond individualism.”21 Weaver discusses

individualism at length in his essay “Two Types of American Individualism” in which he

contrasts Henry David Thoreau and John Randolph of Roanoke.

Noting that it is Thoreau’s individualism that is best known and most commonly lauded,

Weaver draws attention to just how counter-cultural his view of individualism is. As further

confirmation, the reference to John Randolph in the new United States Capitol visitor center

quotes his famous statement: “I am an aristocrat, I love liberty, I hate equality” before stating

that “the country soon passed Randolph by as manufacturing interests grew and politics became

more democratic.”22 The dismissal of Randolph and his “aristocratic” ways as being backwards

would come as no surprise to Weaver.

However, it is Randolph to whom Weaver points as an example of the best type of

American individualism. Whereas Thoreau withdrew from the world to Walden Pond, Randolph

refused to retreat and instead stood as a member of the community. This is the “social-bond”

individualism, which Weaver saw as the hope for society. Randolph’s defense of the “smaller but

‘natural’ unit against the larger on which pretends a right to rule” was firmly based on the local

community.23

Randolph was raised in a tradition that still respected the ties of society. For him,

severing such ties was an extreme last resort.24 For Thoreau, they were the first order of

business.25 Weaver explains that this “anarchic individualism is revolutionary and subversive

from the very start.”26 It is destructive of society and grows from a “self-righteousness or

egocentric attachment to an idea” rather than a natural development of a cultured society.27

Whereas Thoreau's individualism is destructive, that of Randolph is constructive.28

Weaver himself can be seen as a modern-day John Randolph. Like Randolph, he has been

forgotten by a large portion of society. His ideals, too, clash with the modern mindset. Like

Randolph, he rejects the value of equality and instead favors fraternity.29 Fraternity, with the

image of family that it evokes, is not a pure mathematical equality or sameness. In the words of

Weaver:

The ancient feeling of brotherhood carries obligations of which equality knows nothing.It calls for respect and protection, for brotherhood is status in family, and family is bynature hierarchical. It demands patience with little brother, and it may sternly exact dutyof big brother.30

Weaver, as did Randolph, looks to an older tradition. Both were Southerners and reflect the

importance of family, community, tradition, and awareness of the transcendent that marks the

culture of this region.

Randolph was a landowner and a planter and was an agrarian in the original sense. There

has been some discussion as to Weaver’s relationship with the Southern Agrarians.31 It is

indisputable that he was educated by and influenced by a number of the original Agrarians.32

Weaver certainly shares their love of community and tradition and engaged in defense of the

local and the particular against the modern waves of specialization, technocracy, and materialism

in a fashion reminiscent of the works of the Southern Agrarians such as I’ll Take My Stand and

Who Owns America?.

Perhaps the most striking similarity to Randolph’s individualism is the fact that Weaver,

despite recognizing the collapse of traditional culture, did not flee to a hermitage. Instead he

stayed. He did not simply stay, however, he went to the enemy, teaching many years at The

University of Chicago.33 For a man who declared urban living to be destructive of all traditional

relationships, including friendship, this seems to be a sign that he refused to give up.34 Weaver

saw that the hope for the future lay in education, not in abandoning the community like the

hermit of Walden.

Richard Weaver saw the problem with modern civilization. He also believed that he knew

the answer. The antidote for nominalism is the recovery of true knowledge.35 That is, knowledge

of the transcendent and the universal. Knowledge that prepared man for life in the real world, a

world that was more than material. For Weaver, the only way to recover this true knowledge was

through education. He denounced those who use the term education like a “conjuror’s word”

expecting to solve every problem as if by magic.36 Weaver clearly saw that it was not education,

but properly directed education in the right areas that was the key.37

When expressing the proper form that education should take, Weaver proposed what has

traditionally been termed a “Liberal Education.”38 He rejects the idea of education as simply job

training, calling such an idea only a partial description of education’s goals. Education is for a

human being, and as such is not the same as simple training of an animal to perform tricks or the

programming of a computer to respond in certain ways. It should see that “the individual is

developed into something better than he would have been without it.”39 Weaver states that

education is not indoctrination. Education, in the Liberal tradition, is for the free man.

Indoctrination is for a “pawn of the political state.”40

Weaver’s conception of the individual assumes bonds with other people in a community.

The individual also assumes freedom, in particular a freedom of choice. This is nothing more

than the Christian conception of free will. Man, Weaver states, cannot “become such an

individual until he becomes aware of his possession of freedom.”41 Weaver continues, saying

that the “real person. . . senses in himself an internal principle of control, to which his thoughts

and actions are related.”42 This is Weaver’s expression of the ancient Christian, and Platonic,

conception of the rational mind reigning in the appetitive and spirited parts of man’s nature.

Liberal education, Weaver believes, is designed to prepare man for freedom.43 He notes

that it was originally intended for a society’s freemen and thus has etymological connections

with the word “free.”44 However, historical curiosities aside, the reason why a liberal education

is the best preparation for free men is because it “introduces one to the principles of things.”45

Liberal education is concerned with truth, universals, rather than simply assorted facts.

This distinction is important to Weaver who views facts as not speaking for themselves, but

rather only can speak through an interpreter.46 Liberal education, says Weaver, is what prepares a

man to be that interpreter. Without the “big picture” man is simply a trivia machine. Facts are

useless by themselves. It is only when they are given meaning that they become relevant. The

individual, a product of a liberal education, is prepared to “confront any fact with the reality of

his freedom to choose.”47 This, Weaver says, is the “way in which liberal education liberates.”48

Weaver is not finished. Not only does a liberal education prepare man to be a free

individual, but it also is important to a free and virtuous society. An education designed to

promote individualism is “education for goodness.”49 He states that the liberally educated

individual is “at home in the world of ideas” and as such, he can “choose among ideas” keeping

in mind the relations between them.50 This is choice based on training, on experience. It is not

the sheltered, false freedom which so many seem to desire today. This is the ground in which

virtue grows. Virtue, Weaver points out, transforms into character through its exercise.51

Weaver sees the traditional model of Western liberal education as the route back from the

brink of societal collapse. It is only through this type of education, Weaver believes, that men

can be made into better men and society made into a better society. Weaver’s way is not

unknown, but it is different than the methods attempted in what he terms “educational plants”

which make up the bulk of higher education in the United States.52

Weaver detests specialization in both individuals and in education. Weaver once noted

that “[t]he specialist stands ever at the borderline of psychosis.”53 Although, Weaver himself was

a professor of English and a gifted rhetorician, his philosophical outlook encompassed the big

picture. He was able to see how the traditional disciplines fit together and complemented each

other. This, too, is an ancient idea, as Weaver himself notes, reminding his reader that Plato

required that his students know geometry before they tried to learn philosophy.54

Just as the free individual exists in a world with which he shares bonds of fraternity, so

does the plan of liberal education. Weaver suggests that recognition of a hierarchy, or order, is to

be retained in his ideal model for education as in society.55 Weaver also raises the importance of

the term “discipline,” as it not only retains traditional distinctions, but also because of the term

“denotes something that has the power to shape and control in accordance with objective

standards.”56 The term also carries with it the connotation of the “power to repress and

discourage those impulses which interfere with the proper development of the person.”57

Discipline implies the existence of a right and a wrong, distinctions neglected under the regime

of the nominalists.

Lastly, Weaver’s view of a liberal education to restore civilization sees the person as an

individual. The educator must look at the truth, and this includes the truth of the person taught. In

contrast to his views on individualism and proposal of an education for that individual as an

individual, Weaver offers the ideas of John Dewey. Dewey denies the value of any interior

development for the community.58 In fact, as Weaver states, Dewey simply wants an education

which makes reference to externals (but not universals, as they are simply imaginary, and thus

internal, to the nominalists) and thus sees humanity as a collection of “atoms or monads” where

there is no room for the spiritual or the truly personal.59 Sadly, it is the model of Dewey, and not

Weaver, that has dominated modern American education.

As a student preparing to enter a graduate program to prepare me to teach at the

university level, both the words and example of Richard M. Weaver assume a great deal of

importance. At first glance, it may seem odd for a student of economics to also look to Weaver’s

works as an example. After all, economics has become highly specialized, highly technical, and

often seems quite far from its roots as household management. While this is certainly true of

much of the economic field as it exists today, there is absolutely no reason why this must be the

case.

Weaver mourns the destruction of the traditional hierarchy of civilization and the creation

of “economic man,” a creature, he says, “whose destiny is mere activity.”60 In a world where

economics is largely dominated by various flavors of Keynesianism, we do indeed find the

government manipulating markets at the “service of appetite” as Weaver saw.61 The mission of

the Federal Reserve is to use the full weight of the Federal Government to keep the economy

safe for growth, regardless of the reality of that growth. After so many bailouts and stimulus

plans, it has become clear that, as Weaver predicted in Ideas Have Consequences, the State has

become “a vast bureaucracy designed to promote economic activity.”62 “Too big to fail” has

become the motto. Little concern seems to be given to the actual merits of keeping these large

corporations, who seem to make very big, very bad decisions.

Luckily, not all economists have fallen for this trap; and, best of all, it is possible to

obtain a Ph.D. in economics from professors who refuse to accept this prevailing theory. This is

one of the reasons why I desire to study at George Mason University. Austrian economics has

something of a unique place in the present schools of economics in at least two ways that it

seems Weaver would agree with. The first is their rejection of blind empiricism practiced by so

many “mainstream” economists, and secondly, the importance placed on traditional, Western

philosophy.

Ludwig von Mises recognized that there was a difference between humans and atoms or

minerals. This led him, and his students following him, to question the validity of the empirical

methods used by many economists. The trend of modern economics has been marked by an

attempt to make economics less philosophical and more of a “hard science,” with physics being

the ideal.63 The Austrians propose that economists should reject this trend, which is nothing more

than a form of the nominalist heresy against which Weaver objected so strongly. Von Mises and

the Austrians have sought to establish economics on a footing of logic and deduction as opposed

to one of empirical studies and induction. In his article “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The

Common Ground,” Weaver cites the Austrian concept of praxology favorably saying that it is an

example of recognition of the “objective” and that the Austrian Libertarians were fellow

“conservators of the real world.”64

Strongly connected to the Austrian School is an appreciation for the importance of

philosophy. Aristotle, Aquinas, and other philosophers frequently find positive reference in

Austrian writings. In a discipline so commonly marked by the triumphalism of the Whig theory

of history as economics, it is refreshing to see that these men are studied not just as historical

figures, but also to see their thoughts applied to modern problems. It is rather hard, for example,

to imagine a Marxist, or even a Keynesian, consulting a fourteenth-century bishop and

theologian in a text on monetary theory (or even discussing monetary ethics at all).65

It is this view of economics as part of a larger picture combined with a distrust of the

nominalist tendency to consider all fields of study like the physical sciences that seems quite

compatible with Weaver’s view of the world. Man is clearly not “just” an economic creature; the

Austrians realize this just as Weaver did. Recognizing this, Weaver himself recommends that

professors read, among others, von Mises, Hayek, and Röpke in order to counter the influence of

Socialist collectivism in their training and to learn “the value of personal freedom.”66 My

personal hope is that studying in such an environment will assist me in obtaining my own goal of

teaching for a free society of free individuals.

Economics, rooted in the Western tradition and seeing man as a free individual, holds

great possibilities. It remains imperative to look at economics, just as with any other discipline,

keeping in mind the transcendent. This seems, at first, to be a paradox, since economics is so

associated with finance and trade. However, once economics becomes about man, the social

animal, and his relationship with his neighbor, then economics, too, becomes open to the

transcendent. It is only with this acceptance of our role as free individuals, that society can

become truly free.

Richard M. Weaver offers an explanation of how to build a free society of free

individuals. It is a plan rooted in the Western Tradition and the traditional view of individuals as

part of a community and of traditional, liberal education. The only safeguard against

indoctrination is the recognition and acceptance of the objectivity of truth.67 It is only through

education directed towards visions of transcendent reality, that social-bond individualism can be

cultivated. A society marked by such free individuals will then be able to turn their backs on

nominalism and move away from the cliff that is societal destruction.

Notes

1. Richard C. Cheeks, “Weaver’s Southern Christendom,” The Acton Institute,http://www.acton.org/publications/randl/rl_review_499.php.2. Ibid.3. Robert A. Preston, “A Man of Vision,” Touchstone, November/December 1998,http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=11-06-021-f.4. Ibid.5. Ibid.6. Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1948), 3.7. Ibid, 2.8. Ibid, 4.9. Ibid, 4-5.10. Ibid, 10.11. Ibid, 10.12. Ibid, 11.13. Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, (Thessaloniki,Greece: Holy Monastery Evangelist John the Theologian, 2007), 66-8.14. Ibid.15. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 35.16. Ibid., 35.17. Ibid., 35.18. Ibid., 36-7.19. Ibid., 37.20. Richard M. Weaver, “Education and the Individual,” In Defense of Tradition, (Indianapolis:Liberty Fund, 2000), 186.21. Richard M. Weaver, “Two Types of American Individualism,” Modern Age, Spring 1963,122.22. “Exhibition and Film Scripts,” U.S. Capitol Visitor Center,http://www.heritage.org/leadershipforamerica/upload/CVC.pdf.23. Weaver, “Two Types of American Individualism”, 125.24. Weaver, “Two Types of American Individualism”, 134.25. Ibid.26. Ibid.27. Ibid.28. Ibid.29. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 41.30. Ibid., 41-2.31. Ralph E. Ancil, “Southern Agrarians,” First Principles,http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=832&theme=home&loc=b.32. Troy L Kickler, Richard M. Weaver, Jr. (1910-1962), North Carolina History Project,http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/67/entry.33. Kickler.34. Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, 30-1.35. Ibid., 35.

36. Weaver, “Education and the Individual,” 185.37. Ibid., 185.38. Ibid., 186.39. Ibid., 185.40. Ibid., 186.41. Ibid., 197.42. Ibid., 198.43. Ibid., 198.44. Ibid., 198.45. Ibid., 198.46. Ibid., 198.47. Ibid., 198.48. Ibid., 198.49. Ibid., 198.50. Ibid., 198.51. Ibid., 198.52. Ibid., 184.53. E. Victor Milione, “The Uniqueness of Richard M. Weaver,” First Principles, Vol. 2 No. 1,September 1965 http://www.mmisi.org/ir/02_01/milione.pdf.54. Weaver, “Education and the Individual,” 190.55. Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, 35.56. Weaver, “Education and the Individual,” 190.57. Ibid., 190.58. Ibid., 195.59. Ibid., 195.60. Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, 51.61. Ibid., 38.62. Ibid., 38.63. Murray N. Rothbard, “Ludwig von Mises and the Paradigm for Our Age,” Mises Daily, 18August 2009, http://mises.org/daily/3623.64. Richard M. Weaver, “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground,” In Defenseof Tradition, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 480.65. Jörg Guido Hülsmann, The Ethics of Money Production, (Auburn: Ludwig von MisesInstitute, 2008).66. Richard M. Weaver, “The Role of Education in Shaping Our Society,” In Defense ofTradition, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 222.67. Richard M. Weaver, “Education: Reflections on,” In Defense of Tradition, (Indianapolis:Liberty Fund, 2000), 173.