Carolina QuotesThe average man of the present age … does not want to be a sentimentalist in his endeavors; he wants some measure for purposeful activity; he wants to feel that through the world some increasing purpose runs. … But since his metaphysic calls only for magnitude and number, since it is becoming without a goal, it is not a source of distinctions in value. It is a system of quantitative comparison. Its effect therefore has been to collapse the traditional hierarchy and to produce economic man, whose destiny is mere activity.
Richard M. Weaver Carolinian
Source
p. 51
- work
- Ideas have Consequences (1948)
- year
- 1948
- locator
- p. 51
Cite this record
“The average man of the present age … does not want to be a s…” Richard M. Weaver. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-1F3F1A8478. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/1f3f1a8478
More from Richard M. Weaver
The conservative realizes that many orthodox positions, once abandoned in panic because they were thought to be indefensible, are quite defensible in only one gives a little thought to basic issues. Surely one of these positions is the right of an individual or society to hold a belief which, though unreasoned, is uncontradicted.
Cultural freedom is in special danger today because so much of our life has been politicized. … With governments which are popular and free, but which allow political sanction to pressures building up against certain types of cultural expression, … the pressure … moves to condemn on grounds which are social and political, and its desire is for uniformity, standardization, consolidation, and all the other features of Gleichschaltung, as it moves to protect from criticism and even from realistic depiction something over which people have become politically excited. In our American experience, these pressures have been largely social.
Any utterance is a major assumption of responsibility, and the assumption that one can avoid that responsibility by doing something to language itself is one of the chief considerations of the Phaedrus.