Carolina QuotesBeneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, Plato’s Phaedrus is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.
Richard M. Weaver Carolinian
Source
“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 5.
- work
- The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)
- year
- 1953
- locator
- p. 5
Cite this record
“Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, Plato’…” Richard M. Weaver. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-35332EC28F. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/35332ec28f
More from Richard M. Weaver
We cannot be too energetic in reminding our nihilists and positivists that this is a world of action and history.
The young come to us creatures of imagination and strong affection; they want to feel, but they don’t know how—that is to say, they do not know the right objects and the right measures. And it is entirely certain that if we leave them to the sort of education obtainable today for extra-scholastic sources, the great majority will be schooled in the two vices of sentimentality and brutality. Now great poetry, rightly interpreted, is the surest antidote to both of these. In contrast with journalists and others, the great poets relate the events of history to a pure or noble metaphysical dream, which our students will have all their lives as a protecting arch over their system of values.
Fanaticism has been properly described as redoubling one’s effort after one’s aim has been forgotten, and this definition will serve as a good introduction to the fallacy of technology, which is the conclusion that because a thing can be done it must be done. The means absorb completely, and man becomes blind to the very concept of ends.