Carolina QuotesSince we want not emancipation from impulse but clarification of impulse, the duty of rhetoric is to bring together action and understanding into a whole that is greater than scientific perception.
Richard M. Weaver Carolinian
Source
“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 24.
- work
- The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)
- year
- 1953
- locator
- p. 24
Cite this record
“Since we want not emancipation from impulse but clarificatio…” Richard M. Weaver. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-A82EEBA117. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/a82eeba117
More from Richard M. Weaver
Try to imagine a man setting out for the day without a single prejudice. … Inevitably he would be in a state of paralysis. He could not get up in the morning, or choose his necktie, or make his way to the office, … or, to come right down to the essence of the thing, even maintain his identity.
The semanticists are exactly wrong in regarding language as an obstruction or series of pitfalls. Language, on the contrary, appears as a great storehouse of universal memory, or it may be said to serve as a net, not imprisoning us but supporting us and aiding us to get at a meaning beyond present meaning through the very fact that it embodies others’ experiences.
It may be true that only those minds which are habituated to think logically can safely trust their intuitive conclusions, on the theory that the subconscious level will do its kind of work as faithfully as the conscious does its kind.