Carolina QuotesUnder the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.
Richard M. Weaver Carolinian
Source
p. 72
- work
- Ideas have Consequences (1948)
- year
- 1948
- locator
- p. 72
Cite this record
“Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the pat…” Richard M. Weaver. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-C82B296BA3. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/c82b296ba3
More from Richard M. Weaver
In any piece of rhetorical discourse, one rhetorical term overcomes another rhetorical term only by being nearer to the term which stands ultimate. There is some ground for calling a rhetorical education necessarily aristocratic education in that the rhetorician has to deal with an aristocracy of notions.
In his effort toward revivification of this sense [the sense for great art], the modern artist has not infrequently retired into himself; he has accepted isolation or even alienation. … Sometimes the good has to go underground. … The “revolutionary” artist … has had the aim of saving himself from the surrounding forces of sentimentality and vulgarity. … It is impossible to make a deal with these forces, and we should not be surprised if in striking back the artist has done so in ways even intended to be offensive. He has sometimes shown defiance and contempt toward those who would deny his level of seriousness.
In dialectic the student … will get training in thinking, whereas the best that he gets now is a vague admonition to think for himself.