The Ethics of Rhetoric

Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr. (March 3, 1910 - April 1, 1963) was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as an intellectual historian, political philosopher and a mid-20th century conservative and as an authority on modern rhetoric. A teacher of composition, a Platonist philosopher, cultural critic, and a theorist of human nature and society, he was described by biographer Fred Young as a “radical and original thinker.”

Born in Asheville, North Carolina and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, he attended a private boarding school and the University of Kentucky, where he earned an A.B in English in 1932. He also held a Master’s degree in English from the Vanderbilt University and received his Ph.D. in English from Louisiana State University in 1943.

After one year’s teaching at North Carolina State University, Weaver joined the English department at the University of Chicago, where he spent the rest of his career, and where his exceptional teaching earned him that university’s Quantrell Award during 1949. During 1957, Weaver published the first article in the inaugural issue of Russell Kirk’s Modern Age. He became known as one of the most well-educated intellectuals of his era.

Weaver’s books Ideas Have Consequences and The Ethics of Rhetoric remain influential among conservative theorists and scholars of the American South. Weaver was also associated with the “New Conservatives,” a group of scholars who in the 1940s and 1950s promoted traditionalist conservatism.

During 1962, the Young Americans for Freedom presented an award for “service to education and the philosophy of a free society” to him. Shortly before his sudden death in Chicago in 1963, Weaver accepted an appointment at Vanderbilt University. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute created a graduate fellowship in his memory in 1964 and the Rockford Institute established the annual Richard M. Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters in 1983.