The Ethics of Rhetoric and Life Without Prejudice: Essays on Language, Culture, and Society

by Richard M. Weaver

The landmark work The Ethics of Rhetoric and a selection of essays on language, modernity, education, and cultural freedom by scholar and rhetorician Richard Weaver, a leading figure in the rise of the modern conservative intellectual movement.

"As man speaks," said Seneca, "so is he."

In The Ethics of Rhetoric, Richard Weaver demonstrates that rhetoric, the language used to move men to action, expresses or betrays the ultimate values of its user. Included alongside are a selection of essays previously published as Life Without Prejudice, with the title essay addressing how a single word can become a flail to beat enemies and make traditional distinctions taboo. Other essays included are "The Importance of Cultural Freedom," "Education and the Individual," "Two Types of American Individualism," "Reflections on Modernity," "The Best of Everything," "Up From Liberalism," and "Conservatism and The Common Ground."

Kindle Edition

Expected publication June 1, 2027

About the author

Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr 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. Weaver was briefly a socialist during his youth, a lapsed leftist intellectual (conservative by the time he was in graduate school), a teacher of composition, a Platonist philosopher, cultural critic, and a theorist of human nature and society.
Described by biographer Fred Young as a "radical and original thinker", Weaver's books Ideas Have Consequences (1948) and The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953) remain influential among conservative theorists and scholars of the American South. Weaver was also associated with a group of scholars who in the 1940s and 1950s promoted traditionalist conservatism.