Abstract
This book has aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the life and work of the late Sir Roger Scruton, probably the best known British conservative philosopher of the turn of the century, focusing on his characteristic parallel interest in the arts and politics. The framework of this introduction was built around the classical distinction between a life lived in action and one lived in reflection. Our claim made about action and reflection was that Scruton was unable or perhaps not prepared to make a definitive decision on this issue. In other words, he lived two lives in parallel: that of the professional philosopher, struggling with concepts, in order to clarify them, under the constraints of universal truth, and that of the public intellectual, ready to fight in order to exercise influence on the state of affairs, to get involved in public affairs, and to make his voice heard, in order to work for the common good.
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Notes
- 1.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Hoboken: Blackwell, 1953) §11.
- 2.
See Wittgenstein’s claim: “Philosophy… leaves everything as it is.” Philosophical Investigations, I. 24.
- 3.
Scruton, Gentle Regrets, 25.
- 4.
See the somewhat anecdotal reference to Anscombe, as well as to Tanner and Casey in Conversations with Roger Scruton, 25.
- 5.
Scruton, Gentle Regrets, 5.
- 6.
Ibid., 136.
- 7.
Ibid., 138.
- 8.
Robert Grant, in his comments on an earlier draft of this text, invited me to “imagine the cruel fun Jane Austen would have had at the expense of them both. And they would have deserved it.”
- 9.
Roger Scruton, Professor David Watkin Eulogy—24th September 2018, Kings Lynn Norfolk, available at: https://www.roger-scruton.com/articles/547-professor-david-watkin-eulogy-24th-september-2018-kings-lynn-norfolk. One should admit, however, that too much social order can, on the other hand, be detrimental to personal liberty.
- 10.
Scruton, Gentle Regrets, 34.
- 11.
Ibid., 35.
- 12.
Both of the above quotations are from Gentle Regrets, 35.
- 13.
Ibid., 197.
- 14.
Ibid., 43.
- 15.
To do so, we shall rely on his chapter on English common law in his book England: An Elegy.
- 16.
Ibid., 113.
- 17.
Ibid., 115.
- 18.
Ibid., 116.
- 19.
Ibid., 117.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid., 118.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Ibid., 120.
- 24.
Ibid., 128.
- 25.
See Against the Tide. The best of Roger Scruton’s columns, commentaries and criticism, ed. Mark Dooley (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).
- 26.
Barbara Day, The Velvet Philosophers (London: The Claridge Press, 1999), 281–2. See also: Jessica Douglas-Home, Once Upon Another Time: Ventures Behind the Iron Curtain (Norwich: Michael Russell, 2000).
- 27.
Scruton, Notes from the Underground, 2014.
- 28.
Roger Scruton, Confessions of a Heretic (Kendal, Notting Hill Editions, 2021), 13–14.
- 29.
Ibid., 14.
- 30.
Scruton, Green Philosophy, 238. The quote is from the beginning of the first book of Augustine’s Confessions, see Henry Chadwic’s translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3.
- 31.
Scruton, Green Philosophy, 238.
- 32.
Scruton, Confessions of a Heretic, 13–14.
- 33.
Scruton and Dooley, Conversations, 91. Interestingly, here his example is Venice, of which he says: it is “a lasting work of the religious imagination, a vision of eternity rising like Venus from the sea.” Ibid.
- 34.
Scruton, Soul of the World, 119.
- 35.
Ibid., 183. The religious sense of a covenant, of course, is different from the modern legal concept of the contract.
- 36.
Ibid., 119.
- 37.
Certainly, he means self-sacrifice, and not the sacrifice of others.
- 38.
For the problematic relationship between Wagner and Christianity, see the account of Ieuan Ellis, “Wagner and Christianity,” Theology 80, no. 676 (1977): 244–50.
- 39.
Scruton, The Ring of Truth, 270.
- 40.
Ibid., 271.
- 41.
But not necessarily present in human communities—remember that the gods get lost in The Ring.
- 42.
Scruton, The Soul of the World, 90.
- 43.
Ibid., 90.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Ibid., 91.
- 46.
Ibid., 92.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid., 93.
- 50.
Ibid.
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Hörcher, F. (2023). Conclusion. The Duality of Scruton’s Philosophy of Politics and Art. In: Art and Politics in Roger Scruton's Conservative Philosophy. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13591-0_6
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