Roger Scruton

Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is an English philosopher, writer, and composer. He is currently a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.^[1]

Biography

Scruton was educated at Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe (1954-1961) and Jesus College, Cambridge (1962-1969). He received a Bachelor of Arts in Moral Sciences (the Cambridge name for philosophy) in 1965, incepted as Master of Arts in 1967, and became a Doctor of Philosophy in 1972 with a thesis on aesthetics. He was called to the Bar in 1978. From 1969 to 1971 he was Research Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge. From 1971 to 1992 he was Lecturer, and, subsequently Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London. From 1992 to 1995 he was Professor of Philosophy at Boston University.

From 1982 to 2001 he was founding editor of The Salisbury Review. He also founded the Claridge Press, which in early 2004 he sold to Continuum International Publishing Group. He remains on The Salisbury Review's editorial board, as well as those of the British Journal of Aesthetics^[2] and openDemocracy.net.^[3]

In the early 1990s he moved from the city to the countryside and discovered a passion for fox hunting with hounds, which is now a criminal practice in the UK (Hunting Act 2004). When in England, he lives with his family on his farm in Brinkworth, Wiltshire.

Contributions to philosophy and the arts

His first publication - Art and Imagination - was an exploration of aesthetics. Since then, he has written on almost every topic in philosophy. In his early book Thinkers of the New Left he expresses doubts about the philosophical value of thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, and the Frankfurt School.

Scruton holds the philosopher Immanuel Kant in particularly high regard. Some object that, while his The Meaning of Conservatism criticises Kantian ethics as too individualistic, his later Animal Rights and Wrongs relies on Kantian ethics. In the former, however, Scruton does not offer a refutation of Kant's moral scheme, merely a criticism.

Scruton has written two books which survey modern philosophy. The first, A Short History Of Modern Philosophy starts with Descartes and ends with Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logical positivist school. His subsequent Modern Philosophy is a more detailed, topic-based survey of the same material.

Scruton has published novels and short stories, and has written two operas, for which he provided both the libretto and music. His first opera, The Minister, was performed in Quenington in 1994 and in Oxford in 1998. His second opera, Violet, based on the life of the harpsichordist Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, was performed twice in London in 2005.

Since 2001, Scruton has also written wine columns for the New Statesman, and made contributions to The World of Fine Wine and the 2007 publication Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine with his essay "The Philosophy of Wine".

Contributions to politics and culture

This section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (February 2009)

Scruton holds Burkean political views. In his The Meaning of Conservatism he seeks to shift the emphasis of the right away from economics towards moral issues such as sex education and censorship laws. He argues that the transference in state planned economies of local knowledge and tradition into the hands of bureaucrats, "government from elsewhere" fosters incompetence, ignorance and corruption and, therefore, bad policy. His alternative is to defend "autonomous institution" (organisations outside of state/government control), citing the legal and medical professions, the City, army, church, Monarchy and business enterprise generally as examples.

Although regarded as a traditionalist, in England: An Elegy he describes himself as a bohemian, interested in French and German high culture.^[4] He says that he is bemused by his generation, who "mock the traditions and institutions that might have been theirs". In March 2009, at the Royal Geographical Society, seconding the historian David Starkey, he proposed the motion: "Britain has become indifferent to beauty" by holding an image of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus next to an image of the British supermodel Kate Moss, to demonstrate how British perceptions of beauty had declined to the "level of our crudest appetites and our basest needs".^[5]

Activism

From 1979, Scruton was an active supporter of dissidents in Czechoslovakia when the country was under the rule of the Communist Party. Inspired by Kathy Wilkes, whom he eulogised in England: An Elegy, he participated in the "underground university" (an informal educational organisation set up by the dissidents) with discussions about philosophy. In 1980 in Oxford, he co-founded the Jan Hus Educational Foundation,^[6] which continues to work in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and served as trustee. Since 1990 he has been a board member of the Civic Institute in Prague. For his services to the Czech people, he received the 1st June Prize of the City of Plzeň in 1996 and the Medal for Merit, First Class of the Czech Republic in 2000. Scruton was also co-founder and trustee of the Jagiellonian Trust, working in Poland and Hungary from 1982 until the return of democracy in 1989, and founder and trustee of the Anglo-Lebanese Cultural Association, working for reconciliation between the Lebanese sects from 1987 until it was disbanded in 1995, after the occupation of Lebanon by Syria in alliance with Hezbollah.

In December 2008 Scruton signed his name to a full-page ad that ran in The New York Times as "No Mob Veto" that declared the group's differing views on California's Proposition 8, but was united in its opposition to "violence and intimidation being directed against the LDS or the 'Mormon' church, and other religious organizations - and even against individual believers - simply because they supported Proposition 8", and announcing their commitment to "exposing and publicly shaming anyone who resorts to the rhetoric of anti-religious bigotry - against any faith, on any side of any cause, for any reason."^[7]

Scruton is known for his opposition to the ban on fox hunting. In his book Animal Rights and Wrongs, he argued that hunting and meat-eating were not immoral, but he opposed factory farming. He also believes that it is, at present, wrong for a British person to eat cod, haddock, skate or turbot, as factory fishing is threatening the continued existence of these species and damaging the oceans themselves.^[8]

Public debates

Scruton debated with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and A. C. Grayling in London in March 2007 on the topic "Are We Better Off Without Religion?"^[9] Scruton argues that religion is both helpful and necessary, although he admits that it is very difficult to prove the truth of religious statements.^[10] Scruton also debated Irish Marxist theorist Sean Matgamna in 1991 on the question "has socialism a future?"^[11]

Japan Tobacco International affair

Scruton has been involved in various business ventures, most notably Horsell's Farm Enterprises, a consulting firm advising clients on public relations, which he co-founded in 1999. This firm has been the source of some controversy, since among its clients is one of the world's largest tobacco companies, for which a quarterly briefing paper, The Risk of Freedom Briefing, has been prepared and circulated to press and politicians since 2000.

In early 2002, The Guardian disclosed a leaked confidential e-mail in which he asked Japan Tobacco International for an increase of £1,000 over his existing fee of £4,500 per month and discussed his aim of getting opinion pieces published "in one or other of The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Independent or the New Statesman" on "major topics of current concern" to the tobacco industry.^[12] As a result of the disclosure, The Financial Times dropped his weekly column, "This Land". Scruton asserts that his relationship with JTI was never concealed, and the new proposal was never acted upon, but his critics respond that his previous articles failed to mention any links to the tobacco industry.^[13]

Other positions held

• Trustee of the Educational Research Trust^[14]

Publications

Philosophy and the arts

• Art And Imagination (1974)
• The Aesthetics Of Architecture (1979)
• A Short History of Modern Philosophy (1982)
• The Aesthetic Understanding (1983)
• Kant (1983)
• Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (1986)
• Spinoza (1987)
• The Philosopher On Dover Beach and Other Essays (1990)
• Modern Philosophy (1994)
• The Classical Vernacular: architectural principles in an age of nihilism (1995)
• Animal Rights and Wrongs (1996)
• An Intelligent Person's Guide To Philosophy (1996) Republished in 2005 as Philosophy: Principles and Problems
• The Aesthetics Of Music (1997)
• Spinoza (1998)
• Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (2004)
• Beauty (2009)

Politics and culture

• The Meaning Of Conservatism (1980)
• The Politics Of Culture and Other Essays (1981)
• A Dictionary Of Political Thought (1982) * NEW EDITION - 2007 *
• Untimely Tracts (1985)
• Thinkers Of The New Left (1986)
• A Land Held Hostage: Lebanon and the West (1987)
• Conservative Texts (1992)
• An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture (1998)
• The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the terrorist threat (2002)
• The Need for Nations (2004)
• Animal Rights and Wrongs (2006)
• Arguments For Conservatism (2006)
• Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Need to Defend the Nation State - Online version (2006)
• Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (2007)

Autobiographical

• On Hunting (1998)
• England: An Elegy (2001)
• News From Somewhere: On Settling (2004)
• Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (2005)

Fiction

• Fortnight's Anger: a novel (1981)
• Francesca: a novel (1991)
• A Dove Descending and Other Stories (1991)
• Xanthippic Dialogues (1993)
• Perictione in Colophon (2000)

Opera

• The Minister (1994)
• Violet (2005)

Television

• Why Beauty Matters (BBC 2009)

References

External links

• Roger Scruton official site
• Profile at American Enterprise Institute website
• The Salisbury Review Quarterly official site
• The Risk of Freedom Briefing
• Roger Scruton wine articles for the New Statesman
• Interviews with Scruton can be found here [1] (2005) and here [2] (1998).
• Roger Scruton - Fox Hunter and Philosopher, Monday 25 July 2005, Counterpoint, ABC Radio National, Presented by Michael Duffy
• The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
• Audio: Roger Scruton in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum