Roger Scruton
Encyclopedia
Roger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination (1974), Sexual Desire (1986), The Aesthetics of Music (1997), and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism (2006). He has also written several novels and two operas.
Scruton was a lecturer and professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College
, London, from 1971 to 1992. In 1982 he helped found The Salisbury Review
, a conservative political journal, which he edited for 18 years. Since 1992 he has held part-time positions at Boston University
, the Institute for the Psychological Sciences
in Arlington, Virginia, the American Enterprise Institute
in Washington, D.C., and the University of St Andrews
. He serves in addition as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for European Renewal
.
and High Wycombe
. Scruton told The Guardian that Jack was from a working-class Manchester family—he hated the upper classes and loved the countryside—and Beryl was fond of romantic fiction and entertaining "blue-rinsed friends." He describes his mother as born and bred in the genteel suburbs of London, cherishing an ideal of gentlemanly conduct and social distinction, which his father "set out with considerable relish to destroy." Although his parents had been raised as Christians, they saw themselves as humanists, so home was a religion-free zone. Family life was not particularly happy, and he had more or less left home by the time he was 16.
He was educated at Royal Grammar School High Wycombe (1954–1961), where he writes that he deliberately failed to fit in, and from which he was expelled shortly after winning a scholarship to Cambridge. When he told his father he had won a place at Cambridge, his father stopped speaking to him. He studied moral sciences (philosophy) at Jesus College
from 1962, receiving a BA in 1965, incepted as MA
in 1967. He was awarded a PhD in 1972 for a thesis on aesthetics, also from Cambridge.
in 1969, and in 1971 joined Birkbeck College, London, where he taught philosophy until 1992, first as lecturer, then as reader and professor of aesthetics. He married Danielle Laffitte in 1973; they divorced in 1979. His first book, Art and Imagination, appeared in 1974. Also in 1974 he became one of four board members of the Conservative Philosophy Group
, founded that year by Hugh Fraser
, the Conservative MP, to develop an intellectual basis for conservatism.
He studied law at the Inns of Court (1974–1976), and was called to the Bar
in 1978, though he never practised. His next publication was also in aesthetics, The Aesthetics Of Architecture (1979). In The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), he sought to shift the emphasis of the Right
away from economics towards moral issues. He told The Guardian in 2010 that the book blighted his academic career; the newspaper said he was vilified by his colleagues at Birkbeck for his political views.
The Politics Of Culture and Other Essays (1981) followed; then a history and dictionary of philosophy in 1982; The Aesthetic Understanding (1983); textbooks on Kant and Spinoza (1983 and 1987); Thinkers of the New Left (1985), a collection of essays criticizing 14 prominent intellectuals; and Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (1986).
s in Eastern Europe under Communist Party
rule, forging links—at some risk to himself, according to David Vaughan on Radio Prague—between Czechoslovakia's dissident academics and their counterparts in Western universities. As part of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation
, he and other academics visited Prague and Brno, now in the Czech Republic, in support of an underground education network started by the Czech dissident Julius Tomin
, helping to smuggle in books and organize lectures, and eventually arranging for students to study for a Cambridge external degree in theology; the theology faculty was chosen because it was the only one that responded to the request for help. He told Vaughan there were structured courses, samizdat
translations and printing of books, and people sitting examinations in a cellar with papers smuggled out through the diplomatic bag.
He was detained in 1985 in Brno and was asked to leave the country. Someone who watched him walk across the border with Austria later wrote: "There was this broad empty space between the two border posts, absolutely empty, not a single human being in sight except for one soldier, and across that broad empty space trudged an English philosopher, Roger Scruton, with his little bag into Austria." On 17 June that year he was placed on the Index of Undesirable Persons. He writes that he was also followed during visits to Poland and Hungary. For his work helping the dissidents he was awarded the Czech Republic's Medal of Merit (First Class) in 1998. Peter Hitchens
wrote in 2009 of his admiration for Scruton and others who did similar work. Scruton has expressed regret at how certain aspects of Eastern European society have developed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
—set up by a group of Tories known as the Salisbury Group, with the involvement of the Peterhouse Right
, a circle of conservatives associated with the Cambridge college, including Maurice Cowling
, David Watkin
, and the mathematician Adrian Mathias. He wrote in 2002 that editing the Review effectively ended his academic career in the UK. The magazine attempted to provide an intellectual basis for conservatism, and was highly critical of some key issues of the period, including the peace movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, egalitarianism, feminism, foreign aid, multiculturalism, and modernism. "At last it was possible to be a conservative and also to the left of something," he wrote of the Review. It was therefore difficult at first to find intellectuals to write for it, but he wrote that, "[o]ne by one the conservatives came out and joined us, recognising that it was worth sacrificing your chances of becoming a fellow of the British Academy, a vice-chancellor or an emeritus professor for the sheer relief of uttering the truth."
It was Scruton who in 1984 famously published in the Review a controversial article by Ray Honeyford, headmaster of the Drummond Middle School in Bradford, questioning the benefits of multicultural education; Honeyford was forced to resign because of it, and had to live for a time under police protection. In 1985 the Review was accused of scientific racism during the annual congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and thereafter, Scruton wrote in 2002, the magazine's writers were ostracized in the academic world. The philosophy department of the University of Glasgow organized an official boycott of a talk he had been invited to deliver to its philosophy society, and what Scruton called a serious libel in The Observer made his position as a university professor untenable, in his view; he wrote that damages from the newspaper paid for his early retirement. He edited the Review until 2001 and remains on its editorial board. He described in 2002 the effect of the editorship on his life: "[it] cost me many thousand hours of unpaid labour, a hideous character assassination in Private Eye, three lawsuits, two interrogations, one expulsion, the loss of a university career in Britain, unendingly contemptuous reviews, Tory suspicion, and the hatred of decent liberals everywhere. And it was worth it."
He also founded the Claridge Press in 1987, which he sold in early 2004 to Continuum International Publishing Group
, and sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Aesthetics.
with hounds. It was through hunting that he met Sophie Jeffreys, an architectural historian; they married in 1996. They have two children: Sam, born in 1998 and Lucy, born in 2000, and live on their farm in Brinkworth
, Wiltshire. They also own an apartment in Albany, an apartment building on Piccadilly
, London. They recently sold their 18th-century house, Montpelier, near Sperryville
, Virginia. He set up several firms, including: (i) Central European Consulting, which was established in 1990 to offer business advice in post-communist Central Europe; (ii) Horsell's Farm Enterprises Ltd, dating from 1999, which had clients such as Japan Tobacco International
(see below), and Somerfield Stores, which he advised about establishing a line of local produce; and (iii) opendemocracy.net, a political website.
From 2001 to 2009 he wrote a wine column for the New Statesman, and made contributions to The World of Fine Wine
and Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine (2007), with his essay "The Philosophy of Wine". His I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine (2009) was in part composed of material from his New Statesman column.
In March 2007 he debated Richard Dawkins
, Christopher Hitchens
, and A. C. Grayling in London on the topic "Are We Better Off Without Religion?" In March 2009, at the Royal Geographical Society, seconding the historian David Starkey
, Scruton 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".
at St Andrews on the topic, "The Face of God." A.C. Grayling described him in 2000 as a "wonderful teacher of philosophy. The pedagogic works he wrote for students and the general public are clear, lucid and accurate. It is partly because of Roger's presence that the department [at Birkbeck] is one of the best in the country."
(JTI), and had written about tobacco issues without declaring an interest. He wrote articles about smoking for The Wall Street Journal in 1998 and 2000, and in 2000 wrote a 65-page pamphlet—"WHO, What, and Why: Trans-national Government, Legitimacy and the World Health Organisation"—for the Institute of Economic Affairs
, a British think tank. The pamphlet criticized the World Health Organization
's (WHO) campaign against smoking, arguing that transnational bodies should not seek to influence domestic legislation because they are not answerable to the electorate. He wrote that overall he was against tobacco—his own father died of emphysema
after smoking for many years—but that it was an innocent pleasure.
In January 2002 The Guardian reported that he had been receiving a monthly fee of £4,500 ($6,400) from Japan Tobacco International. An October 2001 e-mail to a JTI executive showed him requesting an additional £1,000 each month, and discussed his aim of having opinion pieces published in several newspapers—including The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Financial Times—on "major topics of current concern" to the tobacco industry. In the same email seeking pay rise on his existing monthly fee Scruton argued that in a business "largely conducted by shysters and sharks" he represented value for money. Then when asked by The Guardian reporter if he saw himself as one of the "shysters and sharks", Scruton replied: "No, on the contrary, but that's what I think of public affairs generally. What I meant was the kind of fees they demand. What we do is a small cottage industry." He objected to The Guardian's use of a leaked email, which he said had been stolen, and said he had never concealed his connection with JTI, which had started three years earlier; he and his wife edited and produced The Risk of Freedom briefing for JTI, published quarterly from October 1999 to April 2006. He told the newspaper the new proposal was never acted upon. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) criticized him for having failed to declare the relationship when he wrote the pamphlet criticizing WHO, and the Institute for Economic Affairs said it would introduce an author declaration policy; Scruton acknowledged that, with hindsight, he should have declared an interest. The Financial Times ended his contract as a columnist on country life, and The Wall Street Journal suspended his contributions.
, two of which he set to music. The first, a one-act chamber opera called The Minister, has been performed several times. The second, a two-act opera called Violet, was performed twice at the Guildhall School of Music in London in December 2005; it is based on the life of Violet Gordon-Woodhouse
, the British harpsichordist.
The Meaning of Conservatism (1980)—which he called "a somewhat Hegelian
defence of Tory values in the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers"—was the book that he said blighted his academic career. He wrote in Gentle Regrets (2005) that he found several of Edmund Burke
's arguments in Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790) persuasive. Although Burke was writing about revolution, not socialism, Scruton was persuaded that, as he put it, the utopian promises of socialism are accompanied by an abstract vision of the mind that bears little relation to the way most people think. Burke also convinced him that there is no direction to history, no moral or spiritual progress; that people think collectively toward a common goal only during a crisis such as war, and that trying to organize society this way requires a real or imagined enemy; hence, Scruton wrote, the strident tone of socialist literature. He further argued, following Burke, that society is held together by authority, in the sense of the right to obedience, not by the imagined rights of citizens. Obedience, he wrote, is "the prime virtue of political beings, the disposition that makes it possible to govern them, and without which societies crumble into 'the dust and powder of individuality.'" Real freedom, Scruton argued, does not stand in conflict with obedience, but is its other side. He was also persuaded by Burke's arguments about the social contract, including that most parties to the contract are either dead or not yet born. To forget this, he wrote—to throw away customs and institutions—is to "place the present members of society in a dictatorial dominance over those who went before, and those who came after them."
Scruton argued that beliefs that appear to be examples of prejudice may be useful and important: "our most necessary beliefs may be both unjustified and unjustifiable, from our own perspective, and the attempt to justify them will merely lead to their loss." A prejudice in favour of modesty in women and chivalry in men, for example, may aid the stability of sexual relationships and the raising of children, though these are not offered as reasons in support of the prejudice. It may therefore be easy to show the prejudice as irrational, but there will be a loss nonetheless if it is discarded.
In Arguments for Conservatism (2006), he marked out the areas in which philosophical thinking is required if conservatism is to be intellectually persuasive. He argued that human beings are creatures of limited and local affections. Territorial loyalty is at the root of all forms of government where law and liberty reign supreme; every expansion of jurisdiction beyond the frontiers of the nation state leads to a decline in accountability. He opposed elevating the "nation" above its people, which would threaten rather than facilitate citizenship and peace. He argued that "conservatism and conservation" are two aspects of a single policy, that of husbanding resources, including the social capital embodied in laws, customs, and institutions, and the material capital contained in the environment. He argued further that the law should not be used as a weapon to advance special interests; people impatient for reform—for example in the areas of euthanasia or abortion—are reluctant to accept what may be "glaringly obvious to others—that the law exists precisely to impede their ambitions."
He defined post-modernism as the claim that there are no grounds for truth, objectivity, and meaning, and therefore conflicts between views are nothing more than contests of power, and argued that, while the West is required to judge other cultures in their own terms, Western culture is adversely judged as ethnocentric and racist. He wrote: "The very reasoning which sets out to destroy the ideas of objective truth and absolute value imposes political correctness as absolutely binding, and cultural relativism as objectively true."
, that human beings have a transcendental dimension, a sacred core exhibited in their capacity for self-reflection. He argues that we are in an era of secularization without precedent in the history of the world. He writes that writers and artists such as Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Edward Hopper
, and Schoenberg
"devoted much energy to recuperating the experience of the sacred—but as a private rather than a public form of consciousness." He argues that because they directed their art at the few, it has never appealed to the many. He defines totalitarianism as the absence of any constraint on central authority, with every aspect of life the concern of government. Advocates of totalitarianism feed on resentment, he argues, and having seized power they proceed to abolish institutions, such as the law, property, and religion, that create authorities. He writes: "To the resentful it is these institutions that are the cause of inequality, and therefore the cause of their humiliations and failures." He argues that revolutions are not conducted from below by the people, but from above, in the name of the people, by an aspiring elite.
He suggests that the importance of Newspeak
in totalitarian societies is that the power of language to describe reality is replaced by language whose purpose is to avoid encounters with realities. He agrees with Alain Besançon that the totalitarian society envisaged by George Orwell
in Nineteen Eighty-Four
can be only understood in theological terms, as a society founded on a transcendental negation. He agrees with T.S.Eliot that true originality is possible only within a tradition, and that it is precisely in modern conditions—conditions of fragmentation, heresy, and unbelief—that the conservative project acquires its sense.
writes that Scruton's Sexual Desire (1986) based a conservative sexual ethic on the Hegelian proposition that "the final end of every rational being is the building of the self," which involves recognizing the other as an end in itself. Scruton argues that the major feature of perversion is "sexual release that avoids or abolishes the other," which he sees as narcissistic and solipsistic. He wrote in an essay, "Sexual morality and the liberal consensus" (1989), that homosexuality is a perversion for that reason: because the body of the homosexual's lover belongs to the same category as his own. Mark Dooley writes that Scruton's objective is to show that sexual desire trades in "the currency of the sacred." Martha Nussbaum
argues that Scruton does not apply his principle of otherness equally—for example, to sexual relationships between adults and children.
Scruton also argues that certain people of any generation, especially men, are attracted to their own sex, and especially to children of their own sex; he writes that the feeling of shame this may trigger, and the avoidance of homosexual acts, leads to a sublimated interest in the young shown by priests, teachers, and scoutmasters, which he says is beneficial. In 2007 he challenged the assumption that gays should have the right to adopt children. The Students Association at St Andrews University, where he took up a quarter-time fellowship in early 2011, expressed concern over his appointment because of these views. In The Guardian in 2010 Scruton said of some of his earlier arguments: "I took the view that feeling repelled by something might have a justification ... Like, we're all repelled by incest—well, not all, but most people are. And there's a perfectly good justification, if you look at it in terms of the long-term interest of society. And in that [1989] essay I experimented with the view that maybe something similar can be said about homosexuality. And I don't now agree with that, because I think that—it's such a complicated thing, homosexuality. ... So I wouldn't stand by what I said then.
Fiction
Opera
Television
Scruton was a lecturer and professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is...
, London, from 1971 to 1992. In 1982 he helped found The Salisbury Review
Salisbury Review
The Salisbury Review is a British conservative magazine, published quarterly and founded in 1982. Roger Scruton was its chief editor for eighteen years and published it through his Claridge Press. It was named after Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the...
, a conservative political journal, which he edited for 18 years. Since 1992 he has held part-time positions at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, the Institute for the Psychological Sciences
Institute for the Psychological Sciences
The Institute for the Psychological Sciences is a graduate school affiliated with the Legion of Christ, a Catholic religious congregation.The school offers masters and doctoral degrees in psychology and clinical psychology. Its stated goal is to provide instruction that is consistent with the...
in Arlington, Virginia, the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
in Washington, D.C., and the University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
. He serves in addition as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for European Renewal
Center for European Renewal
The Center for European Renewal is a pan-European conservative group based in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Center for European Renewal was founded in the fall of 2007 by a group of mainly European conservatives, including Dutch law professor Andreas Kinneging, the Czech think-tank director Roman...
.
Early life and education
Scruton and his two sisters were born to Jack Scruton, a teacher, and his wife Beryl Claris, and raised in MarlowMarlow, Buckinghamshire
Marlow is a town and civil parish within Wycombe district in south Buckinghamshire, England...
and High Wycombe
High Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
. Scruton told The Guardian that Jack was from a working-class Manchester family—he hated the upper classes and loved the countryside—and Beryl was fond of romantic fiction and entertaining "blue-rinsed friends." He describes his mother as born and bred in the genteel suburbs of London, cherishing an ideal of gentlemanly conduct and social distinction, which his father "set out with considerable relish to destroy." Although his parents had been raised as Christians, they saw themselves as humanists, so home was a religion-free zone. Family life was not particularly happy, and he had more or less left home by the time he was 16.
He was educated at Royal Grammar School High Wycombe (1954–1961), where he writes that he deliberately failed to fit in, and from which he was expelled shortly after winning a scholarship to Cambridge. When he told his father he had won a place at Cambridge, his father stopped speaking to him. He studied moral sciences (philosophy) at Jesus College
Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...
from 1962, receiving a BA in 1965, incepted as MA
Master of Arts (Oxbridge)
In the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin, Bachelors of Arts of these universities are admitted to the degree of Master of Arts or Master in Arts on application after six or seven years' seniority as members of the university .There is no examination or study required for the degree...
in 1967. He was awarded a PhD in 1972 for a thesis on aesthetics, also from Cambridge.
Teaching, writing, marriage
After graduating, he spent two years overseas, teaching at the Collège Universitaire at Pau in France. He became a research fellow at Peterhouse, CambridgePeterhouse, Cambridge
Peterhouse is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the oldest college of the University, having been founded in 1284 by Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely...
in 1969, and in 1971 joined Birkbeck College, London, where he taught philosophy until 1992, first as lecturer, then as reader and professor of aesthetics. He married Danielle Laffitte in 1973; they divorced in 1979. His first book, Art and Imagination, appeared in 1974. Also in 1974 he became one of four board members of the Conservative Philosophy Group
Conservative Philosophy Group
The Conservative Philosophy Group was formed in the UK in 1974 by Sir Hugh Fraser, a Conservative MP, to provide an intellectual basis for conservatism at a time when the Conservative Party had just lost two general elections and elected a new leader, Margaret Thatcher...
, founded that year by Hugh Fraser
Hugh Fraser (politician)
Major Sir Hugh Charles Patrick Joseph Fraser MBE was a British Conservative politician and first husband of the author Lady Antonia Fraser.-Youth and military career:...
, the Conservative MP, to develop an intellectual basis for conservatism.
He studied law at the Inns of Court (1974–1976), and was called to the Bar
Call to the bar
The Call to the Bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party, and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received a "call to the bar"...
in 1978, though he never practised. His next publication was also in aesthetics, The Aesthetics Of Architecture (1979). In The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), he sought to shift the emphasis of the Right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
away from economics towards moral issues. He told The Guardian in 2010 that the book blighted his academic career; the newspaper said he was vilified by his colleagues at Birkbeck for his political views.
The Politics Of Culture and Other Essays (1981) followed; then a history and dictionary of philosophy in 1982; The Aesthetic Understanding (1983); textbooks on Kant and Spinoza (1983 and 1987); Thinkers of the New Left (1985), a collection of essays criticizing 14 prominent intellectuals; and Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (1986).
Activism in Eastern Europe
From 1979–1989 Scruton was an active supporter of dissidentDissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s in Eastern Europe under Communist Party
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....
rule, forging links—at some risk to himself, according to David Vaughan on Radio Prague—between Czechoslovakia's dissident academics and their counterparts in Western universities. As part of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation
Jan Hus Educational Foundation
The Jan Hus Educational Foundation was founded in May 1980 by a group of British philosophers at the University of Oxford. The Foundation operated an underground education network in the former Czechoslovakia, at the time under Communist Party rule, running seminars on philosophy, smuggling in...
, he and other academics visited Prague and Brno, now in the Czech Republic, in support of an underground education network started by the Czech dissident Julius Tomin
Julius Tomin
Julius Tomin is a Czech philosopher. He became known in the 1970s and 1980s for his involvement with the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, which ran an underground education network in the former Czechoslovakia, offering seminars in philosophy in people's homes.Barbara Day writes that Tomin studied...
, helping to smuggle in books and organize lectures, and eventually arranging for students to study for a Cambridge external degree in theology; the theology faculty was chosen because it was the only one that responded to the request for help. He told Vaughan there were structured courses, samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
translations and printing of books, and people sitting examinations in a cellar with papers smuggled out through the diplomatic bag.
He was detained in 1985 in Brno and was asked to leave the country. Someone who watched him walk across the border with Austria later wrote: "There was this broad empty space between the two border posts, absolutely empty, not a single human being in sight except for one soldier, and across that broad empty space trudged an English philosopher, Roger Scruton, with his little bag into Austria." On 17 June that year he was placed on the Index of Undesirable Persons. He writes that he was also followed during visits to Poland and Hungary. For his work helping the dissidents he was awarded the Czech Republic's Medal of Merit (First Class) in 1998. Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens
Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an award-winning British columnist and author, noted for his traditionalist conservative stance. He has published five books, including The Abolition of Britain, A Brief History of Crime, The Broken Compass and most recently The Rage Against God. Hitchens writes for...
wrote in 2009 of his admiration for Scruton and others who did similar work. Scruton has expressed regret at how certain aspects of Eastern European society have developed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Editing The Salisbury Review
In 1982 he became founding editor of The Salisbury Review—a journal championing traditional conservatism, in opposition to ThatcherismThatcherism
Thatcherism describes the conviction politics, economic and social policy, and political style of the British Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher, who was leader of her party from 1975 to 1990...
—set up by a group of Tories known as the Salisbury Group, with the involvement of the Peterhouse Right
Peterhouse school of history
The Peterhouse school of history was named after the Cambridge college of the same name where the history taught concentrated on 'high politics'...
, a circle of conservatives associated with the Cambridge college, including Maurice Cowling
Maurice Cowling
Maurice John Cowling was a British historian and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.-Life:Cowling was born in Norwood, South London, to a lower middle-class family. His family then moved to Streatham, where Cowling attended an LCC elementary school, and from 1937 the Battersea Grammar School...
, David Watkin
David Watkin (historian)
David John Watkin, MA PhD LittD Hon FRIBA FSA is a British architectural historian. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Professor Emeritus of History of Architecture in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge...
, and the mathematician Adrian Mathias. He wrote in 2002 that editing the Review effectively ended his academic career in the UK. The magazine attempted to provide an intellectual basis for conservatism, and was highly critical of some key issues of the period, including the peace movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, egalitarianism, feminism, foreign aid, multiculturalism, and modernism. "At last it was possible to be a conservative and also to the left of something," he wrote of the Review. It was therefore difficult at first to find intellectuals to write for it, but he wrote that, "[o]ne by one the conservatives came out and joined us, recognising that it was worth sacrificing your chances of becoming a fellow of the British Academy, a vice-chancellor or an emeritus professor for the sheer relief of uttering the truth."
It was Scruton who in 1984 famously published in the Review a controversial article by Ray Honeyford, headmaster of the Drummond Middle School in Bradford, questioning the benefits of multicultural education; Honeyford was forced to resign because of it, and had to live for a time under police protection. In 1985 the Review was accused of scientific racism during the annual congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and thereafter, Scruton wrote in 2002, the magazine's writers were ostracized in the academic world. The philosophy department of the University of Glasgow organized an official boycott of a talk he had been invited to deliver to its philosophy society, and what Scruton called a serious libel in The Observer made his position as a university professor untenable, in his view; he wrote that damages from the newspaper paid for his early retirement. He edited the Review until 2001 and remains on its editorial board. He described in 2002 the effect of the editorship on his life: "[it] cost me many thousand hours of unpaid labour, a hideous character assassination in Private Eye, three lawsuits, two interrogations, one expulsion, the loss of a university career in Britain, unendingly contemptuous reviews, Tory suspicion, and the hatred of decent liberals everywhere. And it was worth it."
He also founded the Claridge Press in 1987, which he sold in early 2004 to Continuum International Publishing Group
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Continuum International Publishing Group is a publisher of books, with its editorial offices in London and New York City. It had been owned by Nova Capital Management since 2005...
, and sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Aesthetics.
Move to the countryside, second marriage
In 1990 he spent a year working for the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, then worked part-time from 1992 to 1995 as professor of philosophy at Boston University, though he continued to live in the UK. In the early 1990s he moved to the countryside and discovered a passion for fox huntingFox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...
with hounds. It was through hunting that he met Sophie Jeffreys, an architectural historian; they married in 1996. They have two children: Sam, born in 1998 and Lucy, born in 2000, and live on their farm in Brinkworth
Brinkworth, Wiltshire
Brinkworth, in northern Wiltshire, is the longest village in Britain, at over 6 miles...
, Wiltshire. They also own an apartment in Albany, an apartment building on Piccadilly
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...
, London. They recently sold their 18th-century house, Montpelier, near Sperryville
Sperryville, Virginia
Sperryville is a census-designated place in Rappahannock County, Virginia, United States. The population as of the 2010 Census was 342.- History :...
, Virginia. He set up several firms, including: (i) Central European Consulting, which was established in 1990 to offer business advice in post-communist Central Europe; (ii) Horsell's Farm Enterprises Ltd, dating from 1999, which had clients such as Japan Tobacco International
Japan Tobacco
, abbreviated JT, is a cigarette manufacturing company. It is part of the Nikkei 225 index. In 2009 the company was listed at number 312 on the Fortune 500 list. The company is headquartered in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo. The international headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.-History:The company...
(see below), and Somerfield Stores, which he advised about establishing a line of local produce; and (iii) opendemocracy.net, a political website.
From 2001 to 2009 he wrote a wine column for the New Statesman, and made contributions to The World of Fine Wine
The World of Fine Wine
The World of Fine Wine, abbreviated WFW, is a British quarterly publication for wine enthusiasts and collectors. Published by Quarto Magazines Ltd, the first issue was released in June 2004. It has been described as "an up-market Decanter, with longer, more in-depth features, more credible tastings...
and Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine (2007), with his essay "The Philosophy of Wine". His I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine (2009) was in part composed of material from his New Statesman column.
In March 2007 he debated Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, and A. C. Grayling in London on the topic "Are We Better Off Without Religion?" In March 2009, at the Royal Geographical Society, seconding the historian David Starkey
David Starkey
David Starkey, CBE, FSA is a British constitutional historian, and a radio and television presenter.He was born the only child of Quaker parents, and attended Kendal Grammar School before entering Cambridge through a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King...
, Scruton proposed the motion: "Britain has become indifferent to beauty" by holding an image of Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
's The Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore...
next to an image of the British supermodel Kate Moss
Kate Moss
Kate Moss is an English model. Moss is known for her waifish figure and popularising the heroin chic look in the 1990s. She is also known for her controversial private life, high profile relationships, party lifestyle, and drug use. Moss changed the look of modelling and started a global debate on...
, to demonstrate how British perceptions of beauty had declined to the "level of our crudest appetites and our basest needs".
Academic posts
He held several part-time academic positions in the 2000s: from 2005 to 2009 he was research professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia, and from 2009 held a visiting scholarship at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., researching the cultural impact of neuroscience. In January 2010 he was awarded an unpaid visiting professorship at Oxford to teach graduate classes on aesthetics, and in 2011 took up a quarter-time professorial fellowship in moral philosophy at St Andrews. He is also an unpaid research professor at Buckingham University. In 2010 he delivered the Scottish Gifford LecturesGifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
at St Andrews on the topic, "The Face of God." A.C. Grayling described him in 2000 as a "wonderful teacher of philosophy. The pedagogic works he wrote for students and the general public are clear, lucid and accurate. It is partly because of Roger's presence that the department [at Birkbeck] is one of the best in the country."
World Health Organization, tobacco
Scruton came to public attention in 2002 when it was reported he had been receiving a fee from Japan Tobacco InternationalJapan Tobacco
, abbreviated JT, is a cigarette manufacturing company. It is part of the Nikkei 225 index. In 2009 the company was listed at number 312 on the Fortune 500 list. The company is headquartered in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo. The international headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.-History:The company...
(JTI), and had written about tobacco issues without declaring an interest. He wrote articles about smoking for The Wall Street Journal in 1998 and 2000, and in 2000 wrote a 65-page pamphlet—"WHO, What, and Why: Trans-national Government, Legitimacy and the World Health Organisation"—for the Institute of Economic Affairs
Institute of Economic Affairs
The Institute of Economic Affairs , founded in 1955, styles itself the UK's pre-eminent free-market think-tank. Its mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social...
, a British think tank. The pamphlet criticized the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
's (WHO) campaign against smoking, arguing that transnational bodies should not seek to influence domestic legislation because they are not answerable to the electorate. He wrote that overall he was against tobacco—his own father died of emphysema
Emphysema
Emphysema is a long-term, progressive disease of the lungs that primarily causes shortness of breath. In people with emphysema, the tissues necessary to support the physical shape and function of the lungs are destroyed. It is included in a group of diseases called chronic obstructive pulmonary...
after smoking for many years—but that it was an innocent pleasure.
In January 2002 The Guardian reported that he had been receiving a monthly fee of £4,500 ($6,400) from Japan Tobacco International. An October 2001 e-mail to a JTI executive showed him requesting an additional £1,000 each month, and discussed his aim of having opinion pieces published in several newspapers—including The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Financial Times—on "major topics of current concern" to the tobacco industry. In the same email seeking pay rise on his existing monthly fee Scruton argued that in a business "largely conducted by shysters and sharks" he represented value for money. Then when asked by The Guardian reporter if he saw himself as one of the "shysters and sharks", Scruton replied: "No, on the contrary, but that's what I think of public affairs generally. What I meant was the kind of fees they demand. What we do is a small cottage industry." He objected to The Guardian's use of a leaked email, which he said had been stolen, and said he had never concealed his connection with JTI, which had started three years earlier; he and his wife edited and produced The Risk of Freedom briefing for JTI, published quarterly from October 1999 to April 2006. He told the newspaper the new proposal was never acted upon. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) criticized him for having failed to declare the relationship when he wrote the pamphlet criticizing WHO, and the Institute for Economic Affairs said it would introduce an author declaration policy; Scruton acknowledged that, with hindsight, he should have declared an interest. The Financial Times ended his contract as a columnist on country life, and The Wall Street Journal suspended his contributions.
Opera
Scruton has written three librettiLibretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
, two of which he set to music. The first, a one-act chamber opera called The Minister, has been performed several times. The second, a two-act opera called Violet, was performed twice at the Guildhall School of Music in London in December 2005; it is based on the life of Violet Gordon-Woodhouse
Violet Gordon-Woodhouse
Violet Gordon-Woodhouse was an acclaimed British harpsichordist and clavichordist, highly influential in bringing both instruments back into fashion.-Family:...
, the British harpsichordist.
Arguments for conservatism
Scruton first embraced conservatism during the student protests of May 1968 in France. Nicholas Wroe wrote in The Guardian that Scruton was in the Latin Quarter in Paris at the time, watching students overturning cars to erect barricades, and tearing up cobblestones to throw at the police. "I suddenly realized I was on the other side. What I saw was an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans. When I asked my friends what they wanted, what were they trying to achieve, all I got back was this ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook. I was disgusted by it, and thought there must be a way back to the defence of western civilization against these things. That's when I became a conservative. I knew I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down."The Meaning of Conservatism (1980)—which he called "a somewhat Hegelian
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
defence of Tory values in the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers"—was the book that he said blighted his academic career. He wrote in Gentle Regrets (2005) that he found several of Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
's arguments in Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
(1790) persuasive. Although Burke was writing about revolution, not socialism, Scruton was persuaded that, as he put it, the utopian promises of socialism are accompanied by an abstract vision of the mind that bears little relation to the way most people think. Burke also convinced him that there is no direction to history, no moral or spiritual progress; that people think collectively toward a common goal only during a crisis such as war, and that trying to organize society this way requires a real or imagined enemy; hence, Scruton wrote, the strident tone of socialist literature. He further argued, following Burke, that society is held together by authority, in the sense of the right to obedience, not by the imagined rights of citizens. Obedience, he wrote, is "the prime virtue of political beings, the disposition that makes it possible to govern them, and without which societies crumble into 'the dust and powder of individuality.'" Real freedom, Scruton argued, does not stand in conflict with obedience, but is its other side. He was also persuaded by Burke's arguments about the social contract, including that most parties to the contract are either dead or not yet born. To forget this, he wrote—to throw away customs and institutions—is to "place the present members of society in a dictatorial dominance over those who went before, and those who came after them."
Scruton argued that beliefs that appear to be examples of prejudice may be useful and important: "our most necessary beliefs may be both unjustified and unjustifiable, from our own perspective, and the attempt to justify them will merely lead to their loss." A prejudice in favour of modesty in women and chivalry in men, for example, may aid the stability of sexual relationships and the raising of children, though these are not offered as reasons in support of the prejudice. It may therefore be easy to show the prejudice as irrational, but there will be a loss nonetheless if it is discarded.
In Arguments for Conservatism (2006), he marked out the areas in which philosophical thinking is required if conservatism is to be intellectually persuasive. He argued that human beings are creatures of limited and local affections. Territorial loyalty is at the root of all forms of government where law and liberty reign supreme; every expansion of jurisdiction beyond the frontiers of the nation state leads to a decline in accountability. He opposed elevating the "nation" above its people, which would threaten rather than facilitate citizenship and peace. He argued that "conservatism and conservation" are two aspects of a single policy, that of husbanding resources, including the social capital embodied in laws, customs, and institutions, and the material capital contained in the environment. He argued further that the law should not be used as a weapon to advance special interests; people impatient for reform—for example in the areas of euthanasia or abortion—are reluctant to accept what may be "glaringly obvious to others—that the law exists precisely to impede their ambitions."
He defined post-modernism as the claim that there are no grounds for truth, objectivity, and meaning, and therefore conflicts between views are nothing more than contests of power, and argued that, while the West is required to judge other cultures in their own terms, Western culture is adversely judged as ethnocentric and racist. He wrote: "The very reasoning which sets out to destroy the ideas of objective truth and absolute value imposes political correctness as absolutely binding, and cultural relativism as objectively true."
Views on religion, totalitarianism
Scruton contends, following Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, that human beings have a transcendental dimension, a sacred core exhibited in their capacity for self-reflection. He argues that we are in an era of secularization without precedent in the history of the world. He writes that writers and artists such as Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
, and Schoenberg
Schoenberg
Schoenberg is the surname of several persons:* Arnold Schoenberg , Austrian-American composer* Claude-Michel Schoenberg , French record producer, actor, singer, popular songwriter, and musical theatre composer...
"devoted much energy to recuperating the experience of the sacred—but as a private rather than a public form of consciousness." He argues that because they directed their art at the few, it has never appealed to the many. He defines totalitarianism as the absence of any constraint on central authority, with every aspect of life the concern of government. Advocates of totalitarianism feed on resentment, he argues, and having seized power they proceed to abolish institutions, such as the law, property, and religion, that create authorities. He writes: "To the resentful it is these institutions that are the cause of inequality, and therefore the cause of their humiliations and failures." He argues that revolutions are not conducted from below by the people, but from above, in the name of the people, by an aspiring elite.
He suggests that the importance of Newspeak
Newspeak
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state. Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained...
in totalitarian societies is that the power of language to describe reality is replaced by language whose purpose is to avoid encounters with realities. He agrees with Alain Besançon that the totalitarian society envisaged by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
in Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
can be only understood in theological terms, as a society founded on a transcendental negation. He agrees with T.S.Eliot that true originality is possible only within a tradition, and that it is precisely in modern conditions—conditions of fragmentation, heresy, and unbelief—that the conservative project acquires its sense.
Views on sexual desire
Jonathan DollimoreJonathan Dollimore
Jonathan Dollimore is a British sociologist and social theorist in the fields of Renaissance literature , gender studies, queer theory , art, censorship, history of ideas, death studies, decadence, and cultural theory...
writes that Scruton's Sexual Desire (1986) based a conservative sexual ethic on the Hegelian proposition that "the final end of every rational being is the building of the self," which involves recognizing the other as an end in itself. Scruton argues that the major feature of perversion is "sexual release that avoids or abolishes the other," which he sees as narcissistic and solipsistic. He wrote in an essay, "Sexual morality and the liberal consensus" (1989), that homosexuality is a perversion for that reason: because the body of the homosexual's lover belongs to the same category as his own. Mark Dooley writes that Scruton's objective is to show that sexual desire trades in "the currency of the sacred." Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum , is an American philosopher with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics....
argues that Scruton does not apply his principle of otherness equally—for example, to sexual relationships between adults and children.
Scruton also argues that certain people of any generation, especially men, are attracted to their own sex, and especially to children of their own sex; he writes that the feeling of shame this may trigger, and the avoidance of homosexual acts, leads to a sublimated interest in the young shown by priests, teachers, and scoutmasters, which he says is beneficial. In 2007 he challenged the assumption that gays should have the right to adopt children. The Students Association at St Andrews University, where he took up a quarter-time fellowship in early 2011, expressed concern over his appointment because of these views. In The Guardian in 2010 Scruton said of some of his earlier arguments: "I took the view that feeling repelled by something might have a justification ... Like, we're all repelled by incest—well, not all, but most people are. And there's a perfectly good justification, if you look at it in terms of the long-term interest of society. And in that [1989] essay I experimented with the view that maybe something similar can be said about homosexuality. And I don't now agree with that, because I think that—it's such a complicated thing, homosexuality. ... So I wouldn't stand by what I said then.
Publications
Nonfiction- Art And Imagination (1974)
- The Aesthetics Of Architecture (1979)
- The Meaning Of Conservatism (1980)
- The Politics Of Culture and Other Essays (1981)
- A Short History of Modern Philosophy (1982)
- A Dictionary Of Political Thought (1982)
- The Aesthetic Understanding (1983)
- Kant (1983)
- Untimely Tracts (1985)
- Thinkers Of The New Left (1986)
- Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (1986)
- Spinoza (1987)
- A Land Held Hostage: Lebanon and the West (1987)
- The Philosopher On Dover Beach and Other Essays (1989)
- Conservative Texts (1992)
- 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)
- An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture (1998)
- On Hunting (1998)
- Spinoza (1998)
- England: An Elegy (2001)
- The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the terrorist threat (2002)
- Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (2004)
- News From Somewhere: On Settling (2004)
- The Need for Nations (2004)
- Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (2005)
- Animal Rights and Wrongs (2006)
- A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism (2006)
- Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Need to Defend the Nation State (2006)
- Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (2007)
- Beauty (2009)
- I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine (2009)
- Understanding Music (2009)
- The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope (2010)
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)
Further reading
- Roger Scruton's website, accessed 5 September 2010.
- The Salisbury Review, accessed 27 December 2010.
- Roger Scruton wine articles, New Statesman, October 2005 – August 2009, accessed 27 December 2010.
- Billings, Joshua. "A Joy Forever?", review of Scruton's Beauty, Oxonian Review, 11 May 2009.
- Kimball, Roger. "An Assault on Mush", The New York Times, 17 February 1991.
- Rose, Steven, and Rose, Hilary. "Less than human nature: biology and the new right", Race and Class, XXVII, 3, 1986.
- Scruton, Roger. "The Case against Feminism," The Observer, 22 May 1983.
- Morrison, Blake. "In Defence of Feminism," The Observer, 29 May 1983.
- Scruton, Roger. "Her Virtue Was Thatcher's Downfall", Los Angeles Times, 25 November 1990.