Roger Scruton

Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is a British philosopher. He is also a broadcaster, commentator, activist on countryside issues, a journalist, and composer. In his many published writings, he has attempted to explain and defend Western culture and the institutions through which it is passed on. In his primary field, aesthetics, he has criticised architectural modernism and tried to make sense of the importance of music. In political philosophy, he has defended a unique and deeply personal version of conservatism.

Biography

Scruton was educated at Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe (1954-1961) and Jesus College, Cambridge (1962-1969). He received his B.A. in Moral Sciences in 1965, his M.A. in 1967, and his Ph.D. in philosophy, with thesis on aesthetics, in 1972. 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, Reader and Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London. From 1992 to 1995 he was Professor of Philosophy and University Professor at Boston University. He is now (2006) Visiting Professor at the Institute of Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia.

From 1982 to 2001 he was founding editor of The Salisbury Review and also founded the Claridge Press in the same year, a firm which was later sold to Continuum International Publishing Group in early 2004. He remains on The Salisbury Review's editorial board, as well as those of the British Journal of Aesthetics, Arka (Krakow) and openDemocracy.net.

In the early 1990's he moved from the city to the countryside and discovered a passion for fox-hunting with hounds. 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 a sophisticated exploration of aesthetics, written in language that would have been very difficult for non-academics to understand. Since then, he has written on practically every topic in philosophy, usually in much more accessible prose. He has held Kant in particularly high regard. Some have objected to what they see as a "pick-and-choose" attitude by Scruton towards Kant's ideas; he criticises Kantian ethics in The Meaning of Conservatism as being too individualistic, but, in other works, he employs Kant's views on sexuality and animal rights to support his own arguments.

Scruton has written two comprehensive volumes on the history of modern philosophy. A Short History Of Modern Philosophy approaches the subject from a historical point of view, starting with Descartes and tracing many of the prominant philosophical questions into the era of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers in the logical positivist school. The second, Modern Philosophy reviews one topic per chapter in over thirty chapters, exploring the topic of philosophy in its breadth. There's a notable exclusion of many major continental thinkers (such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and those of the Frankfurt School) and their lines of research in both works, but he has stated, in the former work, some doubt as to the results and placement of such thinkers in the history of philosophy. His viewpoints on this matter have been expounded upon in his now out-of-print book Thinkers of the New Left.

In addition to his work on the theoretical side of the arts, Scruton has also 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 given two performances in London in 2005.

Contributions to politics and culture

Scruton's Burkean political views, expounded in the conservative quarterly Salisbury Review and elsewhere, earned him a reputation as a controversial figure. He has since attracted some criticism from animal rights groups with his support for fox hunting with hounds, and his book Animal Rights and Wrongs. The Meaning of Conservatism was, to some extent, a response to the growth of liberalism in the Conservative Party. The book focused on economics much less than most Tories of the day and presented arguments against sex education and the dilution of censorship laws.

In the Thinkers of the New Left, Scruton compiled fourteen essays he authored from The Salisbury Review, each one critically examining a New Left philosopher. This book provoked outrage and the publisher, Longman, subsequently stopped printing the book. Claridge Press, however, decided to print it instead.

Volunteer work

From 1979 Scruton was an active supporter of dissidents in Czechoslovakia when the country was under the rule of the Communist Party. He participated in "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 which continues to work in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and which he served as trustee. Since 1990 he has been a board member of the Civic Institute [http://www.obcinst.cz/ 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 and the Hezbollah.

Public relations 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 Japan Tobacco International was asked for an increase of £1,000 over its existing fee of £4,500 per month in return for the firm's assistance in getting opinion pieces published "in one or other of the WSJ 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. As a result of the disclosure, the Financial Times dropped Scruton's weekly column, "This Land."

In his defence, Scruton pointed out that his previous relationship with JTI was never concealed and that, in any case, the new proposal was never acted on.

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)

Politics and culture

The Meaning Of Conservatism (1980)
The Politics Of Culture and Other Essays (1981)
A Dictionary Of Political Thought (1982)
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: Globalization and the terrorist threat (2002)
The Need for Nations (2004)

Autobiographical and Topographical

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)

External links

The Home Page of Roger Scruton
Salisbury Review Quarterly
The Guardian article on Scruton & Japan Tobacco International
Roger Scruton's letter of defence, as published by The Guardian
The Risk of Freedom Briefing
Website for Scruton's opera,'Violet'
review of 'Violet'
Interviews with Scruton can be found here (2005) and here (1998).

Roger Scruton | Roger Scruton | Roger Scruton | ロジャー・スクルートン