In Memoriam: Sir Roger Scruton

A few days ago (January 12^th) the notable British philosopher and conservative intellectual, Sir Roger Scruton passed away from cancer at the age of seventy-five.  It was certainly a sad moment, especially for those of us who consider themselves conservative, who have embraced and engaged in the intellectual progress of conservatism, and revere conservatives living and through the ages.  Sir Roger Scruton was a giant of modern day conservatism.  He was the William F. Buckley of Britain.  That is to say using the Buckley adage, “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” Sir Roger Scruton yelled stop against the mindless progressivism that is probably even more dominant in Britain than in the United States. 

I’m not going to list his intellectual accomplishments.  I can’t.  I’m not schooled enough in his books, but you can get a cursory overview in his Wikipedia entry.  While I compared Scruton to William F. Buckley above, that comparison was in terms of stature and public persona, not in philosophic unanimity.  Buckley over the years became more and more a Libertarian.  Roger Scruton was not a Libertarian and I believe was suspicious of Libertarians.  While conservatives may have some economic agreement with Libertarians, there is much we disagree.  Closer to Roger Scruton in philosophic outlook I believe was Russell Kirk, the person at the root of 20^th century American conservatism. 

That said, let me highlight a number of tributes put out for Sir Roger on his passing.  First from an obituary in the British Daily Mail, subtitled “'Greatest conservative of our time.”  

Sir Roger Scruton, a revered conservative philosopher who cleared his name after being sacked as a government advisor over false anti-Semitism claims, has died after a six-month battle with cancer.

The Cambridge graduate - author of some 50 books on morals, politics, architecture and aesthetics - died on Sunday, with his family saying they are 'hugely proud of him and of all his achievements'.

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan tweeted: 'Very sad news. Professor Sir Roger Scruton, the greatest conservative of our age, has died. The country has lost a towering intellect. I have lost a wonderful friend.'

The conservative magazine the Spectator USA highlighted possibly his greatest achievement, setting up an underground university in communist held Europe despite the intellectual sympathies to the communists that came out of British universities: 

During the Cold War he faced an academic and cultural establishment that was either neutral or actively anti-Western on the big question of the day. Roger not only thought right, but acted right. Not many philosophers become men of action. But with the ‘underground university’ that he and others set up, he did just that. During the Seventies and Eighties at considerable risk to himself he would go behind the Iron Curtain and teach philosophy to groups of knowledge-starved students. If Roger and his colleagues had been largely leftist thinkers infiltrating far-right regimes to teach Plato and Aristotle there have been multiple Hollywood movies about them by now. But none of that mattered. Public notice didn’t matter. All that mattered was to do the right thing and to keep the flame of philosophical truth burning in societies where officialdom was busily trying to snuff it out.

Paul Krause at the online conservative magazine, The Imaginative Conservative, probably summarized the core of Scruton’s thought: 

Sir Roger had risen to some fame with the publication of The Meaning of Conservatism in 1980, a philosophical exposition of the political tradition free from the negativity and pejoratives of those who have often controlled the meaning and understanding of conservatism. In this work, Sir Roger decisively showed how conservatism is, properly, independent of the classical liberal economic dogmas that largely usurped the older, communitarian, traditional, and aesthetic spirit of conservatism, which Sir Roger saw deriving from the thought of Aristotle through that of Burke and Eliot. In his defense and exposition of conservatism, Sir Roger explained that conservatism was an organic outgrowth of unique inheritances including Common Law, property rights, and institutional justice, producing the liberty that conservatives enjoy and in which they are allied in preserving. In American parlance, Sir Roger’s conservatism is what we now call paleo-conservatism.

Krause, who had studied under him, characterized him summarily: 

Contrary to the leftwing media’s portrait of him, the Roger Scruton that we all came to know was a gentle and humorous man, a man who wouldn’t harm a fly and who was open to all people. Like moths attracted to the flame, students from all continents came together to discuss everything from music and aesthetics to politics and metaphysics with Sir Roger, who seemed to be the incarnate flame of wisdom. His encyclopedic knowledge allowed him to help all in our respective pilgrimages. He was our Virgil through hell and purgatory, and he left us at the top of the mountain, pointing to the light that lay beyond. Befitting a man of such humility, he once revealed to us that instead of being remembered as the world-class philosopher he was, he wished to be remembered as the organist for the small Anglican parish of which he was a member.

The Imaginative Conservative also published Sir Roger’s final speech titled, “A Thing Called Civilization.” A couple of quotes: 

Now, I myself have obviously got into an awful lot of trouble through defending Western civilization. It seems a strange feature of our times that the more you’re disposed to defend it, the more you are regarded as some kind of narrow-minded bigot. But the people who make that accusation are the real ones with the narrow mind. They’re people who do not see exactly how large and comprehensive our civilization has been and still is.

And

And I feel that now is the time, through institutions like ISI especially, to bring courage and conviction again to young people who know that there’s something wrong with this activist witch hunting of the old curriculum. The time has come, it seems to me, for people like me and the older generation of teachers to give courage to young people, to say: Look, you have a civilization and inheritance which helps you to understand these things. Giving way to activism of this kind, activism which excludes whole realms of human knowledge, is not doing yourself a favor. It’s not bringing to you the things that you actually need in the world into which you’re going to progress.

And

Let’s leave aside the idea of Western civilization. After all, it depends which way you’re going around the globe whether it’s West or East. Look instead at the idea of civilization. What is it? What is a civilization? It is surely a form of connection between people, not just a way in which people understand their languages, their customs, their forms of behavior, but also the way in which they connect to each other, eye to eye, face to face, in the day-to-day life which they share.

This is something which has ordinary dimensions in the workplace and in the community, in our day to day. But also it has a high culture built upon it, works of art, literature, music, architecture, and so on. These are our ways of changing the world so as to be more at home in it.

I think that is the distinctive feature of Western civilization, that it is a comprehensive civilization constantly giving us new ways of being at home, ways of being in relation to each other, which bring peace and interest as the primary bonds between our neighbors.

As a philosopher, Sir Roger was known for his philosophy of aestheticism, that is, what makes beauty. His contribution I think was answering the question as to why beauty is even needed.  Here is a BBC documentary, titled “Why Beauty Matters,” that he wrote and produced explaining why beauty in the modern world matters even more so than in the past.  It’s almost an hour long, but it will be worth your while to watch it in its entirety.

Finally I wish to include in this In Memoriam a quote from Sir Roger that I think captures the core of what his conservatism was all about. 

"Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring, that of their opponents exciting but false."

-Sir Roger Scruton

That my friends is the essence of conservatism, that "collective assets," by which he means cultural touchstones, are derived from a historical past and cannot be replicated without generations of experience.  They should be nearly sacrosanct in value and handled with loving care.

May the Lord grant Sir Roger Scruton eternal rest in peace with God’s beautiful light shining on him in eternity.