Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton, FBA, FRSLis an English philosopher who specialises in aesthetics. He has written over thirty books, including Art and Imagination, The Meaning of Conservatism, Sexual Desire, The Philosopher on Dover Beach, The Aesthetics of Music, Beauty, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, Our Church, and How to Be a Conservative. Scruton has also written several novels and a number of general textbooks on philosophy and culture, and he has composed...
beauty voice people
Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.
music song self
Music exists when rhythmic, melodic or harmonic order is deliberately created, and consciously listened to, and it is only language-using, self-conscious creatures ... who are capable of organizing sounds in this way, either when uttering them or when perceiving them. We can hear music in the song of the nightingale, but it is music that no nightingale has heard.
anarchy abstract intellect
The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
atheist doe propose
Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.
hands knowing purpose
This "knowing what to do"... is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand... The one who "knows what to do" is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.
sex people desire
In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.
consolation imaginary imaginary-things
The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
sacrifice culture demand
The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.
useless
Nothing is more useful than the useless.
beauty clouds fleeting
Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion; But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.
religious art redemption
In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.
subtle agree position
Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
bullying institutions protect
Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.
despair shields causes
Being unpopular is never easy; but being unpopular in a good cause is a shield against despair.