Roger Scruton's Blog, page 8

Roger Scruton was no atheist – argues his literary executor, Dr Mark Dooley - The Critic, Jan 21

When the late Roger Scruton sent me a proof of what would be his last book, Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption, I considered it in the same vein as I had all his writings. It was, I believed, yet another brilliant attempt to show a disbelieving world how to find redemption from its fallenness. It is true that he opens the book by observing that Parsifal is Wagner’s answer to “a question that concerns us all: the question of how to live in right relation to others, even if there is no God...

Richard Chartres - Thoughts from a Life: The Church of England

For much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a minority of English people became obstinately metaphysical. Some quit these shores, not so much for religious liberty in the abstract, but in the hope of building a more rigorously godly Commonwealth in New England.

The 17th century English Civil War, in which a greater proportion of the male population perished than in the First World War, was fuelled by religious passions. 

Roger Scruton in his 2012 book Our Church identifies this as the...

Hamza Yusuf - Thoughts from a Life: Scruton’s Wisdom

The notion of wisdom, and what constitutes it, seems increasingly less understood, and therefore less appreciated, in our age of imprudence. Wise men—and Sir Roger Scruton was one—have become anachronisms of late, relics of a bygone era. St. Thomas Aquinas described a wise man, using Aristotle’s six attributes, as “a man who knows all things, even difficult things, with certitude, and knowledge of the cause, who seeks science for its own sake, and orders and persuades others.” 

Read the full ar...

Eternal Lessons from Wagner’s Last Opera, National Review - Dec 20

Eternal Lessons from Wagner’s Last Opera By Barnaby Crowcroft

Roger Scruton finds in this 19th-century work an antidote to many of our modern society’s ills.

The publication of Roger Scruton’s Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption is itself a thing of some historical significance. This is the last book by one of our most eminent recent philosophers, who died of cancer in January this year, about the last opera by the only composer who can also be considered a philosopher in his own right....

Scrutopia Alumni Meeting 2021

Scrutopia friends, join us for the Alumni meeting from Friday 4th until Wednesday 9th June 2021.

Watch this space for full details.

 

Tom McLeish FRS - Thoughts from a Life: Science and Religion

One of the most refreshing contributions that Roger Scruton made to an otherwise tired, and largely derailed, discussion of ‘science and religion’ in the last two generations is to avoid that specific heading almost entirely. His tacit refusal to construe a bipolar debate along the current conflictual axes defined by neo-atheism and fundamentalism was, already, a welcome signifier that the field of play is larger, weightier and more complex.

Read the full article HERE on the Roger Scruton Legac...

Thoughts from a Life: Science and Religion - Tom McLeish FRS

One of the most refreshing contributions that Roger Scruton made to an otherwise tired, and largely derailed, discussion of ‘science and religion’ in the last two generations is to avoid that specific heading almost entirely. His tacit refusal to construe a bipolar debate along the current conflictual axes defined by neo-atheism and fundamentalism was, already, a welcome signifier that the field of play is larger, weightier and more complex.

Read the full article HERE.

Charles Moore - Thoughts from a Life: On Hunting

Roger Scruton loved hunting (not in the American sense, usually meaning shooting, but in the English sense of hounds chasing a live quarry – in his case, the fox). He wrote that his life had divided into three parts – the first ‘wretched’, the second ‘ill-at-ease’, but ‘in the third, hunting’. 

Read the full article HERE on the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation website. 

Thoughts from a Life: On Hunting - Charles Moore

Roger Scruton loved hunting (not in the American sense, usually meaning shooting, but in the English sense of hounds chasing a live quarry – in his case, the fox). He wrote that his life had divided into three parts – the first ‘wretched’, the second ‘ill-at-ease’, but ‘in the third, hunting’. 

Read the full article HERE

2021 Programme

The Scrutopia summer school offers a ten-day immersion experience in the philosophy and outlook of Sir Roger Scruton, the British writer and philosopher who has inspired many searching people to believe in Western civilisation and its legacy. The course of study, which will take place in and around Sir Roger's home near historic Malmesbury in the Cotswolds, during the summer of 2021. The dates have now been confirmed as Wednesday 28th July through until saturday 6th August. 

We are thrilled to ...