How to be a conservative, by Roger Scruton
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How to be a conservative, by Roger Scruton
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What does it mean to be a conservative in an age so skeptical of conservatism? How can we live in the presence of our 'canonized forefathers' at a time when their cultural, religious and political bequest is so routinely rejected? With soft left-liberalism as the dominant force in Western politics, what can conservatives now contribute to public debate that will not be dismissed as pure nostalgia?
In this highly personal and witty book, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explains how to live as a conservative in spite of the pressures to exist otherwise. Drawing on his own experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life, Scruton argues that while humanity might survive in the absence of the conservative outlook, it certainly won't flourish. How to be a Conservative is not only a blueprint for modern conservatism. It is a heartfelt appeal on behalf of old fashioned decencies and values, which are the bedrock of our weakened, but still enduring, civilization.
How to be a conservative, by Roger Scruton- Amazon Sales Rank: #379090 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-06
- Released on: 2015-10-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.53" h x .62" w x 5.29" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 208 pages
Review
“Elegantly written and thought-provoking . . . I loved this book, especially the way it seems to be aimed as much at the heart as the mind. On both it has a cleansing effect, the equivalent of eating a tart lemon sorbet.” ―Country Life
“Roger Scruton is that rarest of things: a first-rate philosopher who actually has a philosophy . . . one of the few intellectually authoritative voices in modern British conservatism.” ―Spectator
“Roger Scruton is one of our great men of speculation.” ―Standpoint
“A persuasive and poignant little book.” ―The Oldie
About the Author Professor Roger Scruton is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, United Kingdom. He has been Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, and University Professor at Boston University. He is currently visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington DC. He has published a large number of books, including some works of fiction, and has written and composed two operas. He writes regularly for The Times, the Telegraph, the Spectator and was for many years wine critic for the New Statesman.
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Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful. LOTS OF GOOD THINKING By John P Boutin A lot of good thought in the book. Not a wildly right-wing manifesto, but a good "loyal opposition" book explaining why despite the good points of both liberals and conservatives, the right end view turns out to be correct. Also explains the difference between modern conservatism and traditional conservatism.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful. Superb Short Primer on What it Means to Be a Conservative By Ted Smith This a superb short book on the fundamental principles of conservatism, written to contrast how conservatism relates to other modern "isms": nationalism, socialism, capitalism, liberalism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and internationalism.Scruton is the polar opposite of our friend below who gave this book a one star rating. Where the reviewer is bigoted and judgmental, Scruton is fair, thoughtful, and lucid.Read the book with an open mind: you'll agree with me.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Not Without Shortcomings but Valuable Nonetheless By Joseph Annunzio Let me begin by stating that I find myself to be in deep agreement with much of what Professor Scruton presents in this book in terms of conservative principles. I will take this opportunity not to repeat the many areas in which I agree with Professor Scruton, but rather, I will focus on the few areas where I think Professor Scruton’s account falls short. Professor Scruton puts great store in three fundamental ideas, viz., the Enlightenment, the nation state, and religion. Each have deep problems that need to be avoided if one is to construct a rational and coherent conservative philosophy.The Enlightenment:To construct a rational and coherent conservative philosophy, one must get past the Enlightenment. Conservatives seems to be stuck in the Enlightenment. If one is going get stuck anywhere in intellectual history, the Enlightenment is a good place to be. However, to construct a rational and coherent conservative philosophy, one must take account of intellectual and philosophical development since the Enlightenment. The fact that conservative philosophers such as Professor Scruton, whom I greatly admire, still look back to the Enlightenment as the basis for a philosophical foundation may explain why conservative, or classic liberal, philosophy continues to fail to gain traction in the modern world and in fact continues to fall out of favor.The seemingly inability to move past the Enlightenment assumptions opens the conservative philosophy to charges of anachronism and this leads to the lack of serious treatment by the intellectual community and thus to a lower esteem in general opinion. In this state, the arguments of conservatism will not reach, convince or animate ordinary people and thus continue to struggle in the general culture. Another limitation of Enlightenment assumptions not addressed by Professor Scruton is that they overstate the case for human rationality. There seems to be a kind of naive confidence in the Enlightenment assumption of reason. I am reminded of Goethe when said that with the use of reason we have become more brutish than any brute. The manifestation of irrational, destructive, capricious, rapacious and genocidal human actions since the Enlightenment, not explained by the Enlightenment assumptions about human nature and reason, are just too notorious to repeat here or require further comment.For better or worse, the fact is that the world, at least the west, has moved on from the Enlightenment. A conservative philosophy must take head-on the development of intellectual movements such as pragmatism, existentialism, relativism etc. and not dismiss them out of hand. A conservative philosophy must meet philosophers such as Nietzsche face-to-face and not dismiss them in a single sentence as does Professor Scruton on p. 83. I believe that Professor Scruton fell into a logical error in his too quick dismissal of Nietzsche’s aphorism that “There is no truths, only interpretations”. Professor Scruton dismissed this insight with the obvious objection that “Either what Nietzsche said is true – in which case it is not true, since there are no truths – or it is false.” I will not go into a deep analysis of the logic here and only say that the apparent contradiction in Nietzsche is only apparent and arises from the limits of subject-predict propositional logic. The logical error forced by the limitations of propositional logic is in making Nietzsche’s statement self-referential or reflexive as explained by Bertrand Russell in his theory of types and class memebrship. A conservative must be able to embrace Nietzsche’s claim and show why the actual truth in his claim is actually a compelling reason for a conservative philosophy. I believe that this can be done but I will not do so here as I will touch upon it below.The Nation State:Professor Scruton expresses deep admiration for the principles of free market exchange as well as and the nation state. Professor Scruton states that national sovereignty is a precondition of free trade on p. 111. I believe that there is deep contradiction here that is not addressed. Professor Scruton does a good job of correctly identifying the flaws in the current thinking on national sovereignty and free trade on pp. 111 - 112. However, there is still remains a fundamental philosophical conflict between the ideas of free trade and national sovereignty. The simultaneous existence of the nation state with its values of sovereignty, loyalty, and social cohesion etc. conflict with the comparative advantage principle of free trade in an international market place. In accordance with the principles of free market exchange, goods and service should be produced in the nation with the comparative advantage to produce those goods with the greatest efficiency. This will result in the most efficient employment of resources, more material wealth and higher overall standards of living for all market participants. This is the argument for free trade. However, the organizing principles of the nation state look to reinforce community affirming activities as well as the ideas that reinforce national identity and loyalty. What could be more community affirming to an American than products marked, with great pride, “Made in America”? How often do hear the refrain, “Buy American”? Based on the principles of the nation state, we criticize free trade as a means for dumping low cost goods into the market, or make other charges of unfair and predatory competition. This makes perfect sense from that stand point of the nation state but not from the stand point free market economics, free trade and comparative advantage. How can we have both, treaties that do not weaken national sovereignty but also allow free trade to result in comparative advantage which could result in the loss of whole industries from some nation states, the existence of which may have social and cultural impacts beyond the economic effect and that perhaps offset the economic gains? Again, my only point is that a rational and coherent conservative philosophy, of which I can see the value of as presented by Professor Scruton, must recognize this contradiction, address it and resolve it.Professor Scruton spends ample time presenting the benefits of a Kantian based regime for international relations when perhaps those nations more aptly exist within a Hobbesian state of nature given the fact that the presuppositions of the Kantian paradigm have not been met. This is the grim reality with which we must come to grips. While Professor Scruton acknowledges the consequences of destructive nationalism, p. 117, he still sees more benefits than drawbacks in nationalism but this is only the case when the national governments are constituted based on educated popular ascent and representation. The nation state in hands of fanatics is very dangerous and in some cases bares more resemblance to a concentration camp such as North Korea or has been said of the state of Prussia, that is was an army with a nation.Further, on p. 165 Professor Scruton states “Hence we are committed to the nation state…” Are we really? I am not convinced that this conclusion follows. Professor Scruton goes on to correctly list the problems with unaccountable transnational organizations and the dangers of these organizations displacing the nation state which Professor Scruton presents as the only possible form of organization, which must be territorial, for preserving secular law, civil order and liberty.The notion of the universal empire (Christendom) gave way to the territorial sovereign nation state which is a peculiar invention of the modern age with nation – this is a cultural identity and state – this is a political identity conflated in to a single unit knows as the nation state. The combination of these gives rise to the potential combination of feelings such as pride, honor, shame, humiliation, victory, defeat liked to power and authority. The nation state idea can and has been used to convince people to fight, die and kill for certain ideas, identities, beliefs etc., true or false. This is no different than the fighting encouraged by religious identity.The nation state is the new model for loyalty and devotion that replaces religion. National identity is the modern invention that has replaced religious identity. Nation state loyalty has become the new model of identity for rallying people to war, death and mass slaughter in the West. The religious devotion model for rallying people to war, death and mass slaughter was the previous model used prior to the invention of the nation state. How much better off are we with the nation state?We have succeeded in separating church from state, now we need to separate nation, or culture, from the state (force, law and authority). Is the choice limited to nation state or transnational organization? Is this not a false choice? Why does the only move away from the nation state have to be toward transnational organizations? This is how Professor Scruton presents the choice. Why is not a move toward local organization considered? It seems to me that to devolve the nation state into local units of community governance stands a better chance of preserving liberty, law and civil order. Professor Scruton points out that a nation state can easily succumb to one-party totalitarian rule with its own politically correct orthodoxy and come to look no different from an Islamic theocracy. Therefore, I would like to see professor Scruton address the potential avenue of local autonomy and development as a way of mitigating the risk inherent in the nation state model. The more local is political control, the more local is political accountability with great potential benefit to the citizens of various locally autonomous political communities. With more local autonomy, there is less potential for the virus or orthodoxy to metastasize through the political body. Professor Scruton calls for education to be liberated from the state and given back to society, p. 172. This is precisely the separation of nation from state to which I am referring. I am not sure that such a separation in education, out of context from the rest of the national state, is possible with so much invested the nation state model.Religion:We must get beyond religion as the source for moral certainty and in fact, get beyond the need for certainty. Conservative philosophy is at its most valuable in an uncertain world set adrift from any moral anchors. If we have religion and with it certainty, we have no need of a conservative philosophy. Conservative philosophy is needed to guide us in an uncertain world by showing us the benefits of citizenship, practical reason, cultural authority and continuity with the past. Without religion and certainty, conservative philosophy can show us the benefits of our cultural inheritance and the importance of preserving this given the uncertainty of the world. With no universal or transcendent set of values or beliefs to guide our ethics, politics, morality, social relations etc., we only have the example of our cultural inheritance, with its successes and failures upon which to draw for guidance. We can only understand our current world against the backdrop of a long cultural inheritance. This is how we can come to understand that we must have an open mind but a cautious hand when it comes to change. We must be suspicious of any sweeping and far reaching change because we know that there is no transcendent faith, truth or certainty upon which to base confidence in a sweeping or fundamental change. Such change is based on certainty which is a form of faith for justification. Ideology is born when the religious zeal replaces political thinking. It is the modern liberal thinking of the left that contains a kind of mysticism that bears more resemblance to religious faith than to practical reason. It is the left that rejects religion and despises religious traditions yet depends on faith in the cause and religious passion to advance its agenda. Conservative philosophy accepts religion as a cultural value and honors its traditions but has no need of faith or religious zeal and it in fact these are antithetical to conservative philosophy. The fact the modern liberal thinking is so antithetical to established religion is because it is a form of religion itself and feels threatened by rival transcendent belief systems. The left is so vehement in the defense of its faith because it is that which is most absurd that is in need of the most aggressive and tenacious defense as pointed by Professor Scruton himself, p. 169. Professor Scruton goes on to correctly point out the intolerance of the left when its true belief is questioned is much like religious orthodoxy, whether of the 17th century Europe or of 21st century Islam; it is the same idea of intolerance for anyone not in agreement with the true belief.Conservatism can honor religion and its traditions because it is not threatened by them because conservatism is not a religion and has no need of the metaphyseal claims made by religion, faith or transcendent belief; just practical, critical and pragmatic reason suffice for conservatism. The basis of conservatism is not certainty of transcendent values or religion; nor is it the radical individualism of the Libertarians. Such a radical shift to extreme individualism is just as much an article of faith as the modern liberal thinking of the left in extreme collectivism. Conservatism is at best, pragmatic and accepts the world for what it is. Conservatives deal with the world as it is presented without trying to remake it into a wished for or, ought to be, fantasy land. Conservative philosophy depends most of the exercise of critical and practical reason.Conservatism cannot be expected to be taken seriously if it retains a true religious foundation. We live in a post Christian society and as Christianity, and religion in general, fade from the western consciousness, conservatism will fade with it if it is so tied to it. After generations of deference, it is time for conservatives to shed the religious justification. Religion is the anchor that will sink conservatism if it is used as the anchor for conservative values.
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