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Roger Scruton
Historical figureUnited Kingdom1944-2020

Roger Scruton

Philosopher and writer · Professor of Aesthetics, Birkbeck College

English thinker who wrote about beauty, nation and nature, and became one of the most recognized conservative voices in Britain.

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Profile on 12 axesAll 12 documented
ECONOMYSTATESOCIETYWORLDOwnershipMarketsWelfareAuthoritySecurityStructureMoralityReligionTechnologyCultureTradeForeign
Where they stood

Roger Scruton, axis by axis

  1. 01Ownership+40
    PublicPrivate
  2. 02Markets+25
    PlannedFree

    Saw markets as systems that correct themselves, but described his early writing as a defense of Tory values against free-market thinkers. Mild lean to free markets.

  3. 03Welfare+40
    SharedSelf-reliant
  4. 04Authority-20
    DemocraticStrong leader
  5. 05Security+35
    LibertyOrder
  6. 06Structure-30
    LocalCentral

    Put local loyalties and the nation state ahead of central planning and of European integration. Leans local compared with supranational power.

  7. 07Morality+70
    ProgressiveTraditional
  8. 08Religion+45
    SecularReligious
  9. 09Technology+20
    EmbraceCaution

    He had no quarrel with technology itself. He did dislike much modern building design, defend traditional ways of life and reject the precautionary principle in green policy. Mild caution.

  10. 10Culture+70
    MulticulturalNational identity

    He stood for national identity and the nation state and distrusted multiculturalism and high immigration, a view critics called exclusionary. Strong lean to national identity.

  11. 11Trade+10
    GlobalProtected

    Criticized the EU's farm subsidy system and favored local food economies over global supermarket chains. Mixed.

  12. 12Foreign policy+45
    CooperationStrength

Who was Roger Scruton?

Lincolnshire was Scruton's home county, and he was born there in 1944. He studied philosophy at Cambridge. Watching the Paris student uprising of May 1968, he said, made him a conservative. He lectured at Birkbeck in London from 1971 to 1992 and later took posts in Britain and the US. He published more than fifty books, covering beauty, music, buildings, sex, wine, faith and politics. Two of them are The Meaning of Conservatism and How to Be a Conservative. He ran The Salisbury Review from 1982 to 2001 and wrote newspaper columns. A 2016 knighthood honored his work. In 2018 the government asked him to co-chair a body on housing design. He died of cancer in January 2020.

Political views

  • Defined conservatism as the wish to protect inherited institutions and customs instead of demolishing them.Source: dezeen.com
  • Between 1979 and 1989 he backed dissident academics under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, helping run teaching in secret.Source: en.wikipedia.org
  • In Green Philosophy he claimed that oikophilia, a love of one's home, is a stronger basis for caring for nature than state regulation or international campaigns.Source: philosophynow.org
  • Supported carbon pricing and similar steps that make polluters carry the costs of the harm they cause.Source: philosophynow.org
  • Championed classical and traditional architecture and attacked many modern buildings.Source: dezeen.com
  • Backed Brexit, seeing the EU as a threat to national self-government.Source: en.wikipedia.org
  • His book Our Church makes the case that the Church of England still has a role in national life.Source: en.wikipedia.org

Legacy

Scruton's fans include Conservative politicians and anti-communist dissidents in Central Europe, who saw him as a leading conservative philosopher. Czech, Polish and Hungarian authorities gave him honors. On the left, critics accused him of hostility to homosexuals, Muslims and others, pointing to his stance against adoption by same-sex couples and to things he said in interviews. A 2019 New Statesman interview cost him his post as a government housing adviser. When the full recording showed that context had been left out, the magazine apologized and he was reinstated. Several architects who disagreed with him found him a gracious opponent.

In their own words

“I knew I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down.”
Recalling the Paris protests of 1968, quoted in Dezeen, 2020

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Roger Scruton: questions

Was Roger Scruton left or right?

He was a man of the right. Scruton defended tradition, the nation state, religion and classical culture, and he backed Brexit. He also argued that love of local places is the best basis for protecting the environment.

What does oikophilia mean?

It means love of home. Scruton used the word for the pull people feel toward the places and communities they live in, and he thought this feeling was the strongest motive to look after the environment.

What was Roger Scruton's view of modern architecture?

He disliked much of it and preferred classical and traditional styles. From 2018 he co-chaired a government commission on housing design, whose goal was more beautiful new homes.

Sources

Portrait: Roger Scruton by Pete Helme.jpg by Pete Helme, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and converted to grayscale by 12axes-test.com.