Uncorking Some Scruton
The late English philosopher Roger Scruton was not just a man of letters. Although he was “officially” a writer and conservative philosopher, he was also an avid equestrian hunter, a hobby farmer, and a skilled organist for his Anglican parish.
The recent Bloomsbury collection Against the Tide: The best of Roger Scruton's columns, commentaries and criticism does justice to Scruton the polymath by serving as an excellent introduction to his delightful writing, range of interests, and penetrating intellect. Edited by Scruton’s literary executor Mark Dooley, the volume is a compilation of journalistic columns ranging over a 40-year period, and the reader is introduced to topics as diverse as feminist satire, the importance of eating animals, and homage to Margaret Thatcher.
Scruton is a profoundly thoughtful traditionalist—or as he might prefer to be called, conservative, in a philosophical political sense. Scruton cherishes traditions, but seeks reasons as to why they should be preserved and why the inherited way might be the best.
Perhaps my favorite essay in the book is “Roger Scruton says ‘Put a Cork in It,’” in which he explains that corked bottles of wine necessitate a ritual of wine drinking while “screwtops” do not. Unlike the cork, the screwtop “gives way at once, allowing no ritual of presentation and no sacramental sound effects… it encourages the quick fix, the hasty glug.” In just four short paragraphs, Scruton expounds the virtue of the cork and the vices of the screwtop with plenty of punning on his surname. Since the “drinking of precious wine is preceded by an elaborate process of preparation, which has much in common with the ablutions that preceded ancient religious sacrifices,” it contributes to making wine “a visitor from a more exalted region and a catalyst of friendly ties.” For this reason “there are no screwtops in Scrutopia.”
Modernity is, of course, a theme that Scruton, as a philosopher interested in preserving the past, struggles with time and again. The civilizational decay of the Western world endangers us with “a new human species,” one that is “cold-hearted, disloyal, promiscuous, uncultured and godless.” Yet because we live in the now, and each have the individual choice to live and love well, we can still be a “source of joy” for those around us. Scruton, looking at our days “sub specie aeternitatis,” even thinks that this time of decay gives us an opportunity to work on the behalf of religion, morality, and culture that “no previous generation has been granted, and which no future generation may desire.”
Rather, the true “counters to despair, and the source of hope in any age” is the fact that “The impulse to love and learn, which will vanish only with the human species” has not disappeared, nor “music, poetry and art,” nor “the sacred texts and the secular knowledge that derives from them.” Of course, Scruton recognizes that most are “reluctant to come forward, largely because the mass media, dominated by trivializing materialists and sarcastic cynics, will cover them with ridicule.” We should take comfort in handing on “knowledge to one person, regardless of the scorn of those who could never receive it in any case.”
Roger Scruton by Pete Helme, 2016
Scruton is a modern apostle of the Beautiful because it is a primary and universal way of speaking to man—even modern man. “What we look at, listen to and read,” he writes in Against the Tide, “affects us in the deepest part of our being. Once we start to celebrate ugliness, then we become ugly too. Just as art and architecture have uglified themselves, so have our manners, our relationships and our language become crude.” Scruton’s 2009 BBC documentary Why Beauty Matters asks some of these questions in a different format, for this documentary explores beauty by contrasting it with ugliness and crudity. By conversing with modern artists about their work, Scruton shows them to be incoherent and contradictory, and sows seeds of doubt about the modern project. If this film has a weakness, it is that Scruton does not present very clearly what building cultural and societal alternatives to ugliness would look like.
Scruton is an author who reminds us that there are deep currents of being human, thinking, being governed, and viewing reality which we in America have forgotten about. One needn’t assume that he is always right, but Scruton is always interesting. And he is always edifying, in the true sense of the word: to conserve by repairing, by bringing new ideas into juxtaposition in order to reinforce and support the ancient walls and towers of Christendom. Treat yourself, and uncork (not unscrew!) some Scruton—let the clear and refreshing elixir of his writing counter your modern mindset, shake your complacency, and flow Against the Tide.
A musician, visual artist, and writer, Julian Kwasniewski lives in the Mountain West where he enjoys reading philosophy and trout fishing. His writing has appeared in The European Conservative, Crisis Magazine, National Catholic Register, and other publications.