Roger Scruton on America, the Nation-State, & the Responsibility of Intellectuals

By |2024-02-26T21:20:43-06:00February 26th, 2024|Categories: Community, Nationalism, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

It is hard to imagine how this country will recover from the hostility and political polarization that now define it without rediscovering a “pre-political loyalty," as Sir Roger Scruton called it, "towards something higher, something that is shared between all the citizens, regardless of their political beliefs and inclinations: the nation." With Roger Scruton’s passing [...]

Why Modern Music Should Listen to the Past

By |2023-02-26T17:17:39-06:00February 26th, 2023|Categories: Culture, Featured, Music, Philosophy, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

It is only the loved and repeated repertoire that will ensure the survival of music, and to be loved and repeated music requires a dedicated audience. Music exists in the ear of the listener, not on the page of the score, nor in the world of pure sound effects. And listeners, deterred by the avant-garde, [...]

Roger Scruton on the Aesthetics of Architecture

By |2023-01-19T16:48:50-06:00January 19th, 2023|Categories: Architecture, Art, Books, Christianity, Christopher Morrissey, Featured, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

When the modern city enshrines the temporariness of facelessness as a permanently utilitarian way of life, then something has gone dreadfully wrong. The Aesthetics of Architecture by Roger Scruton (320 pages, Princeton University Press, 2013) One of the principal observations of Sir Roger Scruton about the modern city is an architectural observation. Modern architecture expresses [...]

T.S. Eliot as Conservative Mentor

By |2023-01-03T12:07:00-06:00January 3rd, 2023|Categories: Conservatism, Roger Scruton, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

Should modern man devote himself like Sartre to undermining bourgeois society and scoffing at manners and morals? Should he play the part of Socrates, questioning everything and affirming nothing? To answer yes to any of those questions is to grant nothing to human life beyond the mockery of it. T.S. Eliot’s solution was to embrace [...]

The Honorable Roger Scruton and His Enemies

By |2022-09-14T17:22:52-05:00September 14th, 2022|Categories: Books, Civil Society, Conservatism, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

I know of no more comprehensive and reflective summary of conservatism than Sir Roger Scruton's "Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition." We should not expect conservative establishmentarians on either side of the Atlantic to pay it much heed, though, for the author has now been pushed into the ranks of the untouchables. Conservatism: An [...]

The Last Speech: “A Thing Called Civilization”

By |2024-01-11T19:09:04-06:00August 15th, 2022|Categories: Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

I myself have obviously got into an awful lot of trouble through defending Western civilization. It seems a strange feature of our times that the more you’re disposed to defend it, the more you are regarded as some kind of narrow-minded bigot. But the people who make that accusation are the real ones with the [...]

The Threat of Free Speech in the University

By |2022-07-26T13:22:41-05:00July 25th, 2022|Categories: Culture, Education, Featured, Free Speech, Modernity, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

Now I, too, would like the university to be a safe space, but a safe space for rational argument about the pressing issues of our time. If a university stands for anything, surely it stands for that idea of truth, as a guiding light in our darkness and the source of real knowledge. Free speech [...]

Sir Roger Scruton: In Memoriam

By |2024-01-11T19:15:37-06:00December 28th, 2020|Categories: Paul Krause, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Like moths attracted to the flame, students from all continents came together to study and discuss everything from music and aesthetics to politics and metaphysics with Sir Roger, who seemed to be the incarnate flame of wisdom. He was our Virgil through hell and purgatory, and he left us at the top of the mountain, [...]

Postmodern Music: Groans Wrapped in Mathematics

By |2020-12-08T15:13:08-06:00December 8th, 2020|Categories: Culture, Jazz, Modernity, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

The atonal music produced in the twentieth century consists largely of random outbursts that could be described as groans wrapped in mathematics. The result makes little or no sense to the ear, and these works remain more items of curiosity than objects of love, and audiences have begun to turn their backs on them. In [...]

Counterpoint and Why It Matters

By |2020-11-30T15:36:07-06:00November 30th, 2020|Categories: Beauty, Culture, Modernity, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Western Tradition|

In music, there has arisen in recent times the illusion that knowledge is not necessary, that the old forms of discipline are merely obstacles to the true creative process, and that real originality means doing your own thing, free from traditional constraint. I recently acquired a CD of music for piano duo by Jeremy Menuhin, [...]

Renewing and Rejecting: Comparing Architecture and Music

By |2020-11-23T17:14:43-06:00November 23rd, 2020|Categories: Architecture, Faith, Featured, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Tradition, Western Civilization|

At a certain stage and for no apparent reason, self-criticism among those of us in the West gave way to repudiation. Instead of subjecting our inheritance to a critical evaluation, seeking what is good in it and trying to understand and endorse the ties that binds us to it, a great many of those appointed [...]

The Heart of Music

By |2021-08-03T17:34:08-05:00November 18th, 2020|Categories: Classical Education, Classical Learning, Featured, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

Young people need to come into the presence of music. Without live orchestras and available concerts the real heart of music will cease to beat, and young people will be deprived of one of the most enriching experiences that I know. I grew up in post-war Britain, at a time when people were beginning to [...]

Tonality Now: Finding a Groove

By |2020-11-05T10:47:22-06:00November 12th, 2020|Categories: Culture, Featured, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

Some people listen to music; others merely hear it. The assumption on which our musical culture has been built is that people will listen to musical sounds, and listen to them for their own sake, treating them as intrinsically significant. All music lovers listen in that sense, regardless of their taste. The ear is a [...]

The Assault on Opera

By |2020-11-12T13:17:40-06:00November 5th, 2020|Categories: Art, Culture, Imagination, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays|

Hardly an opera producer now, confronted with a masterpiece that might otherwise delight and console an audience, can control the desire to desecrate. The more exalted the music, the more demeaning the production. What modern producers seem to forget is that audiences are gifted with the faculty of imagination. The disappearance of the bourgeoisie has led [...]

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