Download or read book A Political Philosophy written by Roger Scruton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-10-03 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past twenty years, Roger Scruton has been developing a conservative view of human beings, society and culture. The tone of this book is positive and the arguments are recommendations with the aim of convincing the reader that rumours of the death of Western civilisation are greatly exaggerated. Much of our present self doubt, argues Scruton, is brought about by the Darwinian theory of evolution. Darwin encourages us to see human emotion as a reproductive strategy. This is a perspective which Scruton attacks vehemently especially in its modern proponents- Desmond Morris and Richard Dawkins. This the author believes undermines the belief in freedom and the moral imperatives that stem from it.
Download or read book The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton written by James Bryson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his most recent work, the contemporary philosopher Roger Scruton has turned his attention to religion. Although a religious sensibility ties together his astonishingly prodigious and dynamic output as a philosopher, poet and composer, his recent exploration of religious and theological themes from a philosophical point of view has excited a fresh response from scholars. This collection of writings addresses Scruton's challenging and subtle philosophy of religion for the first time. The volume includes contributions from those who specialize in the philosophy of religion, the history of thought and culture, aesthetics, and church history. The collection is introduced by Mark Dooley, author of two books on Scruton, and includes a response to the writings from Scruton himself in which he develops his idea of the sacred and the erotic and defends the integrity of his work as an attempt to give a sense of the Lebenswelt (or 'lifeworld'): how humans experience the world. He argues that religion emerges from that experience and transforms us from beings bound by causal necessity into persons who acknowledge freedom, obligation and right. A unique and fascinating collection of writings that sheds light on this hitherto unexplored aspect of Roger Scruton's philosophy.
Download or read book The Soul of the World written by Roger Scruton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-06 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling defense of the sacred from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today's fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive—and to understand what we are—is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things. Rather than an argument for the existence of God, or a defense of the truth of religion, the book is an extended reflection on why a sense of the sacred is essential to human life—and what the final loss of the sacred would mean. In short, the book addresses the most important question of modernity: what is left of our aspirations after science has delivered its verdict about what we are? Drawing on art, architecture, music, and literature, Scruton suggests that the highest forms of human experience and expression tell the story of our religious need, and of our quest for the being who might answer it, and that this search for the sacred endows the world with a soul. Evolution cannot explain our conception of the sacred; neuroscience is irrelevant to our interpersonal relationships, which provide a model for our posture toward God; and scientific understanding has nothing to say about the experience of beauty, which provides a God’s-eye perspective on reality. Ultimately, a world without the sacred would be a completely different world—one in which we humans are not truly at home. Yet despite the shrinking place for the sacred in today’s world, Scruton says, the paths to transcendence remain open.
Download or read book Our Church written by Roger Scruton and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most people in England today, the church is simply the empty building at the end of the road, visited for the first time, if at all, when dead. It offers its sacraments to a population that lives without rites of passage, and which regards the National Health Service rather than the National Church as its true spiritual guardian. Here, Scruton argues that the Anglican Church is the forlorn trustee of an architectural and artistic inheritance that remains one of the treasures of European civilization. He contends that it is a still point in the centre of English culture and that its defining texts, the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are the sources from which much of our national identity derives. At once an elegy to a vanishing world and a clarion call to recognize Anglicanism's continuing relevance, Our Church is a graceful and persuasive book.
Download or read book Animal Rights and Wrongs written by Roger Scruton and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this acclaimed book, Scruton takes the issues relating to vivisection, hunting, animal testing and BSE and places them in a wider framework of thought and feeling. Now available in paperback
Download or read book The Face of God written by Roger Scruton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roger Scruton explores the place of God in a disenchanted world. His argument is a response to the atheist culture that is now growing around us, and also a defence of human uniqueness. He rebuts the claim that there is no meaning or purpose in the natural world, and argues that the sacred and the transcendental are 'real presences', through which human beings come to know themselves and to find both their freedom and their redemption. In the human face we find a paradigm of meaning. And from this experience, Scruton argues, we both construct the face of the world, and address the face of God. We find in the face both the proof of our freedom and the mark of self-consciousness. One of the motivations of the atheist culture is to escape from the eye of judgement. You escape from the eye of judgement by blotting out the face: and this, Scruton argues, is the most disturbing aspect of the times in which we live. In his wide-ranging argument Scruton explains the growing sense of destruction that we feel, as the habits of pleasure seeking and consumerism deface the world. His book defends a consecrated world against the habit of desecration, and offers a vision of the religious way of life in a time of trial.
Download or read book The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton written by James Bryson (Postdoctoral Fellow) and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Human Nature written by Roger Scruton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and rights. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant’s suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say “I”—by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today’s most fashionable ideas about our species.
Download or read book Gentle Regrets written by Roger Scruton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roger Scruton is Britain's best known intellectual dissident, who has defended English traditions and English identity against an official culture of denigration. Although his writings on philosophical aesthetics have shown him to be a leading authority in the field, his defence of political conservatism has marked him out in academic circles as public enemy number one. Whether it is Scruton's opinions that get up the nose of his critics, or the wit and erudition with which he expresses them, there is no doubt that their noses are vastly distended by his presence, and constantly on the verge of a collective sneeze. Contrary to orthodox opinion, however, Roger Scruton is a human being, and Gentle Regrets contains the proof of it - a quiet, witty but also serious and moving account of the ways in which life brought him to think what he thinks, and to be what he is. His moving vignettes of his childhood and later influences illuminate this book. Love him or hate him, he will engage you in an argument that is both intellectually stimulating and informed by humour.
Download or read book Roger Scruton The Philosopher on Dover Beach written by Mark Dooley and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intriguing portrait of Roger Scruton and his philosophy.
Download or read book Culture Counts written by Roger Scruton and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly standing up to today's nihilisms and debasements of taste. Culture Counts offers a noble and compelling defense of high culture and the centrality of rich aesthetic experience for a full human life. The wisdom of roger scruton's judgments and the elegance of his prose are themselves powerful evidence for the truth of his thesis.
Download or read book The Uses of Pessimism written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging widely over human history and culture, from ancient Greece to the current global economic downturn, Scruton makes a counterintuitive yet persuasive case that optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries. Scruton's argument is nuanced, however, and his preference for pessimism is not a dark view of human nature; rather his is a 'hopeful pessimism' which urges that instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. Written in Scruton's trademark style-- erudite, sweeping in scope across centuries and cultures, and unafraid to offend-- this book is sure to intrigue and provoke readers concerned with the state of Western culture, the nature of human beings, and the question of whether social progress is truly possible.
Download or read book Modern Culture written by Roger Scruton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean by 'culture'? This word, purloined by journalists to denote every kind of collective habit, lies at the centre of contemporary debates about the past and future of society. In this thought-provoking book, Roger Scruton argues for the religious origin of culture in all its forms, and mounts a defence of the 'high culture' of our civilization against its radical and 'deconstructionist' critics. He offers a theory of pop culture, a panegyric to Baudelaire, a few reasons why Wagner is just as great as his critics fear him to be, and a raspberry to Cool Britannia. A must for all people who are fed up to their tightly clenched front teeth with Derrida, Foucault, Oasis and Richard Rogers.
Download or read book Conservatism written by Roger Scruton and published by All Points Books. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “...one of the most eloquent and even moving evocations of the conservative tradition in Western politics, philosophy and culture I have ever read...the ideal primer for those who are new to conservative ideas...” —Richard Aldous, Wall Street Journal A brief magisterial introduction to the conservative tradition by one of Britain’s leading intellectuals. In Conservatism, Roger Scruton offers the reader an invitation into the world of political philosophy by explaining the history and evolution of the conservative movement over the centuries. With the clarity and authority of a gifted teacher, he discusses the ideology's perspective on civil society, the rule of law, freedom, morality, property, rights, and the role of the state. In a time when many claim that conservatives lack a unified intellectual belief system, this book makes a very strong case to the contrary, one that politically-minded readers will find compelling and refreshing. Scruton analyzes the origins and development of conservatism through the philosophies and thoughts of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, among others. He shows how conservative ideas have influenced the political sector through the careers of a diverse cast of politicians, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Disraeli, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He also takes a close look at the changing relationship between conservative politics, capitalism, and free markets in both the UK and the US. This clear, incisive guide is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Western politics and policies, now and over the last three centuries.
Download or read book Escape from Reason written by Francis A. Schaeffer and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Truth is no longer based on reason. What we feel is now the truest reality. Yet despite our obsession with the emotive and the experiential, we still face anxiety, despair, and purposelessness. Tracing trends in twentieth century thought, Francis A. Schaeffer shows that Christianity offers meaning where there is purposelessness and hope where there is despair.
Download or read book The Age of Atheists written by Peter Watson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014 From one of England’s most distinguished intellectual historians comes “an exhilarating ride…that will stand the test of time as a masterful account of” (The Boston Globe) one of the West’s most important intellectual movements: Atheism. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzche declared that “God is dead” and ever since tens of thousands of brilliant, courageous, thoughtful individuals have devoted their creative energies to devising ways to live without God with self-reliance, invention, hope, wit, and enthusiasm. Now, for the first time, their story is revealed. A captivating story of contest, failure, and success, The Age of Atheists sweeps up William James and the pragmatists; Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis; Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Albert Camus; the poets of World War One and the novelists of World War Two; scientists, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking; and the rise of the new Atheists—Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. This is a story of courage, of the thousands of individuals who, sometimes at great risk, devoted tremendous creative energies to devising ways to fill a godless world with self-reliance, invention, hope, wit, and enthusiasm. Watson explains how atheism has evolved and reveals that the greatest works of art and literature, of science and philosophy of the last century can be traced to the rise of secularism. From Nietzsche to Daniel Dennett, Watson’s stirring intellectual history manages to take the revolutionary ideas and big questions of these great minds and movements and explain them, making the connections and concepts simple without being simplistic. The Age of Atheists is “highly readable and immensely wide-ranging…For anybody who has wondered about the meaning of life…an enthralling and mind-expanding experience” (The Washington Post).
Download or read book Beauty A Very Short Introduction written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.
