Books by Roger Scruton

A compelling defense of the sacred from acclaimed philosopher Roger ScrutonIn 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.

What is culture? Why should we preserve it, and how? This book defends Western culture against its internal critics and external enemies, and argues that rumours of its death are seriously exaggerated. It shows our culture to be a continuing source of moral knowledge.

A revised edition of the Notting Hill Editions essay collection by the late Sir Roger Scruton with a new introduction by Douglas Murray.Confessions of a Heretic is a collection of provocative essays by the influential social commentator and polemicist Roger Scruton. Each “confession” reveals aspects of the author’s thinking that his critics would probably have advised him to keep to himself. In this selection, covering subjects from art and architecture to politics and nature conservation, Scruton challenges popular opinion on key aspects of our culture: What can we do to protect Western values against Islamist extremism? How can we nurture real friendship through social media? Why is the nation-state worth preserving? How should we achieve a timely death against the advances of modern medicine? This provocative collection seeks to answer the most pressing problems of our age.In his introduction, the bestselling author and commentator Douglas Murray writes of what it cost Scruton to express views considered unpalatable, and of the importance of these ideas after Scruton’s death.

A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger ScrutonIn 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. Our world is a shared world, exhibiting freedom, value, and accountability, and to understand it we must address other people face to face and I to I.Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroes to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "e;I"e;-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.

Our Church is a dazzling and original personal history of the Anglican church and its enduring place in public life by one of our foremost public intellectuals.

Death-Devoted Heart explodes the established interpretation of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. Scruton boldly attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries.

A landmark account of architectural theory and practice from acclaimed philosopher Roger ScrutonArchitecture is distinguished from other art forms by its sense of function, its localized quality, its technique, its public and nonpersonal character, and its continuity with the decorative arts. In this important book, Roger Scruton calls for a return to first principles in contemporary architectural theory, contending that the aesthetic of architecture is, in its very essence, an aesthetic of everyday life. Aesthetic understanding is inseparable from a sense of detail and style, from which the appropriate, the expressive, the beautiful, and the proportionate take their meaning. Scruton provides incisive critiques of the romantic, functionalist, and rationalist theories of design, and of the Freudian, Marxist, and semiological approaches to aesthetic value.In a new introduction, Scruton discusses how his ideas have developed since the book's original publication, and he assesses the continuing relevance of his argument for the twenty-first century.

Roger Scruton is one of Britain's most respected thinkers and in this new book he offers a radically different solution to the planet's most important problem.

In this provocative and passionately argued book, Roger Scruton proposes that the greatest harm and havoc has been wrought on the world by those who have presented themselves as optimists and idealists, whether of the left or of the right. Rejecting such ideals, we should instead seek to replace such irrational - and pernicious - exuberance with a humane pessimism.

This new edition takes stock of the revolutionary changes that have taken place since the dictionary was first published in 1982. 1790 entries cover every aspect of political thought providing an indispensable guide to the thought, the wisdom and the folly of modern politics by one of the most lucid philosophers of our time.

In this classic introductory work, Scruton takes us on us on a fascinating tour of the subject, from founding father Descartes to the most important and famous philosopher of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

What is music, what is its value, and what does it mean? In this exciting book, the philosopher Roger Scruton explores the nature and meaning of music from first principles and gives a fascinating analysis of musical organization, together with a provocative account of contemporary civilization and its discontents.

Roger Scruton is one of the most widely respected philosophers of our time, whose often provocative views never fail to stimulate debate. Considered by many to be the best philosophical primer since Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy, this book is a must for both the student and the general reader.

First published in 1980, this contribution to political thought is a statement of the traditional conservative position. Roger Scruton challenges those who would regard themselves as conservatives, and also their opponents.