fools frauds and firebrands by roger scruton

He articulated the possibilities that leaving the European Union opened for renewing our civic and democratic institutions.įurther reading How identity politics drove the world mad He evokes a “we” that provides the democratic authority of the nation state, which far from evaporating in the swirl of globalisation, retains the legitimacy to preserve meaning and attachment in people’s lives. His final book, Where We Are, is a profound reflection on the basic assumption of national sovereignty. It was the lack of that understanding that concerned him about Islam. The origins of authority remained political and revisable. He thought that in England, following the civil war, there was an appreciation of pluralism and a suspicion of religious enthusiasm. His understanding of Christianity, meanwhile, and its relationship to the nation was understood in terms of civility and temper and not as the foundation of political authority. His love of Kant and appreciation of secularism set him apart from reactionary thinkers. His book, Green Philosophy is a very significant contribution to this. He was enamoured of the Common Law as the defender of our liberties, and our environment. He thought that the Ancient Constitution, based upon the balance of interests rather than the separation of the powers was the system best suited to our country. Roger’s politics was local, conservationist and loosely sociable he was far too much of a loner, though, to subscribe to a communitarian or collectivist anthropology.

It required a sense of solidarity, of sharing a fate with others. That theme of home, or oikophilia, was one of his great contributions to modern philosophy.

His conservatism, in which association, friendship, institutions and ultimately politics would encourage a shared responsibility for each other in a shared home, “an island of me in a sea of we”, is central to his thought. He was a modernist in literature and style, but it was a modernity tempered by tradition and this was expressed in his view of people as longing for meaning, for attachment, for love and for beauty, who flourish in a society characterised by healthy relationships, a sense of being part of a “we”. Roger gave expression to the new era that is now emerging in which the nation state, democracy, a sense of place and the working class are not doomed remnants of a previous epoch, but the primary materials through which the effects of globalisation are mediated politically. Further reading Jeremy Corbyn's Labour would crush civil society

Fools frauds and firebrands by roger scruton