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An Interview With Roger Scruton
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10156 |
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BOOK WORLD
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8 / 1986 |
2,604 Words |
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Gregory Wolfe
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As I traveled to Roger Scruton's office at the University of London to conduct this interview, I couldn't help reflecting on the irony of its location - especially in light of his recent book Sexual Desire. The office is situated in the heart of Bloomsbury, a part of London characterized by elegant Georgian squares and made famous by the group of intellectuals and artists, including Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, who dominated British cultural life during the first three decades of this century. It was the Bloomsbury Group, more than any other set of "progressive" intellectuals in this most progressive of centuries, who legitimized and celebrated the modern ethic of "free love" and the cult of bisexuality. And it is precisely this Bloomsbury ethic that Scruton attacks in Sexual Desire. Indeed, he believes that the heavy cloak the Victorians threw over the intimacies of our sexual nature indicated a saner and more realistic attitude than our modern sexual libertarianism. Several generations alter its heyday, it appears that the Bloomsbury group has formidable antagonist.
'Formidable' is a word that comes easily to mind in describing Roger Scruton's many achievements. At an age when most writers are only beginning to make their mark, Scruton has ten books to his credit, and is already an established presence on the British political and intellectual scene. He has been praised for his "independence of mind" - a conservative critic of socialism who has maintained a stance that is far from identical with that of Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher.
At Cambridge University, where he received both is bachelor's degree and his doctorate, Scruton began by studying natural sciences. But a passion for literature led him to an interest in aesthetics, which in turn spawned a commitment to philosophy. Scruton's doctoral dissertation at Cambridge was later published as Art and Imagination, and was soon followed by The Aesthetics of Architecture, The Aesthetic Understanding, and The Politics of Culture and Other Essays.
Scruton's interest in philosophy has also resulted in several books, including a history of modern philosophy, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, and a volume on Immanuel Kant in the Past Master series published by Oxford University Press. He is currently professor of aesthetics in the philosophy department at the University of London.
For all his scholarship in art and philosophy, Scruton has never been far from social and political controversy. After studying for the bar at the Inner Temple, he is now qualified as a barrister - an English term for a certain type of lawyer. He is one of the leaders of a vigorous revival of conservative thought among a younger generation of scholars and writers. As editor of The Salisbury Review, a quarterly journal of ideas, Scruton has provided conservatism in Britain with an intellectual respectability it lacked for many decades. His fortnightly column for The Times (London) has given him the reputation of being a skilled debater. His books in this area are The Meaning of Conservatism, Dictionary of Political Thought, and the forthcoming Thinkers of the New Left.
To round off this brief portrait, it is worth mentioning that Scruton has published a novel, Fortnight's Anger.
I began the interview by asking Scruton about his interest in philosophy. He spoke of his early
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