Scruton: the elegant philosopher
In 1980, when Scruton was still an aesthetics professor at Birbeck College, London, he was invited, altogether with Gerald Allan Cohen, best known as Jerry Cohen, canadian politician, to teach a seminar in Britain, as co-authors.
Cohen, in an attitude that would be considered rude within the academic community, declined the invitation, and let Scruton teach the lecture by himself, in an anti-peer manner, whereas Cohen was a marxist; and Scruton, a conservative.
Later on, Scruton and Cohen became friends, in a way that Scruton himself, on his article Confessions of a Sceptical Francophile, would call a Cohen’s analysis of marxism “impeccable”.
This is a bare example of Scruton’s pattern of behaviour: after being victim of an unforgivable act as it would sound in the academy — the complete despise of a cathedratical colleague — , he not only raised a friendship, but even publicly complimented his former disaffection, portrayer of the ideology a conservative loathes — marxism.
Having written more than 50 books on political conservatism, ideology, religion, beauty and even sex, Sir Roger Scruton, who passed away last weekend, due to a pancreatic cancer, is the most pious example of Kirk’s conservative mind. Ignoring past trouble with his peer, he managed to restore the most elementary social property of the human being: bonding. With a foe.
As himself would portray on his The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), conservatism is more an attitude than a mentality or, even more, an ideology. From soccer to the civil society and the State, conservatism is present in the human action, even if unconsciously. Calling Aristotle, T.S. Elliot and Hume conservatives, he argues you don’t have to fake a conservative position in your deeds, but naturally act upon society, family and politics. That would be conservatism itself — which is present in every person, from the moment it is born to its death, even though one can assume anti-conservative positions (e.g. progressivism). It is not necessarily reactionary. It’s just conservative, for all it is worth.
On Human Nature
Edmund Burke was an irishman who proudly served Britain against the French Revolution. Member of the Whig Party, and a constitution-defending monarchist against the Parliament, he advocated for change in the british imperialist policies and the limitation of the governmental powers.
Anti-revolutionary reformist, he believed moral values, as spontaneous to man, would come before idealistic prospects, such as Rousseau’s writings on society and power. Respecting man as an spiritual being — a concept inalienable to conservatism, even atheist conservatism — , he validated society as a divine conception of the Creation given to man, implanted in the mind of the species.
Nonetheless, to sustain his views, he based this divine theory on the british organisation of society itself — almost fully founded on the Church. Even if Church and State were constitutionally separated, for him, they were just parts of a functioning machine, which is the society itself.
As if tradition embraced the social support of the community, some practices could be adapted to the days back then, as man is a being in constant change. The biggest point of his view on conservatism is the motto “conserve what is good, change what is bad”.
Scruton’s views, based mainly on Burke’s matrix of conservatism — political conservatism — would support conservatism for what it is, a one and whole attitude towards the community, the people and the individual itself.
Why family? Why politics? Why leadership? Why man and woman? Why motherhood? Why war? Why honor? Why beauty? Why God? Why society? Those are the main questions Scruton, over his 50 years of career, tried to explain to us, not by conservatism — but through it.
Scruton explained — or at least tried — that the basis of society itself is civilisation, and that civilisation cannot exist without some solid values backing it up. The universal conservative tripod — family, private property and liberty — would be the founding values of the occidental civilisation, in a way that anything that could harm it (i.e. from socialism to identitarian policies or dismantling of family through degeneration of the current understanding of sex and breeding) could jeopardize its own existence, as a community cannot resist against reforms that transforms its very core — such as the statization of the private property or the destruction of the image of God by a central propaganda committee.
The englishman, through his bibliography, aggregated value to the obvious — that what makes us who we are is, nonetheless, the most precious and fragile particularities of our own identity, and without which we cannot keep on existing.
We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.
-G.K. Chesterton
Radical reforming — such as the profanation of sex, gratuite promotion of atheism or social control of the freedom of speech — , as mild as they seem, is the pavemented way for the destruction of the society and, utterly, of it community members — ourselves. We would be anything, but the people we were born and raised years ago. This may sound like brainwashing or 1984-like — but it is what Scruton, in a fine, polite way, tried to convince us while he was alive. All Huxley’s previsions are coming to life.
Why beauty matters
In his views on Architecture, sir Roger Scruton compared the soviet/modern architecture, which is functional, with the classical one, which is aesthetical. As capitalism and economic rule determined the best allocation of resources — and architecture is not one of them, at least according to the utilitarianism that leaders all collective decisions in a democracy — , the aesthetic features of buildings and constructions were removed from projects. Buildings, instead of high ceiling even with only one floor, or with roman-like pilasters, gave room to quadratic, built-to-suit constructions, which have no worth but from its usage whatsoever.
That might sound weird even to you, beauty-enjoying reader. Why should my workplace have entailed details on the corners or statues in my way to the bathroom?
That’s precisely Scruton’s critique to the useful and unuseful dimensions of life and existence.
The useful — an engine, a lever, a soviet public building — will only stay as long as it is useful. After the engine gets outdated, the lever gets broken, or a new useful building is built, those things will perish and eventually cease to exist due to existence of time and weathering.
In the other hand, the useless — an old-fashioned, all detailed telephone; a statue of David or the Coliseum — , since it doesn’t have any usage but its own rarity and beauty, is preserved, for its unique, irreplaceable value. For soviet buildings can be build as many times as human engineering can; but there will be only one Coliseum, now and forever, and no other can be ever built.
Although beauty in all of its forms is important, even in people, its symbolic value is also extendable to the other unsubstitutable elements of human life. Friendship, love, peace, altruism — all useless. For what is useful one day, will get replaced by something even more useful than it; but what is useless, as it will remain forever, and nothing will ever make it useful by any means possible, consisting its value in its meaning, not its usefulness.
The philosopher of the elegance
Elegance is defined, by The Cambridge Dictionary, as the quality of being graceful and attractive in appearance or behaviour. Merriam-Webster Dictionary goes further, and it defines as scientific precision, neatness, and simplicity.
Elegance, in most Etiquette manuals, is simplicity. The simplicity of being hygienic, of the courtesy, and of the cultural norm, in a respectful attitude towards the other, showing care and even affection with people and things surrounding one.
This is what Scruton meant through his life and his work. Conservatism, after all, it is not a state policy, a political wing or a ideology. Conservatism is just elegance. As himself would say,
Conservatism comes from a feeling that every mature person easily shares: the awareness that admirable things are easily destroyed but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective goods: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, all that depends on cooperation with others, since it is not. We have ways of obtaining them in isolation. In relation to such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy, and recreational; The labor of creation is slow, arduous and dull. This is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives are disadvantaged when it comes to public opinion. Your position is true but dull; that of your opponents is exciting, but false.
Elegance comes with tolerance, peace, beauty, cleanliness, care and precision; and those immaterial values have one only finality: to preserve. We preserve nature, preserve life, preserve roads, preserve animals. We just haven’t been able to preserve ourselves. We are constantly trying to destroy — “deconstruct” — our values, our beliefs, our behaviours, our culture. We want to preserve so much, but can’t preserve our identity, which makes us, us. And if we can’t succeed in existence, nothing we care for will ever succeed, as well.
For his elegance, for his simplicity, for his clarity of thought, for his fight, for his patience, and for his last scream preventing us from driving ourselves to self-destruction, thank you, Sir Roger Scruton. Your elegance is going to be remembered.
