Roger Scruton has died.

RIP

I only became aware of him last year but enjoyed listening to him speak on YouTube with various other younger thinkers and made a note to go and read some of his work on the philosophy of beauty, and obviously being a target for deplatforming and smearing by the loony Left, he was clearly someone with output worth reading.
 
Somnambulist said:
RIP

I only became aware of him last year but enjoyed listening to him speak on YouTube with various other younger thinkers and made a note to go and read some of his work on the philosophy of beauty, and obviously being a target for deplatforming and smearing by the loony Left, he was clearly someone with output worth reading.
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Ah, so what he was saying was...

RIP
 
stockhausen said:
(BBC Online)

I imagine that Spike Milligan would have described him as a spelling error.
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Why am I not surprised by your distasteful eulogy? Did these words of his strike a discordant note with you? ;)

He told the Guardian that he became a Conservative when visiting Paris during the 1968 student protests, which he saw as an "unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans" professing "ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook".
 
If there is a higher place we go to when we die then I hope Roger Scruton is giving a few entities a verbal trousering.
One of his books literally kept me sane inside some very dark and dank walls, Modern Philosophy; An introduction and survey.
It helped me understand a whole lot about myself and others.
As an unabashed aesthetic I appreciated his work.
Hats off to him for remaining faithful to his beliefs and understanding.
 
Never heard of him.A bit of googling and I doubt I would have liked him.Seemed a bit unpleasant.
 
Chris Wilson said:
. . .
He told the Guardian that he became a Conservative when visiting Paris during the 1968 student protests, which he saw as an "unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans" professing "ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook".
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Yes, it seems that meeting people with opposing strong views did rather upset him.
I believe that a few years ago he was sacked from some Quango by by the Tory Party who felt that being both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic at the same time was a bit too far even for them ;)
I imagine that he considered the Minister for the 19th Century to be a radical modernist.

I heard him talk from time to time over the years but rather dismissed him as an attention-seeking contrarian, a bit like that bloke Clarkson who used to present Top Gear. Personally I became more aware of him when he was promoting smoking whilst being paid by the tobacco industry.

There is quite a bit about him on Wikipedia and in past Guardian reports - I gather that Private Eye had some fun at his expense but of course that is not available online :(
 
The Guardian has a couple of good, balanced, pieces on him: A fromal Obituary, and a more reflective take from Seamus Perry.

Unlike some other prominent Conservative intellectuals, Scruton really did have the chops and is widely recognised by his peers for the excellent quality of much of his actual work but he strikes me as a man overly fond of "being controversial" to the detriment of his overall project.
 
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