THE FOUNDATIONS OF

ROGER SCRUTON'S
THE AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE
Anthony Skillen

ARCHITECTURE PERVADES and shapes our lives in ways that no other art does
and has been the work of the finest artistic minds throughout the ages. Apart
from Geoffrey Scott's masterpiece, The Architecture of Humanism (1914),
modern philosophical aesthetics has had little to say about it. While Scott's
book remains a marvellous and freakish advertisement of analytical philo-
sophy, it must be said that it exalted architecture largely by relegating its
practical aspects ('firmness', 'commodity') to a position subordinate to the
quasi-sculptural values of'delight': 'To combine these laws of delight with
the demands of "firmness" and "commodity" is a further problem. . . . But
all these questions are distinct.'1 Thus did Scott reinforce the view that it is
not as a sound, used, building that a structure might be beautiful, and so the
'aesthetic dimension' appears detachable. How much better, then, to focus
on objects which exist utterly as aesthetic objects. Even Marxist theorists of
art preoccupy themselves with fine paintings and books, seeking in these
subtle reflections of class struggle, while the places they inhabit and the clothes
they wear escape their attention. So Roger Scruton's book2 is welcome,
insisting as it docs that architecture is
primarily a vernacular a r t . . . . a natural extension of common human activities.... One
might say that, in proposing an aesthetics of architecture, the least one must be pro-
posing is an aesthetics of everyday life. One has moved away from the realm of high
art towards that of common practical wisdom.3

Architecture is simply one application of that sense of what 'fits' which governs every
aspect of our daily existence.4

And so, since 'our sense of the beauty of an object is always dependent on a
conception of that object'8, we would expect Scruton to explore what
architecture is, what complex 'assembly' of dimensions needs to be 'synthe-
sized' in successful, 'fitting', and therefore fine and beautiful building.
But, while Scruton says some extremely instructive things in the course
of his serious, erudite and impressive book, his whole approach, it seems to
me, ill suits him in his endeavour to break out of the 'continuing intellectual
disaster' that is philosophical aesthetics.6 For Scruton turns away from an
257
 258 ROGER SCRUTON'S THE AES THETICS OF ARCHITECTURE
examination of what architecture is, arguing diat inquiries into the 'essence'
of architecture necessarily embark on futile, monolithic quests, producing
only the rival dogmatisms of Formalism, Functionahsm, Expressionism, or
whatever. All, as is argued in Chapter 3, violate the complexity and indivi-
duality of architectural experience. Better, says Scruton, to focus on our
'enjoyment', 'appreciation' or 'interest', on 'taste' in architecture, to con-
centrate on 'appreciation in itself, in abstraction from its object'.7 Indeed,
Scruton seems to think of aesthetics as a branch of the philosophy of mind.
It seems to me that part of the trouble here lies in the term 'aesthetic', a term
which throws attention back on itself. Consider the idea, found unself-
consciously expressed in Plato and Aristotle, and in everyday life today, of
an action's 'beauty'. Is it not obvious that to render 'that was a beautiful
thing to do' by 'that action had aesthetic value' thoroughly distorts the
meaning? (And remembef that many of the most beautiful deeds are done
modestly, when no one is there to applaud.)
It is not clear to me that inquiry which takes as its concern the nature of
architecture is doomed a priori to a kind of legislative monolithism. Nor do
I think that it has been so bedevilled. Why should architecture and archi-
tectural wordi not turn out to be plural and complex, with dimensions
whose commensurability is a mystery? On the other hand, why is an
approach which begins from what appreciation is not equally liable to essen-
tialism, to do injustice to the complexity and diversity of responses and
reactions to architecture? In fact, I think, Scruton does fall into hii own exca-
vations in just that way.
If your account of architecture begins from a paradigm of'the spectator's
experience', then you cannot but push in the direction of the self-conscious
art-object analysis which Scruton would like to transcend. And so it is that
in Chapters 4, 5 and 68 he embraces an essentialist view of architectural
experience and judgement as a 'species of imaginative attention'9 which 'no
aspect of architectural experience' fails to exemplify.10 It is in virtue of this
'imaginative structure' that the experience of architecture is primarily
aesthetic.11
Imaginative perception, Scruton says, is a species of 'intellectual' percep-
tion, thus separating it from 'sensuous' perception. It is further distinguished
from 'literal' perception by virtue of the object of the spectator's perception
being 'seen as unreal', 'non-existent'.12 Since looking at a picture or a statue
and seeing 'someone' there illustrates this notion, Scruton cannot quite
mean what he says, lest the pious be condemned to atheism while seeing
Christ in the picture. Elsewhere Scruton uses different criterial formulations:
for example, independence from belief,13 which would suggest the falsehood
that if you were to see a statue as really carved or a facade as genuinely ancient
this would be of no aesthetic significance. Then we are given: lack of
correspondence to 'physical'14 or 'material'18 reality. All that is 'literally
 ANTHONY SKILLEN 259

there are physical objects—'a mass of masonry'. But this Galilean ontology
is far too exiguous to illuminate aesthetics, however easy it makes the asser-
tion of the ubiquity of'imaginative experience'. If building groupings aren't
'literally* there (any more, says Scruton, than that notes, rhythms and
melodies literally exist) why say that cathedrals, town squares and architraves
are? Are they only lots of stuff (really) ?
Scruton stresses the 'voluntariness' of 'imaginative perception'. But you
cannot help seeing the Queen's profile on the stamp and you cannot help
hearing a familiar tune, or having the Miiller-Lyer Illusion. You can, on
the other hand, choose to ignore the wood for the trees, the quality for the
width. It is sheer a priorism to insist on a special activism in seeing Brunelleschi's
San Spirito columns as 'evenly rhythmical'.16 By the way he discusses the
imagination, and especially its freedom, Scruton permits himself to embrace
a subjectivist position despite claiming that the very notion of imaginative
activism implies a conception of correctness:

Here, not only is it possible to choose one's interpretation, in the sense of choosing the
experience that is most satisfying, one can also begin to see how the notion of a correct
experience might arise, the notion of an experience that leads to an understanding and
appreciation of the building.17

Why is a way of seeing correct? Not 'because it accurately represents the

history of the column . . . but because to see the column in this way is to
open the possibility of a richness of meaning that would otherwise be
missed'.18 Thus Scruton speaks of 'unity imposed' on objects in which 'the
literal mind would see nothing but disjointedness or chaos'19; and comments
in respect of his own account of Borromini's Oratorio di San Filippo Neri:
'The relation of a building to an historical, spiritual or moral interpretation
is a critical achievement; ic is created by the critic, in drawing comparisons,
and in deriving significances'.20
To appreciate buildings you need, among other things, the imagination to
see the connections, backgrounds, meanings, promises and characters; but
you do not therefore need to impose imaginary connections and meanings,
to engage in the 'manufacture of significances' which Scruton elsewhere21
castigates. Nor, by the way, do I sec any basis for Scruton's apparent view
that 'imaginative perception' as he understands it is ipso facto aesthetic.
Scruton has other dubious things to say in these sections, which are based
on his earlier articles: that the aesthetic experience of architecture can be
'precisely dated'; that taste presupposes 'education' and 'instruction'; and
that the fact that 'people absorb from the organic contours of our ancient
towns, with their human details, their softened lines and their "worked"
appearance, a kind of pleasure that sustains them in their daily lives; while
in the bleak environment of the modern city a dissatisfaction is felt that
disturbs people without their knowing why' need be of no aesthetic relevance,
260 ROGER SCRUTON' S THE AES THETICS OF ARCHITEC TURE
since 'Such inarticulate pleasures and displeasures have little in common
with architectural taste and give us no guidance in the practice of criticism.'22
The implication here is that 'absorption' can occur without 'attention'. But
it is obvious that this 'merely sociological observation' entails that people are
noticing the things mentioned. If this isn't a, paradigm of architectural
experience of the 'aesthetics of everyday life' I should like to know what is.
Once again Scruton's method of focusing on 'aesthetic attention' in the
abstract had led him into a mandarin 'aestheticism' from which he wants to
depart.23
Despite insisting on an intellectualism in aesthetic perception, Scruton
follows Wittgenstein in making trie subject of experience authoritative in
regard to 'aesthetic explanation'. A critic may describe the objective pro-
perties of die object (entasis, for example) and I may have failed to notice
these. But I am the authority on whether the critic has adequately character-
ized what it is that I am experiencing. The claim is dubious: if I claim that I
found the voice marvellously expressive, I may cling to this even though
you tell me I am infatuated by the singer's face. Yet I may be shown to be
wrong. I shut my eyes. If I claim to be annoyed by your arrogance it might
turn out that I am really upset by your non-arrogant persistence. Similarly
for 'the roof is too low', 'the carpet gives a garish effect'; and so on. I would
urge that 'objects' are a certain kind of cause, and that even phenomeno-
logical causes are subject to a degree of testing. Among these 'causes' are the
things which architects know how to produce—'looks', 'feels'. One line in
the Miiller-Lyer Illusion really looks longer than the other. I see no reason
a priori why the kind of thing Adrian Stokes thrusts forward as organizing
architectural experience should not be admissible. However implausible or
false the claim that we respond to built forms as breasts, phalluses or wombs,
Stokes's claim is surely that 'being a breast' is a 'phenomenal property'
(appearance) of the dome or whatever, that this is its unconscious 'fantasy
character', and in this sense as much a dimension of the object as 'tranquillity',
'piety' or 'top-heaviness'. Generally, causal analyses of perception cannot
be ruled out in the way Scruton attempts.
Scruton feels a need to insist on the role of thought, lest experience lack the
backing necessary to guarantee 'objectivity', 'correctness'. Tastes in food,
for example, being brute, are, he says, 'sub-aesthetic' and 'sub-objective'.
But we can tell when food is 'off', 'bitter', and 'tasteless' without being able
to offer backing justifications. Perhaps there are other primitive aesthetic
judgements like this. Scruton half accepts this. Indeed, he goes so far as to
say on page 134 (despite having insisted that aesthetic experience is necessarily
'intellectual') that the 'natural order of things' begins with 'primitive', pre-
reflective 'aesthetic choice'. What does he say about this, then? On page 201
he discusses Wittgenstein's example: 'the doorway is too high'. Despite the
wholly unmediated character of such judgements, it is 'intrinsic' to them
 ANTHONY SKILLEN 261

'that they should seek justification'. Thus comparisons will occur and
standards will develop—'he will acquire the beginnings of a style'. But this is
to overlook the utterly characteristic way that intuitions are trusted in these
matters, and tested by experience—'You were right; it ivas too high'—
without the need of a theoretical apparatus or set of stylistic canons to back
them up. (How could any such theory be more certain?) It seems to me, for
example, that the styles promoted by the capitalist fashion industry are
characterized by a probably deliberate 'instability' in relation to such
intuitions, by a lack of classicism's respect for the eye's 'judgement'—planned
obsolescence. However that may be, there has to be something wrong with'
an aesthetics of everyday life which lacks a place for such 'brute' visual pro-
perties as being drab, monotonous, bright or garish—it is not simply in
virtue of its expressing a utilitarian corporatist outlook that the dull mono-
tony of much of our visual environment is to be condemned. A focus on
buildings in terms of their visually expressive articulation tends of its nature
to 'monumentalism', to top-heavy emphasis on 'expressive richness'; even
if we are led, with Ruskin, to think of the humble cottage as a monument
to humility.
But an adequate 'aesthetics of architecture' is not to be developed only by
unburdening the beholding eye of the imaginative and intellectual weight
placed on it by Scruton. That would still leave us without a sense of everyday
life passed in and around buildings. For everyday life, as Scruton is sometimes
at pains to point out, involves making 'practical use' of buildings, squares,
parks and gardens. Yet he tells us: 'There is no way of using the idea of
function to cast light on the nature of architecture'.24 'Our discussion of
taste has shown that actual structure is irrelevant to. aesthetic judgement
except and in so far as it is revealed in virtual structure'.25 That way lies the
kind of view, expressed by Susanne Langer, that actual functions—having
to cater for people moving, working, sitting, sleeping—are afflictions of
architecture, utilitarian burdens disfiguring its neck. But if we ask: what
stands to architecture as looking at and listening to stand to paintings,
sculpture and music, the answer, which should determine our 'aesthetics', ,
must be something like: living with. And that should convey that 'using' is
an inadequate contrast to 'looking' and 'listening'. People get to love and to
hate places. Some of them arc horrors which have been contrived to assume
•a pleasing shape. But when the 'shape' of a building does please those who
know what is behind it, it does so in a way different from the way it might
please or fail to please those who come to visit and to take photographs—
especially for those glossy architecture journals.
However important a person thinks 'aesthetics' to be, any one who cuts
offissues of beauty from actual ways, as distinct from 'virtual' ways, of living
must be misguided, inviting the philistine anti-aestheticism that is so common,
the kind, for example, that John Passmore expressed in 'The Dreariness of
262 ROGER SCRUTON'S THE AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE
Aesthetics': '. . . it is the caf6-haunters, the preachers, die metaphysicians,
and the calendar-makers who talk of beauty. . . . it is what the bourgeoisie
pays the artist for'.28 Scott invites this response to die quotation at the
beginning of this discussion. But he proceeds to talk of the 'sacrifices' and
'compromises' involved in 'uniting' firmness, commodity and delight. But
I want to say that this union can itself be beautiful or ugly. To treat discre-
pancy between 'expressive' and 'functional' properties as the intersection of
separate dimensions of Beauty and Utility is to violate the sense of incongruity
that such collisions produce. Actual function may not only belie virtual
function, it may 'kill' the impression among a building's inhabitants—
virtual function needs support from functional virtue. Time's and use's
work are not exhausted in their inscriptions on stone. Buildings may cele-
brate what they do not promote; may highlight what they do not enhance.
It seems to me simply wrongheaded either to exclude such perceptions from
'aesthetics' or to leave out of the catalogue of a building's beauties the way,
for example, it gives people space to move about without getting lost. No
more than a human action's beauty need a building's beauty draw attention
to itself. (But when we focus on 'aesthetics', on 'appreciation', we cannot
but concentrate only on beauty-as-noticed.)
In arguing that beauty is structural (as implied in all the old notions of
'harmony' and 'unity in variety') I have urged that beauty is not only a visual
property but can have many levels—and beauty at one level can co-exist with
ugliness at another, perhaps deeper, level—making for a further incongruity
(dishonesty, for example). And so, I would see the importance of architec-
ture as primarily a matter of its relations (plural) with activities and ways
(forms) of life. One does not have to follow Socrates' ascent all the way to
the Forms to share his recognition of the 'kinship' which ways of life
share with beautiful objects and bodies.27
If this is accepted, it can be seen that architecture is as 'philosophical' as
any activity which seeks to embody and foster a form of life, and as con-
tentious: how should a university be? a town be? a house be? For your
'aesthetic' on this view is your understanding and perception of how things
do and do not hang together; what things are central and what peripheral—
and of what things simply have to co-exist.28 As well as being lovely in
themselves, physical forms and materials can 'signify' such a 'philosophy'
and can do so more or less self-consciously and at different levels of 'abstrac-
tion'. (Scruton is good on this.) They remain, however, apart of the picture,
a picture that can be more or less beautiful or ugly, and in different ways.
Now, clearly, on this view, an 'aesthetic sense'—a sense of beauty and ugli-
ness—will be a normal and vital characteristic of human life, reaching from
a sense of nobility in action to a grasp of how a kitchen should look. We
know diat people can be bhnd to certain things, sometimes very important
things. But this implies no dichotomy. Some painters are weak in 'composi-
 ANTHONY SKILLEN 263

tion', some architects indifferent to colour. If this view is right, if beauty

and ugliness are found across diverse categories and in their 'mutual reflec-
tion', then Scruton is more or less right, if panglossian, to say 'Architecture
is simply one application of that sense of what "fits" which governs every
aspect of daily existence'.*9
But Scruton's account of'the aesthetics of everyday life' does not follow
that tack through. 'The aesthetic' for him refers not to the fitting but to the
appropriate (fitting) appearance—primarily to the (imaginative) eye. Yet, on
this restricted terrain, Scruton wants to build a view of aesthetics as not only
permeating life and expressing it (for me the best moments of the book are
Scruton's discussion of forks30 and of walls31), but as 'essential', 'indispen-
sable' pre-conditions of the rational pursuit of life. According to him, unless
we have a sense not just of 'the fitting' oj 'the appropriate' or 'what it is
right' to do or feel but of what 'looks right', what is 'visually valid',32 what
is an 'appropriate appearance' (page 229), what has 'visual decorum'33, we
must lack full practical rationality.
Now since so much of Scruton's book is taken up with discussion of the
ways in which visual appearances 'express', 'announce', 'signify', 'represent'
outlooks, aims, values and ways of life, it might be wondered how he can
also insist that such outlooks, aims, values and ways of life in turn presuppose
tokens presented to the visual imagination. Scruton says that, in virtue of the
complex 'significant' character of their style, buildings, clothes, decorations,
furniture, utensils 'herald in the immediate present those aims in his life
which are not immediately statable',34 and that this heralding functions by
a kind of empathetic intimation of the achievement of obscure goals—you
dress smartly to anticipate 'what it is (feels) like' to be successful.35 If you
couldn't represent this feeling, you couldn't have it. I question this and I
question the importance of this 'imagining an experience' (through represen-
tation) to a distinctively aesthetic view of life. It is possible to imagine what
an ice cream will be like, but that does not dignify my desire with the
insignia of an aesthetic outlook. And in any case, do I need to choose my
clothes before knowing what to do?
Scruton's account locates itself in an attack on Benthamite accounts of
rationality. Against Bentham, Scruton says, with some exaggeration: 'In
every task, however functional, there are infinite ways of proceeding. All
our choices are extracted from a chaos of functionally equivalent alter-
natives.'36 'Extracted from'—the phrase is significant and is typical. Form
enables us to lift the 'experience out of the immediate'.37 We can break
away from the immediate gratification,38 from 'the jungle of gratifications'39
only if the immediate present can be endowed with meaning,40 only if there
is 'a perception in the immediate here and now' of profound aims and
values. Only thus is 'the immediacy of present impulse' transcended.41
I said earlier that, in the idea of literal perception to which Scruton counter-
264 ROGER SCRUTON'S THE AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE
poses 'imaginative perception', Scruton expresses a bleakly Galilean ontology
of primary qualities. Turning from object to subject, it seems to me that he
is similarly haunted by a state-of-nature vision of a chaotic bundle of
impulses craving immediate gratification and being sublimated and
launched into the future only through our imaginative capacity to 'endow'
what is immediately before us with 'transcendent' significance. In one sense
we cannot see past our eyes. Therefore our gazings have to be met by
representations, that we, in some synaesthetic way 'imitate'. But then we
have to ask: how are we capable of so 'reading' our immediate field, if it
does not already express what we are already capable of relating to: concep-
tions of decency, success, fulfilment, and so on? Why not therefore say
that the concept of 'manners' does not presuppose a revulsion against
chewing with one's mouth open, but may include it? And why not say that
our desires (though, tautologically, they do exist when we have them) can
take more or less distant and more or less determinate objects? I am sure
that Scruton does us a service to remind us that the role that representations,
reminders, tokens, play in our practical lives is seriously underestimated. I
am not sure that his transcendental argument for their fundamental status,
Kantian in form and in spirit, can be accepted.
If we see 'selves' as having, as a matter of course, social characters, out-
looks and aspirations, if in other words we take forms of life as 'given' and
not as constructed out of, or imposed on, a chaos of individual impulses,
then, not only are we not forced into the kind of 'transformations' that
Scruton would have us make, we are further released from his preoccupation
with an aesthetics of the 'immediate present'. Moreover, we arc less inclined
than Scruton to counterpose 'the social order' with its Augustan and Bradleyan
norms of 'the appropriate' to 'the jungle of gratifications' and are able to
see human activities as more pluralistic and potentially mutually conflictual
things. 'The objective order' is something that we are part of, or it is a merely
ideological fantasy. That is why Marxism, with its insistence on the 'objecti-
vity' of everyday human activities, ill deserves the dismissive treatment
Scruton administers in Chapter 6.
To finish this discussion leaving the impression that Scruton's book is not
an extremely interesting, instructive and valuable one4* would be unjust.
Although I have expressed disagreement with much of its philosophical
framework, part of the virtue of this book is that it is able to say so much
that is illuminating and important within its unevenly operating constraints.
While I think the book would have benefited from the use of fewer examples
(Scruton assumes an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of buildings and an
almost professional grasp of terminology), an incidental benefit of the book
is that it fosters the detailed interest in architecture that it manifests.. The
book is attractively presented. Its many photographs, while tending to
promote a sense of the specialness of 'architectural appreciation' (where are
 ANTHONY SKUXEN 265
the busy crowds? What is it like to work in a building?), enable the reader
to respond to Scruton's invitation to reflect independently on a topic whose
importance and intellectual challenge he does much to establish.43

REFERENCES
1
Scott, page 258. contemplation of an object for its own
1
This article is a review discussion of Roger sake', page 239.
Scruton's The Aesthetics of Architecture. 14 Scruton, pages 40-1.
Mcthuen, London, 1979. 302 pages, illus- t s Ibid., page 125.
18
trated. ^12-50; £6-95 paperback. Aesthetics and Language, ed. W. Elton
' Scruton, pages 16-17. Compare pages (Blackwell, 1959).
17
189, 206. In Symposium 209 and following. I believe
4
Ibid., page 17. Scruton is wrong, page 113, to attribute
6
Ibid., page 10. to Plato the view of beauty as an 'inter-
8
Ibid., page 292. mediary' between the lower and higher
7
Ibid., page 4. realms. It is found in both. Ordinary
8
These chapters consist in part of modified idiom is, I suggest, with Socrates.
extracts from Scruton's articles, Architec- 18 See R. V e n t u n , Complexity and Contra-
tural Aesthetics' (Vol. 13, 1973), and diction in Architecture ( N e w York, 1966).
'Architectural Taste' (Vol. 15, 1975), first 19 Scruton, page 17.
10
published in this journal. Ibid., pages 241 and following.
11
' Scruton, page 137. Ibid., page 231.
10
Ibid., page 92. " Ibid., page 240.
11 83
Ibid., page 96. Ibid., page 230.
11 34
Ibid., page 76. Ibid.
13 36
Ibid., page 77 and elsewhere. Ibid., pages 32 and following.
11
Ibid., page 82. " Ibid., page 240.
37
16
Ibid., page 95. Ibid., page 241.
38
le
Ibid., page 91. Ibid., page 247.
17 " Ibid., page 249.
Ibid., pages 91-2. 40
18 Ibid., page 248.
Ibid., page 93. 41
19
Ibid., page 230.
Ibid., pages 102-3. 41
There are relatively few printer's errors:
10
Ibid., page 123. 'arrchitectural (p.x), 'lnimicable' (p. 23),
11
Ibid., page 56. 'value', 'surrounds' (p. 149), 'thought'
" Ibid., page 112, but see the second (p. 196), 'that' (p. 235), 'passiom' (p. 276),
thoughts on page 113. should be 'architectural', 'inimical',
13 'valued', 'surround', 'though', 'than',
The tension is shown by his saying on one
hand that aesthetic experience requires no 'passim'.
'special attitude' of 'disinterestedness' 41 Potential readers may wish to examine
(etc.), page 206, and on the other that Scruton's own brief Summary of his
aesthetic understanding is 'the imaginative book on page 259.