Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Series Editors
David F. Hardwick
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Leslie Marsh
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
This series offers a forum to writers concerned that the central presup-
positions of the liberal tradition have been severely corroded, neglected,
or misappropriated by overly rationalistic and constructivist approaches.
The hardest-won achievement of the liberal tradition has been the
wrestling of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations
of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries. The very precondition of
knowledge is the exploitation of the epistemic virtues accorded by soci-
ety’s situated and distributed manifold of spontaneous orders, the DNA
of the modern civil condition.
With the confluence of interest in situated and distributed liberalism
emanating from the Scottish tradition, Austrian and behavioral economics,
non-Cartesian philosophy and moral psychology, the editors are soliciting
proposals that speak to this multidisciplinary constituency. Sole or joint
authorship submissions are welcome as are edited collections, broadly
theoretical or topical in nature.
Ferenc Hörcher
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
This book has its root in my decades-long acquaintance with the late Sir
Roger Scruton. We kept meeting at academic events, and I also inter-
viewed him regularly, when I had been working as a journalist for ten
years after the millennium. Without the first-hand impressions I gained
during those years of him as a character, this book would have been a dif-
ferent one. For philosophy is not simply about epistemic claims—for
example, of certain truths concerning the natural world and the human
realm. It is also about character formation, and the efforts to live a mean-
ingful and whole life. Although Scruton was not exactly an extrovert,
when getting into human relationships, he was able to open up and show
something of his own internal mental landscape. Yet he died painfully
early, and I had to realise that I missed the opportunity to get to know
him in a deep enough manner. What remained, instead, was to get a
more intimate knowledge of his thoughts, as presented in his philosophi-
cal and autobiographical texts. I made the decision in the year of his
death to write this book, and Palgrave Macmillan was ready to embark
with me on this project—I am grateful to them for this trust and confi-
dence. Its main idea is to shed a new light on Scruton’s achievements, by
connecting the two fields of philosophy he was engaged in most: Scruton,
the political philosopher and Scruton, the aesthete and art critic.
During the one and the half years of intensive work on this book after
his death I ran into great debts. First of all, it was Sophie Scruton who
v
vi Preface
encouraged me to take the path I intended. Sir Roger’s one time personal
assistant, Izzy Larthe, also offered her help when I needed. As for the
academic support, the list is too long. Yet the most important was the
help I received from Bob Grant and Anthony O’Hear, from among the
closest friends of Sir Roger, who both saw the first version of the text of
the whole book, and tried to help me polishing it. John O’Sullivan, presi-
dent of the Danube Institute, and his wife, Melissa, also believed in my
project. Of the younger generation I had the chance to meet and work
together to cultivate the memory of Sir Roger, with Alicja Gescinska, and
Samuel Hughes. I earned a friend in the person of Marek Matraszek,
another close ally and disciple of Sir Roger. Two organisers of the Humane
Philosophy Project and the Vanenburg Society, Mikolaj Slawkowski-
Rode and Jonathan Price were also very helpful. I thank the invitation of
Fisher Derderian, founder and executive director of the Roger Scruton
Legacy Foundation to join the scientific committee of the Foundation. I
also owe a lot to the Common Sense Society, and especially to Anna
(Stumpf ) Smith Lacey and Marion Smith, two of its founding pillars. I
found the non-partisan, civil and educative aims of Liberty Fund also
extremely fruitful, and I appreciate the activity of a number of its board
members and fellows, including Emilio J. Pacheco, Douglas J. Den Uyl,
Christine Henderson and Peter C. Mentzel. Since I began working on
this project, a great number of senior, as well as junior academics con-
tacted me on Twitter, academia.edu and ResearchGate, giving me advice
and encouragement. Especially promising is the recent establishment of
an online friendly circle, the Conservative Philosophy Club, inspired by
the Conservative Philosophy Group, established, among others, by
Sir Roger.
The two institutions where I am affiliated, The Research Institute of
Politics and Government of the University of Public Service and the
Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities, both
in Budapest, provided for me excellent working conditions for the proj-
ect. I am especially grateful to Bernát Török, earlier student of mine at
the Catholic University, present-day director of the Research Centre of
the University of Public Service, for his great support, as well as to András
Koltay, who invited me to the university. I am also grateful to the present
rector of the University, Prof. Gergely Deli, as well as to Dániel Schmal,
Preface vii
diector of the Institute of Philosophy. I also benefited from the kind sup-
port of the network of Scruton Cafés in Budapest, in these friendly loci
some of my ideas could be tried with a benevolent audience.
As usual, Steve Patrick edited the English of my book, and Andrea
Robotka took care of the copy editing of the text. I am grateful to both,
as to Palgrave Macmillan’s reviewers and editors who also did their best to
raise its quality. All the remaining spots are my own responsibility.
I dedicate this book to my grandson, Sámuel Hörcher, who was born
only a week ago (June, 2022).
1 Introduction:
Politics, Art and Philosophy 1
Fields of Human Activity 1
Oakeshott’s Modes of Experience 1
Aristotle’s Forms of Knowledge and Activity 5
Plato on Beauty, Poetry and the Divine 9
Practical Life and Contemplation 12
Art and Politics 14
Politics and Philosophy 16
Art and Philosophy 20
Scruton’s Triangle: Philosophy, Art and Politics 24
2 The
Emergence of a Philosophy of Art and Politics 33
Paris 1968 35
Casey and The Peterhouse Right 37
John Casey 37
Maurice Cowling 40
David Watkin 43
Cultural Criticism 46
F.R. Leavis 46
Studying the Law 47
ix
x Contents
3 The
Political Philosophy of Conservatism (Vita Activa) 55
The Salisbury Group and the Salisbury Review 55
Underground Teaching in Communist Central Europe 58
Conservatism: Doctrine or Philosophy 60
The Meaning of Conservatism (1980) 61
A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism (2006) 67
How to Be a Conservative (2014) 76
Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (2017) 86
National Attachment 97
England. An Elegy (2000) 98
The Need for Nations (2004) 104
The Concept of Oikophilia 112
4 The
Theory of Art and Culture135
The Theory of Culture 136
Modern Culture (1998) 137
Culture Counts (2007) 142
The Theory of Beauty 149
Beauty (2009) 149
In Praise of the Vernacular: Aesthetics, Politics and
Architecture 157
The Example of Watkin 159
The Aesthetics of Architecture (1979) 168
The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age
of Nihilism (1994) 185
New Urbanism, Poundbury and the Building Better
Commission 200
In Praise of Wagner: Metaphysics, Politics and Music 213
The Politics and Metapolitics of Wagner 215
Music as a Communal Experience 228
5 From
the Philosophy of Art to Metaphysics (Vita
Contemplativa)255
Metaphysics I. The Face of God 257
Painting the Fall of Man 257
The Gifford Lectures and Natural Theology 259
Contents xi
6 Conclusion.
The Duality of Scruton’s Philosophy of
Politics and Art323
Vita Activa: The British Idea of the Rule of Law 326
Vita Contemplativa: Philosophy of Art 332
The Philosophy of Politics, Art—and Religion 334
A
uthor Index359
S
ubject Index371
1
Introduction: Politics, Art
and Philosophy
Let us start our story with the name of the British philosopher, Michael
Oakeshott. Although Oakeshott and Scruton were both representatives
of twentieth-century British conservatism, their particular ways of philo-
sophical thinking were remarkably different.1 While they both represent
more or less Burkean until the very end of his life, defending the virtues
of the British political tradition, with its cherished ideas of the King-in-
Parliament, the unwritten constitution, habeas corpus and Bill of Rights.
What did change perhaps, over the years, is that he discovered in that
very tradition ideas which had religious roots, like the relevance of author-
ity, pietas and human friendship. All of these concepts, however, had
ancient Greek philosophical backgrounds as well.
basis, selecting the particular story line which will be able to show the
universal in the particular. Aristotle also provides a rather detailed account
of how the practically wise person chooses. Practical wisdom is, in fact,
the ability “to deliberate well” in—as we would say—difficult cases. “The
unconditionally good deliberator, however, is the one capable of aiming
at and hitting, in accord with rational calculation, the best for a human
being of things doable in action.”30 The phronimos (the practically wise
person) is able to deliberate well, because he possesses the virtue of char-
acter or deliberate choice (prohairesis), which enables him to find the
correct desire and the true reason for that choice. While theoretical
thought is purely either true or false, in the case of non-theoretical
thought, which is either practical or productive, “the good state is truth
in agreement with correct desire.”31 Hence, in Aristotle’s view, in order to
make good choice, a human agent needs both to know the world cor-
rectly, but also to desire correctly as well—and these might be regarded as
the objective and the subjective criteria of choice.
Choice, then, is crucial in both practical and productive thought.
Aristotle assumes both of them to have the same structure. This is also
true of the early modern teaching on moral and aesthetic judgement,
which was also Aristotelian in its inspiration.32 The third Earl of
Shaftesbury, for example, claimed that there was a sense of right and
wrong, which enabled human beings to judge the affections other people
have—those affections which determined the quality of the actions those
people were engaged in.33 Shaftesbury was also interested in the way we
make aesthetic judgements, that is to say the way we judge whether some-
thing, someone or some activity is beautiful or not. It is also important to
note that, as he saw it, both moral sense and the sense of beauty are born
with us, but at the same time both of them require education, through
which they can be refined.34 This education is meant to be carried out
both at the level of the individual and at the level of a community, with a
multi-generational dimension as well: “Taste or Judgment … can hardly
come ready form’d with us into the World… Use, Practice and Culture
must precede the Understanding and Wit of such an advanc’d Size and
Growth as this. A legitimate and just Taste can neither be begotten, made,
conceiv’d, or produc’d, without the antecedent Labour and Pains of
Criticism.”35 This is important, because it foreshadows the way that the
1 Introduction: Politics, Art and Philosophy 9
There was another ancient Greek thinker who made a great impact on
both Oakeshott and Scruton. And that, of course is Plato. Plato’s Republic
and Symposium both address the relationship of politics and poetry (or
art, in more general terms) in respect to philosophy. Although Plato did
not influence Scruton’s political thought directly, his philosophy of
beauty, which he developed—among other places—in Symposium might
be considered relevant for an understanding of Scruton’s understanding
of beauty as something which leads human beings towards the meta-
physical dimension.
One should recall in this context Socrates’ story in Plato about the
prophetess Diotima. Perhaps the most interesting and famous part of her
narrative concerns the rise of the soul towards absolute and pure beauty.
Plato in the Republic criticises the poet, because he leads us away from the
truth. Yet Socrates’ teacher of love, Diotima, presents the case differently.
Diotima reminds us that poiesis in the most general sense means to pro-
duce or create: “poetry is more than a single thing. For of anything
10 F. Hörcher
whatever that passes from not being into being the whole cause is com-
posing or poetry” (205b–c).38 Poetry in the narrow sense is only one kind
of production, which is connected with music and verse: “a single section
disparted from the whole of poetry—merely the business of music and
meters—is entitled with the name of the whole. This and no more is
called poetry; those only who possess this branch of the art are poets”
(205c). In Diotima’s teaching, the relationship between producing in the
general sense and producing in the narrow sense is compared to eros.
There is a general sense of eros, wishing the Good and happiness, “all that
desire of good things and of being happy” (205d). At the same time one
should not forget about the narrow sense of eros, which we use about
those whose wish is to have the Good and happiness in a specific way, “all
those who pursue him seriously in one of his several forms obtain, as lov-
ing and as lovers, the name of the whole” (205d). The tricky thing of
Diotima’s tale is that she does not simply draw attention to the same logi-
cal structure between the general term and the specific sense of it, of
poiesis and eros. She also connects poetry and eros substantially. She claims
that lovers, in other words those who wish to have the Good for ever with
them, act in a specific way: they create something beautiful. Love, the
wish to have the Good, is “begetting on a beautiful thing by means of
both the body and the soul” (206b). Diotima defines begetting as “the
conjunction of man and woman is a begetting for both” (206c).
Procreation is divine in a certain sense, because it is the poiesis of what is
immortal, “an immortal element in the creature that is mortal” (206c).
Moreover, the divine cannot take place in the ugly, because that would be
discordant. Thus, Diotima also proved that the wish to have the Good for
ever for ourselves leads us to the immortal: it is also the search for
the divine.
The next stage is to show that this procreation can take place not only
in the body, but also in the soul. In this connection, Diotima mentions
both poets and statesmen. Both of them conceive and bring forth some-
thing that is proper for the soul. And prudence and the virtues are surely
proper for the soul. That is why both the poet and the statesman are
prudent according to Plato. Considering everything we know about the
virtues, it becomes clear that “of these the begetters are all the poets and
those craftsmen who are styled”—in Diotima’s narrative—“inventors.
1 Introduction: Politics, Art and Philosophy 11
Now by far the highest and fairest part of prudence is that which con-
cerns the regulation of cities and habitations; it is called sobriety and
justice” (209a). This suggests that poets and statesman are aiming at the
same things: to have the Good for themselves. To achieve this, they “cre-
ate in the soul,” surpassing their own selfish interests, and through that
activity they eventually become prudent and virtuous.
After showing how close poets stand to statesman, Diotima, the teacher
of Socrates in Plato’s dialogue, identifies different kinds or levels of pro-
duction. Sexual procreation itself is regarded by her as a natural form of
poiesis. A higher level of beauty can be achieved by creating that which
lasts for ever than can be attained by creating mortal bodies. “Homer and
Hesiod and all the other good poets” created poems to “procure them a
glory immortally renewed in the memory of men” (209d). But an even
higher form of immortal beauty is that created by the lawmakers and
those who govern cities (209e).
It would seem, then, that statesmanship is at a higher level of creating
beauty than natural procreation or poetry. The highest level of beauty,
however, is achieved only by those who confront not one beautiful body
or soul in the material, particular world, but “a province of beauty,” the
“beauty in the mass” (210c). This realm is only discovered by the philoso-
pher, who contemplates “the main ocean of the beautiful” (210d). It is
the philosopher who will be able to achieve “a certain single knowledge
connected with a beauty,” which is akin to a metaphysically inspired aes-
thetics. He catches sight of “a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature”
and this is “the final object of all those previous toils.” The object he
contemplates is “ever-existent, and neither comes to be nor perishes, nei-
ther waxes nor wanes” (211a). This is, of course, the vision of the divine
being, which is the realm of the theologian in European culture. In other
words, the hierarchy which Diotima argues for, includes, in ascending
order, sexual love, poetry, politics, philosophy (together with aesthetics)
and finally theology. As we shall see, Scruton’s philosophy in these fields
was indeed strongly influenced by this vision of the hierarchy of forms of
knowledge and of the love of beauty.
12 F. Hörcher
literary skill” made him famous not only within the city but also far
beyond its walls.47 Salutati’s master and example was the Roman orator,
man of letters and statesman, Cicero, from whom he learnt the relevance
of rhetorical abilities in political life. Yet he learnt from his masters in
Latin poetry, Virgil and Petrarch, that the greatest human achievements
are the achievements of the intellect, even if he had serious doubts, “a
broad scepticism about the capabilities of human reason in divine
matters.”48
Vita activa and vita contemplativa—these two patterns of intellectual
life remained constant in modern European culture, spawning a long line
of reflections on the role of the intellectual in politics, and the virtues of
living in an ivory tower of humanistic studies and self-reflection, popula-
rised by examples like that of Montaigne.
famously claimed: “We possess art lest we perish of the truth,”49 suggest-
ing that we should learn from artists “how to make things beautiful,
attractive, desirable for ourselves when they are not.”50
The relationship between modern art and politics was not ideal. Since
at least the Enlightenment, and certainly in the age of Romanticism, art-
ists in the empire were often regarded as subversive trouble-makers, and
the politics of the age considered the relationship between art and culture
as politically dubious or downright suspicious. Nietzsche himself was not
able to find his place in the cultural policy of Bismarck’s Germany, and
his writings were to inspire radical political ideas in the early twentieth
century.
Just as in the age of Pericles in ancient Greece, Florentine humanism
had a long-lasting effect on the modern understanding of the public role
of art. Royal courts and great urban centres competed in a Europe-wide
rivalry of sponsorship of the arts. From the fine arts to theatre, from
architecture to music, from literature to rhetoric, artists and intellectuals
could establish their reputation by contributing to the unashamed praise
of their own political leader or the community. Art, from the Renaissance
onwards, became well known as the best support of a political power’s
fame and reputation, among the best statesmen and their advisers in the
rich courts of the continent, as well as in the most thriving cities of
Europe. This was the contemporary form of what came to be called soft
power, the use of art and culture to raise prestige and earn public
recognition.
the Great. Certainly, one can question the actual political effectiveness of
an education led by a famous philosopher. Still, both rulers and republi-
can communities seemed to be inclined to have in their entourage politi-
cal advisers, who often had philosophical erudition, besides a knowledge
of the theory of rhetoric.
In the European history of the somewhat risky relationship between
ruler and adviser, once again, Renaissance Italy stands out. If you ask
someone to name but one philosopher who was employed as a political
advisor, the most obvious answer is Niccolo Machiavelli. Indeed,
Machiavelli’s oeuvre is almost exclusively composed of political advice.
Florence was a famous centre of artistic and intellectual life in late medi-
eval and Renaissance Italy, yet the political conflicts between rival groups
of the citizenry threatened to tear the city apart, causing constant politi-
cal turmoil.
This was the political context of the activity of Machiavelli. Unlike
Plato or to some extent, even Aristotle, Machiavelli was not an idealist in
his political convictions. On the contrary, he was probably the earliest
theoretician of politics who publicly defended a political theory of real-
ism dividing his readers according to their morals, religious convictions
and political experiences. The ancients, too, had their realist authors,
notably the famous historians Thucydides, Polybius and Tacitus.
Certainly, Machiavelli was inspired by them. Yet Machiavelli was also
directly involved in political matters throughout his life. He held impor-
tant positions during the republican period of his city, collecting first-
hand experience of its actual workings. His surviving texts prove his
competence as a political thinker who exercised a profound influence.
The most vexing question of the Florentine thinker’s oeuvre is that he
seems to give contradictory pieces of advice to different clients. In spite
of the fact that he had his own political preference, probably for a repub-
lican form of government, his most famous work, The Prince, is a rather
clear-headed advice-book for an authoritarian or even tyrannical ruler.51
Machiavelli remained the paradigm case of a thinker who looked into the
abyss of practical politics and gave a realistic picture of what he saw there.
Like his ancient Roman forerunner, Cicero, whenever he was not actively
involved in political machination, he was ready to write about his own
experiences or the political past of his city, and drew from those narratives
18 F. Hörcher
Le 12. — Papa est allé aux *** ; le pasteur est venu ; il a neigé,
fait soleil, toutes les variations du ciel, et peu de chose à dire. Je ne
suis pas en train d’écrire ni de rien faire d’aimable : au contraire. Il y
a de ces jours où l’âme se recoquille et fait le hérisson. Si tu étais là
tout près, comme, hélas ! je te piquerais ! bien fort, ce me semble. Et
plût à Dieu que cela fût ! Je ne serais pas à penser que peut-être tu
n’es pas bien portant dans cet air de Paris.
où toi, nécessiteux,
Défaillant, tu prenais l’aumône dans ce creux [20] .