{"id":3413,"date":"2020-01-12T15:55:05","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T15:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/01\/12\/scruton-quits-the-sublunary\/"},"modified":"2020-01-12T15:55:05","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T15:55:05","slug":"scruton-quits-the-sublunary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/01\/12\/scruton-quits-the-sublunary\/","title":{"rendered":"Scruton Quits the Sublunary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Roger's earthy tenure lasted a mere 75 years.  Philosophy is an old man's game, as I heard it said in my youth; Sir Roger fell short of the Russellian by 22 years.   Steven Hayward<\/a> of Powerline<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In the introduction to his book The Meaning of Conservatism<\/em>, Scruton writes that \u201cConservatism may rarely announce itself in maxims, formulae, or aims. Its essence is inarticulate, and its expression, when compelled, skeptical.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Why \u201cinarticulate\u201d? Because, as he explains elsewhere, the liberal has the easy job in the modern world. The liberal points at the imperfections and defects of existing institutions or the existing social order, strikes a pose of indignation, and huffs that surely something better is required, usually with the attitude that the something better is simply a matter of will. The conservative faces the tougher challenge of understanding and explaining the often subtle reasons why existing institutions, no matter how imperfect, work better than speculative alternatives.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, an essence cannot be inarticulate, only a person or his literary production.  It would be better to say that the essence of conservatism is not wholly articulable. It cannot be made into a system, and the conservative is indeed skeptical of comprehensive theories. He stands on the terra firma<\/em> of a gnarly reality which, though intrinsically intelligible, is only partially intelligible to him; a reality independent of human dreams, wishes, and wants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hayward goes too easy on the contemporary liberal or 'progressive.'  He should have pointed out that the 'liberal' will tear down what provably works without assurance that anything better can be put in its place. 'Progressives' have shown their willingness to break millions of eggs for an omelet the  possibility of which they have no good reason to believe in. The Left is pointlessly destructive and ever on the slouch toward the big Nihil<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Scruton\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sir Roger's earthy tenure lasted a mere 75 years.  Philosophy is an old man's game, as I heard it said in my youth; Sir Roger fell short of the Russellian by 22 years.   Steven Hayward of Powerline: In the introduction to his book The Meaning of Conservatism, Scruton writes that \u201cConservatism may rarely announce itself … Continue reading “Scruton Quits the Sublunary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}