Roger Scruton who has died of lung cancer aged 75, was a philosopher and a controversial public intellectual. Active in the fields of aesthetics, art, music, political philosophy and architecture, both inside and outside the academic world, he dedicated himself to nurturing beauty, “re-enchanting the world” and giving intellectual rigour to conservatism.
He wrote more than 50 books, including perceptive works on Spinoza, Kant, Wittgenstein and the history of philosophy, and four novels, as well as columns on wine, hunting and current affairs, and was a talented pianist and composer.
A member of the traditionalist-conservative Salisbury Group, he helped found the Salisbury Review, which he edited from 1982 to 2001. This quarterly, which was circulated in the Soviet bloc, often in samizdat form, was criticised in Britain for having retrograde attitudes. In 1984 it defended Ray Honeyford, the Bradford headteacher who had disputed the value of multicultural education. Consequent hostility from colleagues prompted Scruton to abandon in 1992 his professorship in aesthetics at what is now Birkbeck, University of London, where he had started as a lecturer in 1971. Though he felt this had scuppered his academic career, in the event it freed him for activities and adventures on a wider stage.
Confissões de um herético pdf by Roger Scruton
Esta coletânea de artigos é fruto de uma década de engajamento com a cultura britânica e norte-americana. Alguns foram publicados em papel, outros na internet, outros ainda estão sendo apresentados ao público pela primeira vez aqui. Descrevo-os como confissões, uma que vez revelam aspectos de meu pensamento que, caso as palavras de meus críticos sejam levadas a sério, deveriam ter sido mantidos em segredo. Compilei material de cunho acadêmico e me esforcei para incluir somente artigos que lidam com assuntos que interessam a qualquer pessoa inteligente, nos tempos voláteis em que vivemos. Roger Scruton