Difference between revisions of "Roger Scruton"
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<blockquote style="background-color:ivory;border:1pt solid Darkgoldenrod;padding:1%;font-size:10pt">What I saw was an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans. When I asked my friends what they wanted, what were they trying to achieve, all I got back was this ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook. I was disgusted by it, and thought there must be a way back to the defence of western civilisation against these things. That's when I became a conservative. I knew I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down. <ref>Nicholas Wroe, '[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/oct/28/politics Thinking for England]', ''Guardian'', 28 October 2000</ref></blockquote> | <blockquote style="background-color:ivory;border:1pt solid Darkgoldenrod;padding:1%;font-size:10pt">What I saw was an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans. When I asked my friends what they wanted, what were they trying to achieve, all I got back was this ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook. I was disgusted by it, and thought there must be a way back to the defence of western civilisation against these things. That's when I became a conservative. I knew I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down. <ref>Nicholas Wroe, '[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/oct/28/politics Thinking for England]', ''Guardian'', 28 October 2000</ref></blockquote> | ||
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| + | Scruton has complained that philosophy is not taken seriously by the [[Conservative Party]] and that ideas are simply viewed as tools for class struggle. In his memoirs he writes that: 'Ideas, in the Tory vision, are fleeting by-products of the social and political process, which are no sooner produced than forgotten. In this and other respects the Tory Party behaves as though Marx were its principal mentor: it treats philosophy as ‘ideology’, and economics as the motor of social life.' | ||
==Tobacco money== | ==Tobacco money== | ||
Revision as of 11:51, 15 March 2011
Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is an influential conservative philosopher. He was a Resident Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge from 1969-71 and is considered to be a member of the so called Peterhouse Right. He co-founded the Conservative Philosophy Group with John Casey and was editor of the Salisbury Review from 1982 to 2000. [1]
In 2002 he was caught taking payments from the tobacco industry in exchange for writing pro-smoking articles in the Wall Street Journal.
Contents
Views
According to a profile in the Times Higher Education, Scruton 'came from a Labour-voting family, [but] his experiences of Paris in May 1968 shifted him sharply to the Right.' [2] In 2000 Scruton told the Guardian:
What I saw was an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans. When I asked my friends what they wanted, what were they trying to achieve, all I got back was this ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook. I was disgusted by it, and thought there must be a way back to the defence of western civilisation against these things. That's when I became a conservative. I knew I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down. [3]
Scruton has complained that philosophy is not taken seriously by the Conservative Party and that ideas are simply viewed as tools for class struggle. In his memoirs he writes that: 'Ideas, in the Tory vision, are fleeting by-products of the social and political process, which are no sooner produced than forgotten. In this and other respects the Tory Party behaves as though Marx were its principal mentor: it treats philosophy as ‘ideology’, and economics as the motor of social life.'
Tobacco money
Scruton was caught taking payments from the tobacco industry in exchange for writing pro-smoking articles in the Wall Street Journal.
After The Guardian's disclosure in 2002 that Scruton had 'asked Japan Tobacco for a £1,000 a month rise to an annual £66,000 to help place articles defending the right to smoke in newspapers, including the WSJ, the Financial Times, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Independent,' he was dropped by both the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. [4]
Affiliation
- OpenDemocracy
- Institute of Economic Affairs
- Conservative Philosophy Group - founder
- Right Reason - contributor
- Town and Country Forum
- Claridge Press - founder
- CEC Government Relations - chairman
- Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies
- New Atlantic Initiative
- University of Buckingham
- International Free Press Society - Board of Advisors
Notes
- ↑ ‘SCRUTON, Prof. Roger Vernon’, Who's Who 2011, A & C Black, 2011; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2010 ; online edn, Oct 2010 [Accessed 14 March 2011]
- ↑ Matthew Reisz, 'Right-thinking aesthetic', Times Higher Education, 25 June 2009.
- ↑ Nicholas Wroe, 'Thinking for England', Guardian, 28 October 2000
- ↑ Rebecca Allison, Wall Street Journal drops Scruton over tobacco cash, The Guardian, 5 February 2002
