An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture

Rating:
Summary: Probing the white underbelly of postmodernism
Review: A fascinating tour through the last three centuries of culture. This book gave me my first real grasp of what modern and postmodern labels are all about. Scruton appears to be an advocate of natural law (that which is good becomes obvious to the enquiring mind) perceived through the lens of high culture, music, art etc. However, he tends to go back in time to find relevant examples. As usual with this sort of diatribe there is nothing really good happening in our day. Scruton has a major Wagner thing going on here. His twilight of the gods philosophy goes so well together with Wagner its not surprising. Unfortunately, Wagner is dead. So what is a person to do?

Rating:
Summary: Insightful here and there
Review: For those familar with Roger Scruton's brillant essays for City Journal, this book offers more of the same. And, while Scruton vigorously argues against the virulent form of nihilism that characterises our age, his own philosophical timidity leaves little by way of solution to many of the problems he lays at the door of modernity and its proponents. In the first chapter, Scruton provides a kind of reductivist anthropological-psychological analysis of religion that would seem to completely demystify Christianity. Scruton notes the important social and psychological functions "ritual" plays in affirming moral identity and transitional phases in an individual's life with respect to the collective an individual helps comprise. Scruton then develops this line of thought by way of introducing his working thesis: when a civilization no longer believes in God, it can either affirm those values that speak to the human Good religion held in place, or it can attempt to find some sense of authenticity and meaning in rejecting the Old Order altogether. Scruton claims his book will argue for the first option, given the destructive, evil nature of the latter. However, herein lies the problem: by adhering to a form of what seems to be little more than a variation on Enlightenment pragmatic liberalism, Scruton himself falls victim to nihilism. His language implies that he himself rejects the idea that there is a transcendent, mind-independent Truth that ontologically grounds man's being. But if this is the case, whatever moral or aesthetic view of the world one adopts will be as arbitrary as any other: reason will not be able to determine a 'fact of the matter' with regard to the Good. In the face of such a state of affairs, Scruton seems to recommend that we avoid those things that are harmful to a virtuous order of things -- this being understood in Aristotelian terms. But if there is no God, then, as the nihilist would say, everything becomes lawful. The anemic version of liberalism afoot here is just that: either you side with the Old Order -- God, Tsar, and Country (in that order) -- or you try and provide people with a reason for believing in empty philosophies. The same revolutionary relativism that Scruton takes to task in modernity has infected Scruton's own philosophical assumptions. This does not change the fact, however, that he offers many excellent insights and critiques of modernity. The latter is what recommneds reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: "May I Know the Whole ...
Review: of which you are so beautiful a part," was a favourite prayer of the man about whom I wrote my doctoral dissertation, the philosopher of religion, William Earnest Hocking. Scruton's conclusion to his work on modern culture reminded me of that prayer. Initially, like many other reviewers on this site, I was annoyed with what I thought were too few answers. And yet the more I pondered Scruton's reference to to the natural piety of Wordsworth, and the ethos of Confucianism, I found myself agreeing with the suggestions he offers.

Again, as with at least one other reviewer, I felt that "Yoofanasia" is worth the price of the book. The tragedy is, indeed, that many of those who might benefit most from these insights are probably unlikely to read the book or this chapter and possibily unable to do so. As one who second career involved thirty years of trying to get adolescents to learn to think, and who refused to buy into the cult of self-esteem and child-centred education, Scruton is right on in this analysis. When I pondered my own experience of how ungrateful were most of these charges of mine, it seemed eminently clear that natural piety could provide some corrective to that and the civility, courtesy, and deference to wisdom of traditional Confucianism could do that as well.

I recommend the book particularly to educators concerned about schools which are warehouses for adolescents and for those who want to make of them anything but. I recommend it for those concerned with media ecology. I recommend it for those whose own hearts leap up when they behold rainbows in the sky, or the warmth of furry, purring kittens, or the smiling, silent face of their beloved.

Catherine Berry Stidsen, Cayuga, Ontario, Canada

Rating:
Summary: Insightful here and there
Review: Roger Scruton has written a very good book. He divides culture into three 'forms': common, high, and popular. He is unashamed in his belief in the primacy of high culture, which is linked to common culture, and considers what popular culture offers far less significant than what higher culture gives us. But that does not mean that Scruton merely dismisses popular culture; rather, it takes up at least three chapters, in which Foucault, Derrida and youth culture (including music) are carefully examined and the bankruptcy of their appeal easily exposed. In that sense the book lives up to the title of the series ('An Intelligent Person's Guide to... '), and Scruton is quite clear on this in the preface. Its audience is thus university students and academics, and possibly the interested, educated common reader. I consider the chapter on youth culture ('Yoofanasia') particularly good and it is just unfortunate that those who may well have their eyes opened by it are the least likely to read it - or to be able to read it. This is, and will continue to be, an unpopular book in fashionable circles; after all, it is by an unfashionable man. On these grounds alone, the book demands to be read, and those with strong ideas on culture will not fail to engage with it.

Rating:
Summary: A Cultured Book about Culture
Review: Roger Scruton has written a very good book. He divides culture into three 'forms': common, high, and popular. He is unashamed in his belief in the primacy of high culture, which is linked to common culture, and considers what popular culture offers far less significant than what higher culture gives us. But that does not mean that Scruton merely dismisses popular culture; rather, it takes up at least three chapters, in which Foucault, Derrida and youth culture (including music) are carefully examined and the bankruptcy of their appeal easily exposed. In that sense the book lives up to the title of the series ('An Intelligent Person's Guide to... '), and Scruton is quite clear on this in the preface. Its audience is thus university students and academics, and possibly the interested, educated common reader. I consider the chapter on youth culture ('Yoofanasia') particularly good and it is just unfortunate that those who may well have their eyes opened by it are the least likely to read it - or to be able to read it. This is, and will continue to be, an unpopular book in fashionable circles; after all, it is by an unfashionable man. On these grounds alone, the book demands to be read, and those with strong ideas on culture will not fail to engage with it.

Rating:
Summary: 'the restoration of man to himself'
Review: Roger Scruton's guide to contemporary culture is a creation of spirit. While many breathe the unreal air of commercial fantasies, Scruton argued the experiences of sanctity and redemption must be kept alive. Scruton not only urged us to live a life richer in values, he championed his vision in terms of values. While I would have preferred a rigorous, intellectual approach, Scruton's captivating prose alone compelled my forgiveness.

The first five chapters explain how we arrived at where we are today. Central to Scruton's thesis was his idea that our cultural heritage finds its source in religion, and shares its social and emotional topography. After all, when religion and art are healthy, they are inseparable. Scruton naturally spent considerable time elaborating upon the many benefits of religion, including community, redemption, freedom, and an ethical vision. But as science arrived on the scene, Scruton explains in a separate chapter, enlightened thinkers saw man in universal terms. Worship gave way to nature, status gave way to contract, and religion become direct without convention. Yet objects of aesthetic appreciation remained for us to rejoice in. Romanticism, the subject matter of the fifth chapter, was an outgrowth of this, an attempt to reestablish community, locality, and warmth. Romanticists wanted to preserve the old way of life, the culture of the people, even if they had to take refuge in the mysterious and the unreal.

Chapters 6-9 address modernism and its consequences. For Scruton, modernism was a spiritual pilgrimage. Man came into shock as he confronted the fact that everything and anything is now for sale. Modernists therefore tried to recover the tradition and guard itself from popular entertainment by creating new "rites of passage." Scruton even identified primitivism as a part of this journey; it seeks to find the human spirit in lost tribes unvisited by the salesman. Scruton devoted a chapter to kitsch and how it became a problem for the modernist. One could cynically choose to be kitsch, or one could be anti-kitsch and remain in a state of perpetual repudiation. Post-modern art became less abstract and more constructive, and as a result, we now have what Scruton believes is an institutional flippancy where everything is pretence.

The last few chapters of the book discuss youth culture and the ferocious attacks by many intellectuals upon high culture. Keeping the quasi-religious language until the end, Scruton tells a story how the faithless, ignored priests we call intellectuals became spiteful and viewed everything with suspicion, leading to their routinized culture of repudiation. Another chapter was assigned to the sociology and value of the ubiquitous youth culture, and the book wound down with a chapter about the form of incantation known as deconstruction.

True or false, valid or invalid, this book provides spiritual nourishment. It asks to leave behind the isolating waxworks of fantasy where we feed our appetites, the unreal world where we search for real surrogates absolutely lifelike and absolutely dead. Instead, Scruton opens the door to the realm of the imagination. Here, our emotions are consecrated, we stand outside of nature in the world ends, and are redeemed in an enduring context.

Rating:
Summary: A Meditation On Culture
Review: Scruton's title is somewhat misleading - he's written, not so much a guide to modern culture, as an extended meditation on its history, beginning with Religion, and continuing on through the Enlightenment, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. As you might expect from this philosopher, he does not approve of the trend - "art is the consolation prize for our loss of religion."

The question is, what is to be done about culture, and why should it matter? Scruton's book is engaging and provocative, but short on answers. It is perhaps worth reading as a brief history of how Western culture lost its way. But those who are hoping for an incisive diagnosis, and a clarion call to arms, will come away disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: A Meditation On Culture
Review: Scruton's title is somewhat misleading - he's written, not so much a guide to modern culture, as an extended meditation on its history, beginning with Religion, and continuing on through the Enlightenment, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. As you might expect from this philosopher, he does not approve of the trend - "art is the consolation prize for our loss of religion."

The question is, what is to be done about culture, and why should it matter? Scruton's book is engaging and provocative, but short on answers. It is perhaps worth reading as a brief history of how Western culture lost its way. But those who are hoping for an incisive diagnosis, and a clarion call to arms, will come away disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Twilight of the gods
Review: This is a great guided tour through the last few centuries of culture. Scruton appears to be an advocate of natural law (the notion that the good will become obvious to the enquiring mind)--believing that the doorway to this epiphany is through high culture. However, he has to go back a century or so to find good examples. It seems that there is nothing worthwhile happening these days. Scruton has a major Wagner thing going on -- they are on the same page as far as the whole twilight of the gods idea goes.

Unfortunately, Wagner is dead and we are left all alone.