Description
Book SynopsisRoger Scruton''s classic work on conservatism, reissued for a new political moment.
Over the past twenty years, Roger Scruton has been developing a conservative view of human beings, society and culture. In the book his arguments are recommendations with the aim of convincing the reader that rumors of the death of Western civilization are greatly exaggerated. Much of our present self doubt, argues Scruton, is brought about by the Darwinian theory of evolution. Darwin encourages us to see human emotion as a reproductive strategy. This is a perspective which Scruton attacks vehemently especially in its modern proponents--Desmond Morris and Richard Dawkins. This the author believes undermines the belief in freedom and the moral imperatives that stem from it.
Trade ReviewAn intelllectual challenge and an entertaining read. -- Richard Hayton, Political Studies Review
What may be found here is a collection of acute observations about modern attitudes, arguments undermining their essential assumptions, and references to the past which enable the reader to set moral and intellectual enquiry into a wide frame of reference. The essays are certainly polemical, and are clearly intended to be; they are, however, elevated above the trivial rhetoric of modern politics, and achieve a distinction that is at once apparent and readily accessible. His essays are prophetic assaults upon the superficial and false understandings inherent in the substitute morality now mandatory in modern materialist thought...there remains intellectual engagement of a high order. -- Edward Norman * Church Times *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Conserving Nations Conserving Nature Eating our Friends Dying Quietly Meaningful Marriage Extinguishing the Light Religion and Enlightenment The Totalitarian Temptation Newspeak and Eurospeak The Nature of Evil Eliot and Conservatism
Acknowledgements Name Index Subject Index
