Roger Scruton (1944–2020)

El hecho de que a partir de las ideas de la Ilustración se propiciara la autonomía moral del individuo y su confianza en dinámicas de causa y efecto consensuadas, son vistas por Scruton como una problemática que unida a diversos debates sobre la moral de nuestro tiempo; a su juicio, solo tienen solución desde la perspectiva de un anhelo de lo trascendente y de su comprensión en términos personales.

Para ello, no se esconde, argumenta desde sus supuestos conservadores junto a las concepciones de la moral tanto kantiana como hegeliana, puestas a prueba de manera crítica; ya que el desarrollo de nuestras sociedades actuales, basadas en los valores de la Ilustración, parecen no tener en cuenta valores centrales sobre lo que el ser humano es y persigue, que a su juicio solo la religión y la familia han conseguido llevar a un estado de trascendencia como eje redentor y/o perentorio del yo (prefiere sustituir alma por yo para evitar cualquier relación religiosa).

Así, él mismo reconoce que hay que encontrar soluciones acordes con las sociedades de hoy e intentar buscar respuesta en esos ejes en descomposición, pero que aún persisten y con los que sin ellos, parece que no somos capaces ni de comprendernos ni de comprender la trascendencia de lo bueno y lo malo que un acto pueda tener en consecuencia para lo que nos conmina como seres humanos. Por ejemplo, un acto de violación en toda su dimensión de degradación moral.

Ofrece un punto de vista radical y hace una crítica a los supuestos ideológicos que a su vez más dividen a las sociedades de manera política: los ideales de libertad y justicia social. Considerando que los postulados de ambas concepciones ofrecen a su juicio respuestas incompletas tanto a los retos que presenta la humanidad como a su realidad ligada a un cuerpo que siente o la hipocresía derivada de los excesos encaminados a una justicia social que obvia los problemas persistentes en el ámbito más cercano del individuo.

Precisamente clava su crítica en cómo las sociedades modernas se establecen sobre altas dosis de consecuencialismo, carente en muchos casos de una ontología (es decir, una búsqueda de trascendencia del yo) que no se base en una voluntad heterónoma de la justicia social, que articula por ejemplo el Estado. Por lo tanto, sorprende y mucho, cómo con un cuerpo armado a base de referencias muy bien escogidas incluso saque a relucir las insalvables carencias de la psicología evolucionista en materia de dar cabida a explicaciones sobre nuestros sentimientos más allá de una supervivencia del comportamiento a través de su necesidad para la supervivencia, como citas literarias claves en el desarrollo ético y moral por facilitarnos la comprensión de nosotros mismos o citas que me han sorprendido como a Nozick o al principio de comportamiento optimizador. Tremendamente curioso. Lo que sin duda demuestra ser una defensa basada en el estudio crítico de toda una vida y con un compromiso intelectual de altura.

Sin embargo, todo eso me hace dudar. Soy consciente de que hay una verdad inherente en todo el rechazo que plantea a postulados que buscan erradicar esa base trascendental con la que el individuo supuestamente encuentra sentido y que tienen cabida tanto en la religión como en la familia. Lo que no me termina de convencer es que en ocasiones parece como si todo se redujera a recuperar lo que George Steiner explica como “anhelo del absoluto”. En esa búsqueda de estabilidad e inmutabilidad que tan jugosa e insaciable parece ser para nuestro cerebro. ¿Es que acaso no existe ninguna forma de lidiar con el caos y la realidad compleja del mundo desde nuestra consciencia de sí, que nos tenemos que mantener en el aquí y el ahora haciendo meditación sin saber muy bien cómo mantener una responsabilidad que nos merezca la pena? O lo que es lo mismo, ¿es que la autonomía es demasiado para el ser humano? Parece ser que aunque no se halle un argumento definitivo, la balanza se dirige más hacia la afirmación de una necesidad de orden y de sentido, más que una posibilidad de mantenimiento autónomo desencadenado totalmente de los yugos que los postulados de la modernidad machaconamente siempre tratan de aludir. Y Scruton no elude la responsabilidad de este hecho y declara todo un marco en torno a la fundamentación de los derechos y deberes, como de la percepción del individuo a través de sus semejantes y su relación con los mismos, como a criticar el endiosamiento de valores como la justicia social o la libertad. Es complejo el dilema, pero alguna opción tendrá que haber a dejarnos arrastrar a la destrucción de cualquier atisbo de tradición o postura no-científica, porque no todo se va a reducir al uso de la razón, o eso dice Scruton. Algo tendrá que quedar a la imperfección propia de lo que somos y a lo que significa sentirla en toda su gravedad, para lo bueno y para lo malo.

La verdad es que ha sido una de las lecturas más interesantes que he tenido en mi vida y bastante mejor que mucho de lo que he leído en la carrera, de hecho se enfrenta directamente a muchas de las ideas que me intentaron inculcar en la facultad. Lo recomiendo bastante, da para hablar largo y tendido de muchas cosas. Aunque bueno, no seré de los que se crean capaces de tratarlas como se merecen, tengo mucho que aprender todavía en ese sentido.
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Scruton’s trying to ride a line that keeps both neoliberals and “the left” on the side of evil, which is refreshing as it actually tries to carve out a niche for conservatism that isn’t just being the stooge of free market advocates. Unfortunately in his desperate paddling away from the left’s ownership of the climate issue he carries a lot of water for exactly the neoliberal globocorp types he says he disagrees with. He initially accepts their counterprogramming on climate change and repeats the usual garbage talking points trying to present the issue as entirely open, 50/50, “both sides”. Later in the book he meanders away from this and tries to present solutions on the premise that it is a real issue.
So the niche he wants to establish spirals around the word oikos and you’ll be hearing it A LOT. Like all classicist fans he takes a concept from ancient greece and molds it into something that suits current day issues, in this case he’s packaged the idea of community and civil society into this concept and will hammer it to death. Much like Niall Ferguson’s book [b:The Great Degeneration|16129479|The Great Degeneration|Niall Ferguson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372541698l/16129479._SY75_.jpg|21954506], Scruton tries to make civil society the big solution to social problems. Big government can’t be trusted. Corporations can’t be trusted. (“The left” and “neoliberals” standins, respectively). We have to trust local rule and bottom up solutions. His strongest points surround the byzantine nature of global commerce and law, and how inflexibility and red tape circuses have stalled environmental solutions. Big globocorps get away with murder because they have the lawyers and spare cash to do it. Small business, and small farming (that in this view is more eco friendly, regenerative) can’t cope and dies on the vine. Nuclear energy is thwarted by stupid green politics. Of course he swerves around the NIMBYism of his bottom up solutions in civil society being a major stumbling block for placing a nuclear power plant somewhere.
He has a point about agreements not being worth the paper they’re printed on if parties like China do whatever they want. Similarly it’s true countries like China and India will dominate the climate outcomes regardless of what we do. But in observing this Scruton has no actual solution other than turning inward toward what we can control. We can organize to pick up trash in the forests and lakes. We can come together to fund solar panel installations. Scruton and Ferguson’s conservatism lamenting this part of environmentalism and the loss of a common cause have a core of truth. But in offering nothing but abdication on the global front he’s effectively just being a stooge for those globalist neoliberal forces that will then decide this issue, and not in his favour.
If he needs to first dismantle big government to get to a place where the bottom up solutions again reign supreme, he’s just buried the entire topic under a Sisyphean task of rewiring all of government so we can solve local ecological issues.
I’d love to see a conservatism that actually cares about conserving. This is only a half-baked attempt.… (more)

I came to Scruton originally because of the film he made on art, which had some compelling ideas about transcendent values as far as beauty and aesthetics go. The relativist notions pervading the field today are elegantly defeated with the Scruton quip "[a relativist] is asking you not to believe him, so don't".

In light of the frankly insane pushback he's received online, with accusations of being a fascist and racist, it's a bit shocking to see his notion of conservatism is so utterly spineless and complacent. His opponents really dressed up lukewarm opposition to progressive notions as the spawn of Satan. Meanwhile, here he is saying the Chicago school conservatives with their focus on pure economics are wrong, as well as the libertarians who want to surrender society to capital forces. Scruton's conservatism rotates around peoples in terms borrowed from the greeks, and their communities. Civil society, not coincidentally a feature of british society about a century ago, is what he's trying to conserve. Freedom of association and wresting some control back from the state to local communities. While he waffles about on topics like christianity and traditions, he's always compromising and refusing to assert a right to primacy. People ought just to choose these values and to prioritize holding onto the pearls of society of old.

The defense of civil society is much the same as Niall Ferguson makes in [b:The Great Degeneration|16129479|The Great Degeneration|Niall Ferguson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372541698l/16129479._SY75_.jpg|21954506] 2 years earlier, but Ferguson made a much more concise and specific case for it. Scruton's meandering and compromising view of conservatism doesn't inspire as a vision. But neither does it explain the absolute hate spewed over his supposed stances.… (more)

Roger Scruton died in January of this year, just after concluding the editorial work on this book. It is now being published posthumously, with the proofreading completed by Professor Robin Holloway. It is a worthy swansong.

Scruton was a philosopher whose renown went well beyond the inner circles of his field. Admittedly, the wider public might know him better for his polemicist defences of conservatism. These landed him – to his glee, chagrin or a mixture of both – into a number of controversies over his career. However, Scruton was also (or, arguably primarily) a philosopher of aesthetics, with a particular interest in music. He made of Wagner’s works a specialist area of study, publishing studies on Tristan und Isolde (“Death Devoted Heart: Sex and Sacred in Wagner’s Trisan and Isolde”, 2003) and the Ring tetralogy (“The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring”, 2016). In this area, Scruton’s knowledge of music (he was an amateur composer) served him well.

As its subtitle implies, Scruton’s final work explores the idea of redemption as the thematic basis of Wagner’s Parsifal. This premise is hardly contentious, since even the bare bones of Wagner’s libretto, a retelling of the Grail Story loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval poem Parzival, reveal the opera to be a work about redemption and healing. The First Act takes us to Montsalvat, the Castle of the Holy Grail, built by Titurel to house and protect the Holy Grail and the sacred Spear, relics of the Passion of the Christ. Amfortas, the King, is brought in on a litter in barely bearable pain. He was once seduced by a beautiful woman at the bidding of the sorcerer Klingsor, thereby losing the Spear and procuring a painful wound which can only be healed by a “pure fool made wise by compassion”. Just then, two knights seize a youth – Parsifal – who has ventured near the castle and killed a swan. The old knight Gurnemanz realizes that this might be the “innocent” who can restore order at Montsalvat. The Second Act is set in the gardens of Klingsor’s magic castle. The flighty Flower Maidens, seducers of many a knight, are excited at the arrival of Parsifal, but the sorcerer has a more ambitious plan and, like a diabolical pimp, sends Kundry out to meet the youth. As in the legend of the Wandering Jew, Kundry has been accursed after she laughed at Christ’s suffering (lovers of the Gothic will notice here one of the inspirations for Sarah Perry’s Melmoth). Kundry is now ensnared by Klingsor, who compels her to use her wiles and charms to bring righteous men to their downfall. Indeed, Parsifal seems impervious to the Flower Maidens, but Kundry knows how to break down his defences: she draws him to her by evoking memories of the mother whom he has abandoned. Kundry kisses him, but he recoils in horror, suddenly realising the source of Amfortas’s pain. Klingsor throws the spear at him but Parsifal seizes it and, making the sign of the Cross in the air destroys Klingsor’s castle and his evil powers. The Third and final act brings about the redemption and healing which are the themes of Scruton’s analysis – Parsifal, after years of wandering, returns to Montsalvat on Good Friday. Gurnemanz baptises him; Kundry, turned into a sort of penitent Magdalene, washes Parsifal’s feet and he baptises her in turn. Parsifal heals Amfortas’s wound, is crowned and leads the Knights in the ritual of the Grail as Kundry, freed of her curse, falls dead at his feet.

It does not take a theologian to notice the Christian elements in the opera. However, Scruton argues that the idea of “redemption” proposed by Wagner, albeit partly inspired by Christian doctrines, is considerably different in conception to religious views of redemption. Indeed, despite the Christian symbolism, the worldview of the opera is equally inspired by Buddhist thought and the philosophy of Schopenhauer. One could consider Parsifal to be “post-Christian” (although that is not a term which Scruton uses) in that Wagner sought to show the possibility of godliness without the need of belief in a God and redemption in this world rather than in the next:

Whether or not there is a God, there is this hallowed path towards a kind of salvation, the path that Wagner described as ‘godliness’, the path taken by Parsifal, and it is a path open to us all.

In this regard, Scruton’s examination of Wagner’s use of ritual is particularly interesting. The Grail ceremonies portrayed in the opera are, very evidently, inspired by the sacrament of Communion in Christianity (and Catholicism in particular). This is emphasized in some of the earliest posters and illustrations associated with the opera, which emphasize Christian imagery. However, Wagner himself takes an almost anthropological approach to these rites, invoking the gravitas of religious rituals without implying any belief in their underlying theology. Significantly Wagner described Parsifal not as an opera, but as A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage (“Bühnenweihfestspiel”), highlighting the mystical aspects of the work. Yet, as Scruton pointed out, the final scene, with its appropriation of religious rites is also evidently not a Christian ceremony, leading Stravinsky to label it “blasphemous” and Debussy “ridiculous”.

In developing his view of the opera, Scruton looks closely at plot (particularly in Chapter 2) and the music (particularly in Chapter 5). It is notoriously challenging to write about the meaning of music, that most abstract of forms, and inevitably there are moments where Scruton, like the best of authors on the subject, resorts to “poetic” phrases in a bid to express what can barely be put into words. Thus, we are told, “Faith, suffering, guilt, atonement, woe, redemption – these are the aspects of our world that are most tightly woven into the musical fabric, by melodies and harmonies that are saturated with the inner life”. That said, Wagner’s use of leitmotifs - musical themes appearing throughout the opera in representation of a character or concept –invites the sort of close scrutiny and exercise in extra-musical interpretation which Scruton embarks upon in this book. His views on how the leitmotifs are combined to achieve not just musical effects but also a philosophical meaning are certainly interesting and cogently put. In this regard, Chapter 6 of the book is particularly helpful, reproducing as it does all the various leitmotifs used in the opera. Here, Scruton acknowledges his reliance on the analytical catalogue produced by Derrick Everett, available on Everett’s Monsalvat website – probably the best resource on Parsifal available on the internet. Scruton borrows from Everett the name for the melodic idea which opens the prelude to the music-drama – the Grundthema. It is an apt moniker: Scruton shows (following other musicological studies) how, in a Beethovenian manner, the “Grundthema” can be further split into shorter motifs each of which takes a life and meaning of its own. Like the Grail in Parsifal, the opening theme is a “horn of plenty” providing many of the musical building blocks for the whole opera.

Sometimes I felt that rather than discussing the opera, Scruton was using it as a springboard to address philosophical themes which were dear to him – such as the idea of compassion and duties towards animals (which he explores in Animal Rights and Wrongs) and sex and desire (the subject of his 1986 study Sexual Desire). Scruton, typically, casts his net of references wide – myth and anthropology, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietsche, Schenkerian analysis, Christian theology and Buddhist thought. All are invoked in a bid to shed more light on Wagner’s enigmatic drama.

Scruton’s book is a slim volume but by no means an easy read – and I say that as a musician (admittedly an amateur one) with a basic degree in philosophy. So possibly I wouldn’t recommend this book as a beginner’s guide to the opera (in that regard I would, once again, refer to the Monsalvat website which includes materials of use to readers of all levels – from initiates to the opera to its greatest aficionados). However, Scruton provies an insightful and multi-disciplinary analysis of Parsifal which comes across as a labour of love.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/05/wagners-parsifal-music-of-redemption-...… (more)