Explore the vast range of titles available.

This study addresses Roger Scruton’s understanding of what he called “moments of revelation”. In two short essays, both entitled “Effing the ineffable”, Scruton framed his discussion of moments of revelation with reference to the medieval Christian mystical discourse. Introducing the medieval discussion of this topic, this study provides an analysis of Scruton’s approach to the theme. In tune with the traditional discourse on revelation, his general aim was to demonstrate that there are ways of revealing important truths about the supernatural, of the world “beyond the window”, that do not require words to be pronounced. He calls our experiences of such phenomena moments of revelation and identifies four different transitory sources of revelation. This study deals with them one by one, after considering whether it is right to label such a revelation transcendental. The four sources of Scruton’s moments of revelation are natural beauty, the beauty of painting, the beauty of music, and personal encounters. The first three examples are connected to his thoughts on art and beauty as a substitute of divine revelation. Perhaps the most surprising of these is the last ones, moments of intersubjective human relationships, “our knowledge of each other”. Relying on both Buber and Levinas, Scruton makes the strong claim that it is in the other that we can experience that world “beyond the window”. His phenomenological exploration of human encounters sheds light on concepts like grace, shekhinah, or real presence and gift. He explains the Christian understanding of the human–divine relationship as well along the lines of the nature of interpersonal human relationship, both of them being in a certain sense, he claims, transcendental. From grace, his account moves forward to self-sacrifice and finally arrives at his idiosyncratic understanding of gratefulness for life. His moments of revelation in art and interpersonal exchange turn out to be, indeed, late and secular versions of the Christian understanding of revelation. In its summary, this study claims that revelation, understood by Scruton as a form of general human experience, allows to catch a glimpse of that which is beyond the window, by the direct, sensually based experience of either the existence of another person or of the beauty of nature and art.

Roger Scruton identified three basic forms of communal loyalties that produce the first-person plural “we”: the national, the tribal, and the credal. Scruton argues that it is the national that maximally permits plurality and difference without jeopardising peaceful coexistence; it even makes possible self-sacrifice for the stranger. The generation of such a first-person plural requires a commitment both to non-contractual forms of obligation for its members and non-purposive activities that transcend questions of utility. These can be seen as keeping alive the question of the bonum honestum, which founds the common good. Pope John Paul II discusses the first-person plural in phenomenological-personalistic terms, as an accidental formation patterned according to the substantial I–Thou relationship between persons. The I–Thou points towards the true good, and this is what allows nations to arise. But various forms of masquerading are here possible, whether it be credal loyalty pretending to be national, or dutiful and moral customs devoid of the bonum honestum as a stabilisation. Both threaten true freedom. John Paul II shows that it is the task of the “we” community to inherit the national patrimony. It is Massimo Recalcati that shows us that, for all its beneficial wealth, this inheriting involves an inevitable mourning and incurring of “symbolic debt”. Only a correct relation to this debt will allow the first-person plural properly to arise and inherit the national patrimony.

Roger Scruton is one of the outstanding British philosophers of the post-war years. Why then is he at best ignored and at worst reviled? Part of the reason is that he is an unapologetic conservative in the tradition of Edmund Burke. That conservative instinct was sharpened during the Paris riots of 1968. From that point on Scruton set himself the task of stridently opposing what he has since termed 'the culture of repudiation'. In so doing he targeted liberals in the tradition of Russell and Mill, existentialists like Sartre and post modernists in the fashion of Foucault. Here is a brilliant description of Scruton's life and work and a careful analysis of his central ideas. Scruton defends an Hegelian and Burkean view of human nature, one founded on allegiance to the State as the guarantor of tangible freedom. He thus opposes any and all variations of the social contract theory, liberal or existential individualism or philosophical theories of the 'authentic' self in isolation from its kind. In recent years his conservative notion of the nation state has been used to reflect upon and criticise the European Union, the United Nations and the idea that the Middle East can be reformed along Western democratic lines. Scruton, argues the author of this book, is the one British intellectual who has courageously rowed against the tide of liberal conviction and has arrived at political conclusions the truth of which are becoming more and more obvious. This book argues conclusively that Roger Scruton is a prophet for our times.