The nation has lost an eminent philosopher, and an ardent defender of the humanities in an age when we urgently need his light. Throughout his illustrious career and prolific writings, Roger Scruton developed a rich and nuanced system of thought, within which the soul’s longing for beauty, a sense of wonder and a veneration of sacred are pivotal. Schooled in Cambridge philosophy and drilled in the arguments of Wittgenstein and Kant, he was always a man of letters and took up a torch from C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, Coleridge and Burke. His deep passion for nature and his artistic creativity as a novelist, composer and critic was unrivalled among his English peers and revered abroad. His writing was elegant, witty, luminous and trenchant; his appetite for metaphysics unabated. His darling theme was beauty: not merely the objectification of pleasure but the index of a transcendent dimension. Roger Scruton had the steady gaze of the prophet and rueful soul of a tender poet: his vision was ultimately a summons to love and gratitude.
The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism has greatly benefited from Sir Roger's philosophical insights. Below, are recordings from some of these conversations:
Scruton and Peterson on the Transcendent:
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Centre fellow, Dr James Bryson, editor of 'The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton' (Bloomsbury, 2016), has brought the philosophies of Scruton and Peterson into conversation with one-another in a recent piece, 'God Fearers'.
Scruton as part of a panel discussion at the Centre's conference 'The Ontology of Love':
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