A Political Philosophy - Softcover

Scruton, Roger

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194 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826496156 ISBN 13: 9780826496157

Publisher: Continuum, 2007

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Over the past twenty years, Roger Scruton has been developing a conservative view of human beings, society and culture. The tone of this book is positive and the arguments are recommendations with the aim of convincing the reader that rumours of the death of Western civilisation 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 Scurton 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.

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About the Author:

Sir ROGER SCRUTON is a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy and politics, including Kant and An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy. He is widely translated. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches in both England and America and is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C. He is currently teaching an MA in Philosophy for the University of Buckingham.

Review:

'What may be found here is a collection of acute observations about modern attitudes, arguments underming 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)

"An 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 underming 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.' (Sanford Lakoff Church Times)

"An intelllectual challenge and an entertaining read." (Sanford Lakoff)

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