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In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Roger Scruton

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Roger Scruton
Age: 75 †
Born: 1944
Born: February 27
Died: 2020
Died: January 12
Aesthetician
Composer
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Roger Vernon Scruton
Professor Sir Roger Vernon Scruton
Scoundrels
Refuge
Argument
Problems
Moral
Problem
Firsts
Scoundrel
First
Relativism

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A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
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Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.
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Freedom can reside only in a point of view, a way of looking upon the system of necessity.Surely this is the one freedom that we may attain to: not to be released from physical reality, but to understand reality and ourselves as part of it, and so be reconciled to what we are.
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The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
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The ethical life... is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society... Unlike the modern youth culture, a common culture sanctifies the adult state, to which it offers rites of passage.
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States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.
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Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.
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Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.
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A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable
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Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.
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Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification
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The sexual parts are not only vivid examples of the body's dominion they are also apertures whose damp emissions and ammoniac smells testify to the mysterious putrefaction of the body.
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Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.
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In the attacks on the old ways of doing things on word in particular came into currency. That word was kitsch. Once introduced, the word stuck. Whatever you do, it musn't be kitsch. This became the first precept of the modernist artist in every medium.
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Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
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Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.
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The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
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To teach virtue we must educate the emotions, and this means learning what to feel in the various circumstances that prompt them.
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This knowing what to do... is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand... The one who knows what to do is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.
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Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity - the habit of saying good morning to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.
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