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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
Problem
Firsts
Scoundrel
First
Relativism
Scoundrels
Refuge
Argument
Problems
Moral

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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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The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
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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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Something of the child's pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.
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Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.
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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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Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past
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There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure
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In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.
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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 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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The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
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When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.
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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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In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.
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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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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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There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last
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