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The problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.

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
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Refer
Possibility
Realm
Problems
Realms
Philosophy
Designed
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Necessity
Rather
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Problem
Solve
Formulated
Might
Tend
Actuality

More quotes by Roger Scruton

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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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In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person's taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion that there is a difference between good and bad taste, or that it matters what you look at or read or listen to.
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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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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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The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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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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In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
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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 best evidence of a mind is when you change it
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Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.
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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.
Roger Scruton
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The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'
Roger Scruton
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The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.
Roger Scruton