The Quintessential Conservative Thinker

[Extract] Roger Scruton is the most important conservative thinker of his generation. He was trained in the tradition of analytic philosophy and traces of that formative experience are still evident decades later in his style of argumentation. But the deeper influence on him are centuries of Anglophone conservative social thinking and aesthetic criticism. This intellectual current began with Edmund Burke. It is a particular way of looking at the modern world. It asks how one can live in the middle of modernity’s ceaseless change and yet retain a strong sense of permanence and durability. The conservative is not indifferent to society’s changes but weighs these carefully. The key is to consider the degree to which change contributes to the deeper human need for continuity and durability

Aesthetics · Argumentation theory · Art · Criticism · Epistemology · Formative assessment · Literature · Modernity · Sociology · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US