A world without Roger Scruton, three years on

The law, order, civility and tranquility that defined the England of his youth is not only gone, but its grave has been desecrated.

“The sense of beauty puts a brake upon destruction, by representing its object as irreplaceable. When the world looks back at me with my eyes, as it does in aesthetic experience, it is also addressing me in another way. Something is being revealed to me, and I am being made to stand still and absorb it. It is of course nonsense to suggest that there are naiads in the trees and dryads in the groves. What is revealed to me in the experience of beauty is a fundamental truth about being - the truth that being is a gift, and receiving it is a task. This is a truth of theology that demands exposition as such.”

These are the worlds, eternal and true, of the late Roger Scruton, who left us just over three years ago. It almost seems as if he were the last stand; Gandalf before the balrog, the final fail-safe. In his absence, all has gone to the dogs. The changes seen by Western society since January 2020 would have made Scruton weep in a way that is it almost just that he is not a ground-level witness to them. The monuments of grandeur have been torn down, and the very spirit of England is under constant assault. The law, order, civility and tranquility that defined the England of his youth is not only gone, but its grave has been desecrated. He indeed would have wept.

In Scruton, the world had a man willing to defend beauty; as if it were a damsel in distress. His disdain for contemporaneity was delivered with a true grace and class, and his venerations of the traditional were sung like a love song. He not only loved beauty, truth, and decency; he loved writing too, and words. His books are a delight to read, even when they deal with the macabre and the unseemly. His words so true that they were axiomatic, his love so strong that it toppled regimes.

It is no use to wish him back, for he is in a far better place; with far better architecture, and no pop music playing through a tannoy. What it is worth doing, however, is remembering him and his work. The man, the thinker, the ideal. Perhaps one day this generation of mine will produce its own Scruton. If so, then we may just stand a chance.

Few men live on after they die. Those who do inhabit memories and photographs. And yet, Scruton lives on in a far greater range. He lives in every old building, every classical piece, every oratorio and romantic poem. Every garden, hedgerow, and oak tree. Every ornate library and every chiseled mausoleum. Every country house, town house, abbey and parish. Every portico and pillar. He lives in Bath and in Oxford, Chester and York, Durham and Cambridge. He lives on in the fragments of the old England that still remain.

A world without Roger Scruton is simply one in which his absence is felt. Though if one just looks around, he will see that Scruton lives on in all that is true, good, and beautiful.