The Personal and the Political in Roger Scruton's Conservatism. (1st October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cullen, Daniel
• Is Part Of: Perspectives on political science. Volume 45:Number 4(2016)
• Page Start: 261
• Page End: 271
• Publication Date: 2016-10-01
• Subjects: Political science -- Book reviews -- Periodicals; Political science literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Political science; Political science literature; Political science -- Study and teaching; Book reviews; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 320
• DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2016.1222220
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1045-7097

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Roger Scruton's philosophical enterprise is an effort to "save the appearances" of value in the human world that elude scientific explanation. The meaning of the human things appears only to a first-person perspective, which is incommensurable with the objective perspective of cause and effect. To make sense of our experience requires a "cognitive dualism" that can account for the human or "lifeworld" as well as physical reality. Ranging rather indiscriminately over Scruton's diverse writings, I expound the unifying conception of personhood that makes them a coherent whole and also serves as the touchstone for Scruton's conservative critique of liberal theory and practice. Some questions are raised about that two-dimensional critique, about its separation into "metaphysical" and "empirical" components, and about whether the latter does or doesn't "operationalize" the former.