Litnet

Roger Scruton is 'n veelskrywer wat reeds meer as veertig boeke gepubliseer het. Ek het drie van sy boeke gelees. Soos 'n mens kon verwag, kom jy herhaling in hulle teë. Pleks van nog van sy boeke te lees, het ek eerder 'n boek oor sy wysbegeerte gelees, want daarin kon ek kennis neem van Scruton-boeke wat ek nie gelees het nie. Ek verwys na Mark Dooley se Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach (London: Continuum Books, 2009). Hierdie boek is nie 'n biografie nie. Dit is 'n uiteensetting van die "major themes" (Kindle 119) waarmee Scruton hom besig hou. Hierdie boek moet nie verwar word met een van Scruton se eie boeke nie: The Philosopher on Dover Beach and Other Essays (1989). Die betekenis van Dover Beach vir Scruton is reeds toegelig (SêNet 9 deser). Dooley is ook die samesteller van The Roger Scruton Reader (2009).

Dooley, 'n Rooms-Katolieke Ier, is met Scruton, 'n Anglikaanse Engelsman, bevriend. Die voordeel is dat die teks as verteenwoordigend van Scruton se denke aanvaar kan word. As wat Dooley geskryf het nie deur Scruton goedgekeur is nie, is dit ten minste met hom uitgeklaar. Die gebruik van baie en dikwels lang aanhalings uit Scruton se geskrifte ("where possible, I let him speak for himself", K 122) is voor publikasie sekerlik deur Scruton goedgekeur. Dit kan immers die afset van Scruton se boeke bevorder of aan bande lê. Die nadeel van hierdie vriendskaplike opset is dat alles wat Scruton skryf, goedkeurend en onkrities deur Dooley aangebied word. Daarom is dit eintlik onnodig om duidelik tussen wat Scruton sê en wat Dooley sê, te onderskei.

Dwarsdeur die boek word daar met bv byvoeglike naamwoorde glad te veel pro-Scruton-heuning gesmeer. In sy nawoord het Dooley geen brieke meer nie. Hy noem dat Scruton, "the quintessential public intellectual" (K 2449), 'n verdere vier boeke in die pyplyn het. "In Scruton England has produced a true philosophical genius" (K 2455). "He seems to be the most sensible intellectual around" (K 2458). Daar word verwys na Scruton se "joyful wisdom" (K 2467), ens.

Scruton word voorgestel as 'n onapologetiese konserwatiewe en soos volg aangehaal: "There is 'no alternative to the day-to-day and nothing more truthful than simplicity. You can change things, improve things, criticise things. But the concepts that you use to formulate your goal will be delivered from a form of life that is shared, invariant and ordinary. To attack that form of life is to jeopardise the meaning of all that you say and do'"(K 57). Dooley: "If there is one single theme that unites all of Scruton's writings ... it is the affirmation of home, soil and settlement"(K 69). Dit gaan om die behoud van "our [dus Britse, spesifiek Engelse] inheritance" (K 79). "Human achievements are rare and precarious ... we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance" (K 446].

Van fundamentele belang is persoonskap ("personhood", K 82) en wat heilig is. "Without the sacred, man lives in a depersonalised world: a world where all is permitted, andwhere nothing has absolute value" (K 91). "It is in and through a 'shared language, shared associations, shared history', or what he calls a 'common culture', that man realises himself and acquires a form of liberty worth the name" (K 98). "Scruton's vision derives from a deep wish to preserve the best of the West, thereby experiencing 'in reward, the experience of belonging'" (K 109).

"Multiculturalism ... dismisses Western culture" (K 1048). "Hence the academic Left's obsession with ... 'the Other' - meaning that which stands opposed to everything Western. It does not matter that many of these 'other' cultures are significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal and ethnocentric" (K 1051). "Scruton labels that disposition 'oikophobia' (as distinct from 'xenophobia'), by which he means 'the repudiation of inheritance and home'" (K 1055). In multikulturisme "the student is wrenched from his inheritance and deprived of his 'only hope of competing on equal terms'" (K 1138). Dit kom neer op sosiale ingenieurswese.

Telkens opper Scruton besware teen moderniteit se "disenchantment" en "the temptation of liberalism ... to wipe clean the slate of history, thereby eradicating from the world all vestiges of personhood and subjectivity ... the search for the 'really real' [bv in die natuurwetenskappe] extinguishes the sacred light of humanity" (K 138). Scruton beklemtoon dat mense, anders as diere, selfbewuste, morele wesens is (K 148). "To treat [man] merely as an object is ... an act of desecration" (K 157). In die natuurwetenskappe "you get causal explanations. In so doing ... you will destroy human meanings and reasons, without which the world is devoid of true sense" (K 161). Ons leef in 'n wêreld van verskynsels, van hoe dinge lyk, van hoe ons dinge sintuiglik ervaar, "the unscientific surface of the world, that place where we live and love ... where 'the seeds of human happiness are sown'" (K 503). "Science [is] destroying our spontaneous response to the surface of the world" (K 601).

"As rational beings, we are more interested in looking for the meaning of events, rather than their scientific causes" (K 243). "Words, smiles and gestures" is meer as net "movements of the flesh" (K 402). Wat vir die mens belangrik is, is dinge soos "love, duty, virtue and kindness" (K 405); almal dinge wat nie wetenskaplik bevatlik is nie. Wetenskaplike kennis is gedeeltelike kennis; kennis van slegs bepaalde aspekte van die werklikheid. Vir volledige(r) kennis moet die wetenskap met subjektiewe kennis, bv wat heilig is, geharmonieer word: "Nothing in the scientific view of things forbids the experience of the sacred" (K 408).

"Whereas the concepts of science have an explanatory function, those of philosophy attempt to convey meaning" (K 249). Philosophy consoles because it re-moralises the ordinary human world, and saves it from the culture of repudiation. Hence, its true aim in the contemporary context is ... 'a last-ditch attempt to re-enchant the world'" (K 291). "Philosophy consoles because it re-personalises the world of objects. It invites us to see the human subject as both sacred and free. Unlike other forms of life, the human self has the capacity to recall its past and project itself towards a future" (K 294).

Oor die 24-jarige Scruton se belewing in 1968 van die studente-opstand in Parys, skryf Dooley: "Thus began a lifetime defending the sacred from the poison of the profane, the beautiful from the ugly and the good from the wicked" (K 182). "The politics of the new Left is one of fanaticism. Its mantra is simple: 'All power in the world is oppressive, and all power is usurped. Abolish that power and we achieve justice and liberation'" (K 195). Dit kon neer op "opting for 'the easy holiday of destruction'" (K 198). "What resulted from this was a 'culture of repudiation'" (K 201). Wat hierdie linkses verwerplik ag, is die burgery, want "Western civilization is in essence bourgeois civilization" (K 207).

"We are left without certainties" (K 228). Wat as redding nodig is, is toepaslike filosofie, waarin standaarde vir smaak- en stylvolheid ontwikkel word. As beginpunt is geloof in die moontlikheid van 'n stabiele samelewing nodig. "The object of wisdom ... is to thoughtfully 'restore what has been thoughtlessly damaged' - that is, 'the ordinary human world'" (K 234). "Scruton believes 'it is from religious ideas that the human world, and the human subject who inhabits it, were made'. The most destructive effect of the culture of repudiation has been the attempt to peel away the traditional idea of personhood which is the bedrock of the religious worldview" (K 314). "God, for Scruton, is the subjectivity of the world" (K 427). "The world [is] that which is 'made in the image of humanity'" (K 449). Ons beeld van God en die wêreld wat ons ken, is deur die mens geskep. "While [religion] may not supply objective truth, it does however furnish us with 'complex allegories of the human condition'" (K 319). "The concepts of 'the holy and the sacred' ... endow the world of objects with a 'subjective' or 'personal' character" (K 337).

Kuns en religie is volgens Scruton ineengestrengel. Kuns is 'n vorm van heiligheid. "Art 'engages our sympathies without compelling any doctrine'" (K 924). Kuns is "the continuing human attempt not just to observe the world but to idealise and sanctify it, to make it into an object of reverence" (K 935). Kuns is deel van hoë kultuur waarvolgens ons moet lewe "'as if our lives mattered eternally' ... it is not accessible to every member of the tribe" (K 976). "High culture captures in abstract and symbolic form, the scared yearnings of the common culture" (K 980). "High culture emulates the redemptive function of religion by cultivating and expanding the individual's emotional range" (K 992).

"Aesthetics and conservative politics are directly linked ... both seek to fulfil man's primal longing for 'a lost experience of home' ... Scruton follows Hegel in believing that the true task of philosophy is to provide for the 'spiritually homeless, a promise of their proper home'" (K 1606). "For how else can a person become conscious of who he is and where he belongs, except through building, making and decorating that small patch of earth he calls 'home'" (K 1609).

"The purpose of education is not to pretend that all children are equally talented. For that will only result in stymieing the progress of the best, while giving a false sense of genius to the rest" (K 1150). 'n Skoolhoof word soos volg aangehaal: "If a school contains a disproportionate number of children for whom English is a second language (true of all Asian children, even those born here), or children from homes where educational ambition and the values to support it are conspicuously absent (ie the vast majority of West Indian homes - a disproportionate number of which are fatherless) then academic standards are bound to suffer" (K 2030). "The enormous variation within races" word onderdruk en verwring deurdat "every non-white is now officially 'black' ... This gross and offensive dichotomy has an obvious purpose: the creation of an atmosphere of anti-white solidarity" (K 2035).

"A culture without distinctions, criticism and judgement is no culture at all. It is simply the apotheosis of ignorance and mediocrity" (K 1153). "Both socialism and liberalism are, in the last analysis, egalitarian. They both suppose al men to be equal in every respect relevant to their political advantage" (K 1651). "The real 'source of social decline in our day lies in the tendency to mortgage our future for the gratification of those who are living now'" (K 1775). "As Burke rightly taught, we were not put here to pillage our inheritance. Still less 'have we the right to distribute all goods equally among the living, without regard for who deserves them, who owns them, or who will use them wisely and well'" (K 1778). "We have no right to exploit the social and moral ecology for our own short-term purposes" (K 1781). "The State ... 'is less interested in freeing people than in equalising them, less interested in upholding responsible choice than in extending its relief to the irresponsible'" (K 2330).

Hegel het identiteit as 'n produk van kulturele bewustheid beskou. Ter bestryding van multikulturalisme stel Scruton voor "integrating [all citizens] into a common culture of nationhood ... it is not blood which binds a people together, but their shared values, customs and institutions. Those are specifically cultural features which are inscribed across the surface of a nation" (K 2085). Scruton se ideaal is dus 'n nasiestaat. Dit verskil fundamenteel van 'n politieke opset "in which individuals do not see themselves as citizens ... but as 'members of an extended family', or as brothers and sisters" (K 2149).

'n Persoon kan nie 'n burger van 'n transnasionale regering soos die Europese Unie wees nie: "It is to scrape away the cultural topsoil from which territorial loyalty grows" (K 2219). "The ordinary people of Europe do not consider themselves citizens of the world, but are 'creatures of flesh and blood, with finite attachments and territorial instincts, whose primary loyalties are shaped by family, religion and homeland'" (K 2232). "Restoring that old sense of somewhere, that peaceful paradise we know as home, is the ultimate aim of Roger Scruton's political philosophy" (K 2293). "As he says, 'nowhere becomes somewhere when we settle there'" (K 2296).

Volgende keer skryf ek oor Scruton se Gifford-lesings.

Johannes Comestor