Influenced by T.S. Eliot (“worth 20 volumes of Hegel”, he has said), his sense of self is utterly opposed to that outlined in Adam Zeman’s more recent piece on cognitive science: “That to which we reach, because it promises redemption, must be understood in personal terms. It is the soul of the world . . . that spoke to Moses from the burning bush.” Thus Scruton tries, in his elegantly subjective way, to do what he says art does — to “realise what is otherwise inchoate, unformed and incommunicable”. He is, after all, an artist-philosopher (and a better creative writer than Eagleton: see, for example, his atmospheric romance set in Communist Prague, Notes from Underground).
All the same, some non-believers who admire his aesthetics and his search for spiritual meaning look forward to an account of the spirit which understands the transcendence of religion and high culture as part of a reworked, more subtly materialist model of the mind and its representation of the world. There is an emerging cognitive science of culture informing some philosophy, which neither Eagleton nor Scruton has time for, partly because they are both wary of the scientific.
Scrugletopia is a thought-provoking place: it finds our culture in a mess; it is not satisfied with our politics; it rejects atheism but also the after-life; it needs faith; it looks for salvation in art, in the humanist and idealist tradition, and in the Christian religious heritage; Scruton is all for personal transcendence while Eagleton, though now less entrenched in leftist “repudiation”, searches for the civilised egalitarian vision.
Each continues to modify and embellish his castle — Scruton with his rich heritage of proudly high culture, his love of beauty and Wagner, and his faith in the Christian tradition (not to mention fine living); Eagleton to ponder yet again how he can resolve the tensions between his dislike of postmodernist-capitalist-atheist culture, his admiration for humanist and Christian literature, and the dreamily enchanting Marxian hills. They have always been able to rely on each other — as have we on them.
All the same, some non-believers who admire his aesthetics and his search for spiritual meaning look forward to an account of the spirit which understands the transcendence of religion and high culture as part of a reworked, more subtly materialist model of the mind and its representation of the world. There is an emerging cognitive science of culture informing some philosophy, which neither Eagleton nor Scruton has time for, partly because they are both wary of the scientific.
Scrugletopia is a thought-provoking place: it finds our culture in a mess; it is not satisfied with our politics; it rejects atheism but also the after-life; it needs faith; it looks for salvation in art, in the humanist and idealist tradition, and in the Christian religious heritage; Scruton is all for personal transcendence while Eagleton, though now less entrenched in leftist “repudiation”, searches for the civilised egalitarian vision.
Each continues to modify and embellish his castle — Scruton with his rich heritage of proudly high culture, his love of beauty and Wagner, and his faith in the Christian tradition (not to mention fine living); Eagleton to ponder yet again how he can resolve the tensions between his dislike of postmodernist-capitalist-atheist culture, his admiration for humanist and Christian literature, and the dreamily enchanting Marxian hills. They have always been able to rely on each other — as have we on them.
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