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Modern Culture (1998)

di Roger Scruton

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What do we mean by 'culture'? This word, purloined by journalists to denote every kind of collective habit, lies at the centre of contemporary debates about the past and future of society. In this thought-provoking book, Roger Scruton argues for the religious origin of culture in all its forms, and mounts a defence of the 'high culture' of our civilization against its radical and 'deconstructionist' critics. He offers a theory of pop culture, a panegyric to Baudelaire, a few reasons why Wagner is just as great as his critics fear him to be, and a raspberry to Cool Britannia. A must for all people who are fed up to their tightly clenched front teeth with Derrida, Foucault, Oasis and Richard Rogers.… (altro)
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I like Scruton's books, but this is the weakest one I've read. He’s conservative in the manner of the British philosopher he is, so in a very reasoned way and quite different from much the term implies for Americans in the context of our virtually content-free and logically-challenged contemporary excuse for political discourse. The book takes TS Eliot’s Notes on the Definition of Culture as its point of departure, ranges through concepts and definitions of culture since the term came into use during the Enlightenment, agrees with Eliot that all cultures are fundamentally based on religion, and attempts to deal with the problems of common and high culture in a society that’s lost its faith.

He tries to replace the sacred things of the once-faithful with high culture but admits he fails, consoling himself that no one else has succeeded at this and insisting the attempt is important as otherwise the common culture disappears while society needs what it provides. It gives people both purpose and a reassuring context into which their lives fit, therefore a basis for a cohesive society. High culture is the closest thing available to the sacramental or transcendental in a faithless society, but in the end it’s not really an adequate substitute.

Scruton makes many insightful arguments and observations, including a lucid critique of pop music based partly on aesthetic and music theories, also on anthropological and sociological analyses. He makes fairly convincing cases that modernist art was a last gasp of Western culture trying to maintain a distinction between high and low, even maintaining a troubled engagement with the religious foundations of Western culture; post-modernist culture has simply given up and lazily merged the serious with the trivial; deconstructionism is essentially nihilistic; and contemporary pop culture is basically one of permanent rebellion without cause, sexuality without purpose or promise, ungrounded youth-orientation without rites of passage to maturity within structured society; blind, unhealthy and counterproductive idolization of pop stars; and of course pop’s endless vapidity and its corrosive ubiquity.

The most interesting aspect of this book is that it reveals what was obliquely hinted at in Conservatism but never made express: without making reference to it, Scruton clearly subscribes to the noble lie concept in Plato’s Republic - people have to believe something which isn’t true for a society to get on. It was the central flaw in the state discussed in Republic, and it’s the central flaw here. I sympathize with Scruton, and he’s made a noble attempt, but I’m glad I’m able to join Eliot in returning to the faith that’s been largely abandoned by the cognoscenti.

To non-believers that faith’s a noble (or ignoble) lie, but for me it’s truth and possibly the only effective basis for a sustainable, cohesive and coherent society in a post-Enlightenment world. Noble lies can work on duped populations but not on relatively free and educated ones. And as much as I love Beethoven’s late string quartets, as Scruton does, and much as they may be the last, best hope of secular humanity to reach the transcendent, in the end they only appear to come close, and only temporarily.
( )
  garbagedump | Dec 9, 2022 |
In which a grumpy old bigot rages against modern life, and thinks he's Plato. The chapter titled 'Yoofanasia' is particularly ludicrous.

In any other field, this sort of unevidenced opinionated claptrap wouldn't make it out of peer review, but for some reason you can get away with publishing one long extended "booo" and call it philosophy.

Mostly harmless, but in the conclusion he briefly raises "feminism and gay liberation" as spectres against which western culture should defend, and you begin to see what this is really all about. Spluttering old dinosaurs like Scruton belong in the bin. ( )
  sometimeunderwater | Nov 13, 2018 |
The first half of the book is mostly 2 stars. The second half is mostly 3. But there are chapters here and there, particularly the great chapter on Deconstructionism, which are solid four stars. Still, this book was a bit disappointing in its lack of punch. And whenever Scruton starts to talk about Christianity, it's a bit of a bother because, even though he respects its function in society, he really doesn't understand it at all. It reminds me of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Nomad in a way because both of them recognize the good that Christianity does and want to use it for that good while simultaneously treating it like a fairy tale.

ETA: I totally forgot the best part of this book, which is definitely where Scruton says that the appeal of electric guitars is that they are like giant dildos you strap on and wave around. ( )
  edenic | Feb 6, 2012 |
great so far
1 vota foozler8 | Nov 8, 2009 |
It is unusual in our day to find a philosophical work that is profound, erudite, and oblivious to current intellectual fashion. I have just finished reading such a work: "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture," by Roger Scruton. First published in 1998, it is a thoughtful attempt to explain the demise of Western culture.

Scruton takes on all the familiar antagonists: deconstructionism, contemporary art, the youth culture, and much more. They scatter in disarray before his mighty pen. For example, discussing the role of artists in contemporary society: "Art is no longer a reflection on human life but a mechanism for excluding it." As for the more vulgar varieties of pop music:

"We witness a reversal of the old order of performance. Instead of the performer being the means to present the music, which exists independently in the tradition of song, the music has become the means to present the performer...it has a tendency to lose all musical character. For music, properly constructed, has a life of its own, and is always more interesting than the person who performs it."

I particularly enjoyed his debunking of deconstructionism, the best such effort I have seen. Scruton traces the development of this exaltation of nothingness, showing how it is intimately connected with the culture of repudiation, that phony pose of our self-styled intellectuals who claim to be in a permanent state of rebellion against the authorities. He shows how deconstruction became a quasi-theological underpinning of the culture of repudiation, enabling people to believe that they are in the opposition, even as they are being swept up by the dominant wave:

"The subversive intention in no way forbids deconstruction from becoming an orthodoxy, the pillar of a new establishment, and the badge of conformity that the literary apparatchik must now wear. But in this it is no different from other subversive doctrines: Marxism, for example, Leninism, and Maoism. Just as pop is rapidly becoming the official culture of the post-modern State, so is the culture of repudiation becoming the official culture of the post-modern university."

Scruton delves into a thorough analysis of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, tracing the main lines of thought through the 19th century to Modernism, Post-Modernism, and finally the morbid state of collapse in which we now find ourselves. He presents several interesting hypotheses, including the notion that art, in its post-Enlightenment sense, stepped in to fill the void left by the collapse of religion as a guiding force in the West.

Explore these fascinating insights when you read the book in its entirety. ( )
1 vota GaryWolf | Mar 7, 2009 |
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What do we mean by 'culture'? This word, purloined by journalists to denote every kind of collective habit, lies at the centre of contemporary debates about the past and future of society. In this thought-provoking book, Roger Scruton argues for the religious origin of culture in all its forms, and mounts a defence of the 'high culture' of our civilization against its radical and 'deconstructionist' critics. He offers a theory of pop culture, a panegyric to Baudelaire, a few reasons why Wagner is just as great as his critics fear him to be, and a raspberry to Cool Britannia. A must for all people who are fed up to their tightly clenched front teeth with Derrida, Foucault, Oasis and Richard Rogers.

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