Scruton, Roger: A Political Philosophy

In this timely new edition of his classic book A Political Philosophy, celebrated conservative philosopher Roger Scruton interrogates contemporary values, virtues and morality. What principles should govern our relations to animals, the nation state, the environment and other ways of life? What does modern marriage look like? What is Enlightenment and how has its inheritance made itself known? How should we approach religion, evil and death? What explains the rise of totalitarianism and how should we respond to nihilism? In these philosophical reflections, Scruton adopts his characteristically articulate and unorthodox tone, making no concessions to intellectual fashion. The result is a book of bold, clear thinking that will seem refreshingly logical to many, particularly those seeking a return to first principles in an increasingly baffling age of modernity.What may be found here is a collection of acute observations about modern attitudes, arguments undermining their essential assumptions, and references to the past which enable the reader to set moral and intellectual enquiry into a wide frame of reference. The essays are certainly polemical, and are clearly intended to be; they are, however, elevated above the trivial rhetoric of modern politics, and achieve a distinction that is at once apparent and readily accessible. His essays are prophetic assaults upon the superficial and false understandings inherent in the substitute morality now mandatory in modern materialist thought...there remains intellectual engagement of a high order.
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