More on Scruton’s Godless Conservatism

In his article on Godless Conservatism (discussed at length in a previous post), the English conservative Roger Scruton defines religion to suit his own preferences. He writes:

The pious person is the one who acknowledges the generations that have gone before, who does not trample on their remains or tear down their achievements. It is this respect for the dead that prompts the awe with which we enter sacred places or celebrate sacred times. It is manifest in the small things—in custom and ceremony. It is also manifest in the large things: in the sense that certain actions are not to be done, not to be thought about, not to be spoken of.

Attracted to the Confucian notion of spirituality as ancestor worship and continuity with the past, Scruton has projected that notion onto all religions, particularly Christianity. This leads him to the conclusion that religious piety—the kind of thing we experience, say, when we’re in church—is “really” about respect for the dead! Now it’s one thing not to be a Christian believer. It’s another thing to have such a silly reductive idea of what the Christian religion is.

This next passage has some ideas that are not bad, though Scruton’s (typically British) conceit that you can maintain respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty without God is doubtful. Also note that this nonbeliever in God sees sex as sacred:

We could never understand the prohibition of obscenity and indecency, for example, if we think of them merely in liberal terms—as exercises of the right to free speech, to be praised or condemned according to the good or bad effects on those exposed to them. The goal of pornography is to de-sacralize the sexual act, to detach it from love and commitment, and to put it on sale as a commodity. The continuity of human society can no longer be guaranteed when people see sex in this way. The prohibition arises from the fact that we witness in pornography a threat to the deepest interest of other generations.

Scruton correctly notes that the problem with liberal equalitarianism is “the inability to recognize obligations that are stronger than desire.” He wants to challenge liberalism, but without posing against it the old religion of the West. Instead, he wants us to believe in the continuity of human and social things, particularly its sexual dimension, and posits our participation in that continuum as the source of moral restraint and decency. But he’s missing the higher source that makes all of that possible. A true modernist intellectual seeking to construct his own god out of earthly values, Scruton ends up making sex the principle that restrains desire.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 24, 2002 02:37 PM | Send