Customer Reviews

Culture Counts (Brief Encounters)

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Just about everything Roger Scruton writes I enjoy reading. He has one of the most penetrating and illustrious minds in all of conservadom, and Culture Counts is a book worthy of his reputation. Scruton is the type of intellectual heavyweight who can score points on every page which is exactly what he does here. Central to his theme is that western education exists to preserve knowledge and transmit it to the generations which follow. Our accumulated observations, values, and judgments must be conserved. Educating individuals is a secondary, and never the primary, goal of organized schooling. One's education is bigger than his person.

The idea I found most intriguing is that no information is superfluous or unworthy of accumulation. Almost every fact we gather in life adds to our general understanding of the world and is, thus, invaluable. Most people don't seem to comprehend this and act as if they are above many things and many individuals. Such attitudes are counter-productive, and are what make an ignoramus an ignoramus. The intrinsic merits of contemplation are today largely forgotten, but not to Mr. Scruton. He reminds us Aristotle regarded contemplation as being the highest good. I also appreciated his short section on the importance of laughter and the way it saves us from despair.

My only criticism is that, at just over 100 pages, Culture Counts is really more of an extended essay than a complete book. Twenty dollars is too expensive a price in my opinion. Of course, the great thing about Amazon is that stuff always sells at a discount here. Furthermore, the z shops have been a godsend for my wallet and I am sure they have been for yours as well.

Roger Scruton's "Culture Counts" is much more than just another tiresome, stale screed attacking the postmodernist establishment. Instead, it is a refreshing defense of the actual, if neglected, inclusiveness and meaningful "multiculturalism" of traditional Western culture, and, simultaneously, an expose of the rigid orthodoxies and crude censoriousness which mark that allegedly open-minded, postmodernist "culture" flourishing at our universities, one he calls the "culture of repudiation." This regnant "culture" he sees as unworthy of a university, since it is in grave contradiction, for it argues that all cultures are relative and therefore of equal value, at the same time as it demonstrates a fashionable self-loathing by bashing traditional Western culture as beyond the pale. It is, in fact, merely nihilist and has nothing substantive to offer in place of what it would destroy.

Scruton is equally provocative in suggesting that current education has things just backwards. To him, the purpose of education is not merely the private benefit to the student, but rather the benefit to the culture, of which a truly educated student will himself be a future guardian. (Pace, John Dewey!)

Finally, it should be pointed out that Scruton is as versed in contemporary art, architecture, music and literature as he is in the traditional, and thus he does not follow his serious analysis with a counsel of impotence and despair, seeing instead convincing "rays of hope" in such current practitioners as, for example, Jacob Collins, Quinlan Terry, David del Tredici, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq, Alain Finkelkraut, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Paul Johnson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and James Wood.

Written by Roger Scruton (Research Professor, Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia), Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged declares that rumors of the demise of Western culture are greatly exaggerated. Countering academic, external, and internal critics of Western Culture, such as dismissive attitudes toward the legacy of "dead white European males", Culture Counts reveals Western cultural contributions to moral education, defends traditional architecture and figurative painting, and urges renewed respect for the positive achievements of Western civilization. "We should see culture as Schiller and other Enlightenment thinkers saw it: the repository of emotional knowledge, through which we can come to understand the meaning of life as an end in itself. Culture inherits from religion the 'knowledge of the heart' whose essence is sympathy. But it can be passed on and enhanced, even when the religion that first engendered it has died. Indeed, in these circumstances, it is all the more important that culture be passed on, since it has become the sole communicable testimony to the higher life of mankind." A highly recommended, thought-provoking philosophical treatise.

Roger Scruton's book "Culture Counts" is meant as an answer
to Western culture's two current threats: radical Islam and,
from within, multiculturalism. To that end he offers up an
examination of just what culture is: its origins and importance
for a civilization.

In a compact (108pp) format of seven chapters, Scruton discusses
the development of cultures generally, using relevant topics from
philosophy and religion, anthropology, and general history. When
commenting on Western Culture in particular, he offers up specific
examples of both popular and high culture drawn from literature
and drama, painting, architecture, and music. In the chapter
"Culture Wars" aim is taken at several factions of the
multiculturalist brigades.

The book is quite readable. However, for those only at the level of
interested layman (such as myself), there are some passages that wend
off into the esoteric. Fortunately, these excursions are few and
brief, and they did nothing to dissuade me from enjoying the book a
second time several weeks later.

Lets face the truth: our universities now undermine western culture. Our universities and our chattering classes argue "that there is no objective procedure, no authority, no secure canon of classics" to pass on. And besides, isn't it a form of prejudice to insist our culture is superior in any way?

This dismissal of western culture spreads across all the humanities. For example, when "Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal..and then exhibited it as a work of art" (p 9) it was an act of malicious undermining of all that had been true and beautiful in western art.

Scruton sifts through the wreckage that is before us to find where the rot started. And with brilliant clarity he finds it in the growing "spirit of skepticism" (p 25) that has also drawn Europe away from religion.

Scruton points out that "the goal of religious education is...the cultivation of the heart, not the head...(and) the education of the emotions through religion occurs only when the doctrines are believed. That is why culture cannot be a religion substitute" (p 39).

The utter ruin of western civilization is all around us. We see it even in the fact that "mathematical competence is a dwindling asset in Western society" (p 57). The humanities appear to have simply disappeared. Art and poetry...so much lost. And music! Spend a second pondering a rap musician's cruelty to women and violence, all in childish rhyme and no melody whatsoever. That's western music today.

Scruton indicates the only hope is in a religious revival. And the chances for that seem...

I have thought long and hard about this book and this review and have written several different versions of the latter. I think, in the end, what I want to do is to emphasize the intelligence and insight of this slim volume. So my plan, is to simply point out some insights that I got from reading it.
The first point I want to pass on is that his is a largely Aristotelean view of culture. If I am understanding Scruton correctly, he believes that culture is a way of passing on a framework of emotional intelligence which then cultivates behavorial habits which then become moral standards.
These standards are then embodied in the canon of high art- those books, paintings, buildings and music which are the highest exemplars of the ethical reflection that the members of that culture have created.
Religion is the best way to do this. Not so much through the understanding of doctrine but through ritual, through "holy words and examples" (p.39)
The problem is that over time Western culture began to seperate itself from religion. I want to make one thing clear here about a way in which I may differ from Prof. Scruton. I believe that this seperation began in Athens; it is the central theme of The Clouds by Aristophanes, it is the reason that the people of Athens put Socrates to death. It is a central tension in Western culture. It is certainly not the gift of the nineteenth century or the Enlightenment or postmodernism (although all those periods and movements did yeoman's work in widening the rift).
Regardless of all that, I think Prof. Scruton's ideas about culture are very interesting and worth further reflection. One small issue that came up for me out of his discussion on culture and religion is the question of whether it is even possible to have a definition of the obscene without some form of religious belief in a soul (p. 49). I think he would say no and it is worth thinking about.
Like the other reviewers, I also found his discussion of the purposes and methods of education to be useful. I have a (wonderful) daughter who is finishing first grade. Consider the following quote from Prof. Scruton:
"Those who understand a subject can deal with its foundations. Those who have yet to understand it must concentrate instead on its most vivid and easily memorized results" (p.58) When I help my daughter with her math homework, I find myself wondering why we aren't struggling with addition and subtraction tables instead of what seem to be exercises designed to teach the commutative property.
I also found insightful his point about culture being perserved for the group not for the good of the individual. I liked his insight into the results of making education relevant:
"A relevant curriculum is one from which the difficult core of knowledge has been excised, and while it may be relevant now it will be futile in a few years' time. Conversely irrelevant -seeming knowledge, when properly acquired, is not merely a discipline that can be adapted and applies; it is likely to be exactly what is needed, in circumstances that nobody foresaw." (p. 29)
Prof. Scruton also feels that it is possible to talk about high and low culture, about what deserves to be in a cultural canon in the same way it is possible to talk about what makes for a good joke:
"Those who think there are no aesthetic values ought to look more closely at the practice of human laughter, which is-judged from one perspective-a continuous search for them..." (p.46) This is a very interesting approach that is worth further development.
Now the discerning reader will note that all my quotes from Prof. Scruton's book have been from the first half of it. I consider the first half to be the philosophical foundation that he lays for the cultural critique of the second half. Which, unfortunately, I found far less convincing. I will submit but one example, that of his critique of modern pop singing that he offers on p. 63. Prof. Scruton feels that "Sometimes serious doubts arise as to whether the performers made more than a minimal contribution to the recording, which owes it trademark to subsequent sound engineering, designed precisely to make it unrepeatable...Hence it is often impossible to sing for yourself the tunes and words of a pop-song"(pp.63-4). All I will say is that any philosophical argument that you make that is instantly refuted by millions of pre-teens singing Hannah Montana songs is just not a good argument. But let us leave such quibbles aside. Prof. Scruton has written something valuable. Indeed, I dare to say something wise. And it would serve well as a basis for conversation between those of us who are secular leftists with those who (while being people who practise/live a faith and who are conservative) would like to have a good chat about politics and culture and about whether there is a soul. In the meantime, I leave you all with a question. If we as a culture have grown away from God and our rational inheritance is the basis for that movement then where does that leave us?
We cannot simply decide to reverse the movement. If we try to do so because of the bad effects that secularlism has had on our sense of moral community, then isn't our faith merely manipulative?

Roger Scruton's book, I think, is slightly mistitled. The subtitle should probably read something like: "on the importance of education as a furtherance of cultural knowledge." (Not as pretty and less likely to sell bools than "faith and feeling in a world besieged.")

This extended essay is an argument for the importance of educating students not just in academics or technical skills, but cultural education. And anyone involved in education knows that this is the minority position right now. Music and art programs have been long under attack, and literature courses focus as much on technical writing skills as they do on examining classic works. Even the mention of "great works" or "the canon" is likely to rouse the ire of many. We prefer John Grisham and JK Rowling.

Scruton further makes things interesting by pointing out that while schools today focuses on "knowledge that" (facts) and "knowledge how" (technical skills). But what also needs to be remembered - what Scruton believes is the chief value of education in culture - is "knowledge what," which means "knowledge of what to do, how to apply what I've learned, and what to feel in given situations." (As a special educator dealing with students with social/emotional issues, I focused a lot on instruction on how to act and how to feel appropriately, but this was always a "special ed thing.")

The big criticism I have of Scruton is that he fails to make any compelling case as to why cultural education (education in classic works of literature, art, music) is the only way to achieve this "knowledge what" Yes, the great works of literature are often great because they express characters and dilemmas deeply and thoughtfully, giving the student a wonderful way to view these people and issues objectively. But just as George Eliot produced works that do this, so do contemporary authors like Wally Lamb, Jodi Picoult, and - yes - John Grisham. Scruton prefers the former authors, but doesn't explain why the latter can not achieve the same things. (And Scruton's case against pop music is even more ridiculous, reminding me of the used-to-be-hippie who, while listening to classic rock stations, wonders why they don't make music like they used to. Scruton, like this poor hippie, doesn't realize that classic rock stations play the hits that survived the test of time, rather than all the top 40 songs that didn't.)

While Scruton correctly notes that the proper end of education is not to give the students what they need, but to give the future at large what it needs. By educating students, we ensure that the ideas we impart on them find their way into the culture at large. Scruton, however, wrongly suggests that this idea is contra to John Dewey's educational philosophy. While I am no fan of Dewey, this type of anti-individualism (educating as social engineering) is all to common in Dewey's words.

Scruton does score points, however, with his critique of postmodernism, relativism, and multiculturalism. He notes that relativism that seeks to "contextualize" reason fail to realize that this itself is using reason (and that reason is quite a universal method, rather than a contextual ideology). Abandoning reason (or compartmentalizing it) is bad pedagogy because it takes away our ability to teach kids one of the most crucial skills of all: how to judge and analyize. [If anyone needs to read a good argument in praise of judgment, see Theodore Dalrymple's "In Praise of Prejudice." and...judge...for yourself.)

Overall, I thought that Scruton's was a decent but somewhat short-falling defense of cultural education. As mentioned, he has many interesting pedagogical ideas, but none of them show that the "great works" can do what modern works cannot (except by very post-hoc arguments against all things modern). It will be of at least some interest to those concerned with the proper direction of education.

Excellent book that discusses the value of culture, especially high culture, when it is so common these days to ridicule it.

The book brings out the truth about our society. We as a nation tend to forget the white man and white woman in the early years and that they are eating the fruit of the labors of the European man and woman.
Thank you!
Bonnie A.