Gentle Regrets (Thoughts from a Life) [Hardcover]

Roger Scruton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0826471315 | ISBN-13: 978-0826471314 | Publication Date: May 10, 2006

Roger Scruton is Britain's best known intellectual dissident, who has defended English traditions and English identity against an official culture of denigration. Although his writings on philosophical aesthetics have shown him to be a leading authority in the field, his defence of political conservatism has marked him out in academic circles as public enemy number one. Whether it is Scruton's opinions that get up the nose of his critics, or the wit and erudition with which he expresses them, there is no doubt that their noses are vastly distended by his presence, and constantly on the verge of a collective sneeze. Contrary to orthodox opinion, however, Roger Scruton is a human being, and Gentle Regrets contains the proof of it - a quiet, witty but also serious and moving account of the ways in which life brought him to think what he thinks, and to be what he is. His moving vignettes of his childhood and later influences illuminate this book. Love him or hate him, he will engage you in an argument that is both intellectually stimulating and informed by humour. >

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Scruton is an English philosopher best known for vigorously defending traditional culture in works like "England: An Elegy" and "The Meaning of Conservatism." His latest book assembles twelve "autobiographical excursions" into a composite account of his intellectual development. In addition to neatly expository essays ("How I Discovered Culture") and a sequence of poems entitled "Miss Hap," the collection includes a reminiscence of the "sleeping cities" of the Eastern bloc and an acute meditation on beauty and religious faith. The blunt wit for which Scruton is known is scarce here, but lyric suits him almost as well as polemic. Such passages as the evocation of a chapel filled with the "soft smell of stone that has grown old in shadow" vividly illuminate the moral import of aesthetic values.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Review

'Extracts'

(Third Way )

'...Roger Scruton so distinctive a figure on the British intellectual landscape...extraordinary range of his interests and sympathies - aesthetics, architecture, farming, hunting, literature, music, philosophy and, above all, religion...very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence, and beautifully produced by one of Britain's most interesting publishers...amiable and thoughtful...succinct...remarkable representative of English high culture...elegant book' (Michael Burleigh Literary Review )

'..beguilling memoirs'

(Jonathan Rée Independent, The )

'In this vivid confessional, Scruton incarnates ideas throughout in autobiographical events... by completely integrating the ideas into the personal narrative, the author creates a new and vital form which is beyond both scholarly dissertation and personal memoir... read this book and be eoncuraged... an excitement and a joy from cover to cover.' New Criticism

'A splendid book, often moving, often funny, disconcertingly humble but also full of passionate indignation and satire... fascinating.' Tablet

a very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence

(Michael Burleigh Literary Review )

Scruton is an English philosopher best known for vigorously defending traditional culture in works like "England: An Elegy" and "The Meaning of Conservatism." His latest book assembles twelve "autobiographical excursions" into a composite account of his intellectual development. In addition to neatly expository essays ("How I Discovered Culture") and a sequence of poems entitled "Miss Hap," the collection includes a reminiscence of the "sleeping cities" of the Eastern bloc and an acute meditation on beauty and religious faith. The blunt wit for which Scruton is known is scarce here, but lyric suits him almost as well as polemic. Such passages as the evocation of a chapel filled with the "soft smell of stone that has grown old in shadow" vividly illuminate the moral import of aesthetic values.--The New Yorker

'The record of an extraordinary life...contains many memorable portraits of Scruton's friends, teachers, inspirations, antagonists...the central teaching of this wise and companionable book is that the acknowledgement of loss is not the end the prelude to the possession of joy.'

(National Review )

"...Gentle Regrets, Scruton's wistful, magnanimous, and ineluctably intelligent memoir."- National Review, March 27, 2006

(National Review )

'[A] book of unforgettable reflections on childhood, schooling, music, opera, religion and love...[a] highly personal series of wistful reflections.'

Times Literary Supplement, A. N. Wilson, 18/08/2006

(A. N. Wilson Times Literary Supplement )

Title mention in article by Roger Scruton on Chomsky.

Wall Street Journal [Europe], 29/09/2006

(Wall Street Journal, The )

'Gentle Regrets, his memoir, is far more than a collection of fertile ideas: it's the colourful story of a learned man's life and the argued attempt to help other reclaim treasures of mind and soul that are being relegated to the discard bin....Scruton has produced a minor classic, a searching treatment of his own spirit in conflict with the spirit of age.' David Castronovo, Commonweal, September 2006

Mentioned in review in Catholic Insight (June 2007)

(Ian Hunter )

"...a penetrating self-examination that is often remorseless and poignant, while presenting what may be the finest contemporary example of one man's resistance to 'personal and social disorders of this age." - Philosophy Now

'..beguilling memoirs'

(, Independent, The )

a very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence

(, Literary Review )

'The record of an extraordinary life...contains many memorable portraits of Scruton's friends, teachers, inspirations, antagonists...the central teaching of this wise and companionable book is that the acknowledgement of loss is not the end the prelude to the possession of joy.'

(, )

"…Gentle Regrets, Scruton’s wistful, magnanimous, and ineluctably intelligent memoir."- National Review, March 27, 2006

(, )

'[A] book of unforgettable reflections on childhood, schooling, music, opera, religion and love...[a] highly personal series of wistful reflections.'

Times Literary Supplement, A. N. Wilson, 18/08/2006

(, Times Literary Supplement )

Mentioned in review in Catholic Insight (June 2007)

(, )

“…a penetrating self-examination that is often remorseless and poignant, while presenting what may be the finest contemporary example of one man’s resistance to 'personal and social disorders of this age.” - Philosophy Now

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (May 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826471315
• ISBN-13: 978-0826471314
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,475,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A stimulating traditionalist, July 15, 2007

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (Paperback)

One has to be awed by the range of cultural references in this book of autobiographical essays. Coming from a home which was not interested in books, the young Scruton was captivated by Bunyan at the age of 13. At 15 he was into Rilke and Dante. At 16, he and a group of sixth form friends `declared war on kitsch'. By the time he was a Cambridge undergraduate, inspired by T.S.Eliot, he was into Culture in a big way: he and his friends there were `consciously aiming to better themselves', and were establishing hierarchies among works which were not kitsch: the superiority of Mozart over Vivaldi, Milton over Carew, Titian over Veronese, and - Paul McCartney over Mick Jagger. They were elitists, and as such rebels against left wing rebels who were then fashionable. And an individualistic conservative he remained for the rest of his life.

As a 24 year old he was in Paris, and witnessed the events of 1968. He was an admirer of De Gaulle because the General defined the French nation in terms of its high culture, and he detested Foucault, one the gurus of the students, for his shallow relativism and for teaching that `truth' requires inverted commas.

So he was a defiant fish out of water as a lecturer at Birkbeck College at a time when academia in Britain (unlike in the United States) considered conservatism as an aberration, and when, to find an English conservative philosopher, he had to go back to Edmund Burke. In 1978 Scruton sought a parliamentary seat; but his Burkean philosophy was so unfashionable that he was not selected, and `I ceased to be an intellectual Conservative, and became a conservative intellectual instead'. The chapter called `How I Became a Conservative' is a splendidly vigorous presentation and illustration of his beliefs.

For me the finest chapter in the book is the Burkean one on architecture, in which Scruton lambasts modern architecture for its contempt of tradition and for the people on whom it inflicts its soulless and anti-communal monstrosities. Scruton was once Professor of Aesthetics; aestheticism lies at the heart of his conservatism and nowhere does it find more eloquent expression than in this chapter. His hatred of what modern architects have perpetrated was shared by his father, an activist in this respect and whom elsewhere in the book he frequently describes as a foul-tempered tyrant, but who here is given generous filial praise.

Conservatives are sceptical of schemes to make the world a better place: and in religion, too, Scruton is attracted by people who believe that `the duty of a Christian is not to leave this world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man.' In one chapter he describes two such Christians - both Roman Catholics - who have been very important to him: here we have an aim of self-improvement which is the spiritual equivalent of the aim he has pursued in the cultural realm. The last chapter (which I found went way over the top in its sweeping claims of the damage done by the lack of religious faith) goes beyond that: it is a sermon on the need for our society and for individuals to recover faith: to bring us together again as a community, to understand suffering as sacrifice, to teach us that we have obligations to the generations who have preceded and who will follow us, to preserve us from the impiety of scientists being allowed to tamper with God's creation, both human and environmental.

There is a chapter on what music in general and opera in particular has mean to the author, in which he conveys his hatred for modern productions that interpose the producer's `message' between the music and the audience.

There is a remarkable chapter called `Living with Sam', the name first of a pet dog, then of a hunter (Scruton is devoted to hunting) and then of Scruton's son. In that chapter he mingles beautiful descriptions with philosophical thoughts about the relationship between humans and animals, about the soul, about personhood and the nature of parenthood, about marriage (which should be a vow and not a contract), and about television (than which `in the armoury of nothingness there is no weapon more lethal').

The rest of the book strikes me as bits and pieces to pad out the volume, without obvious connections to its main theme. There is a chapter on the resonance of names (Scruton's own included); an evocative one on the contrast between Prague and Warsaw in communist and in post communist times (during the former period Scruton did some underground lecturing there). Another chapter reproduces his diary of a six day visit to Finland as a lecturer, fairly relentless and quite funny in its mockery of the lugubrious Finns and their soulless modern buildings. There are diary entries about his friend Iris Murdoch, and about a visit to Soweto in 1983.

The book evoked varying reactions from me. Sometimes I found its tone smug and precious; I enjoyed him when he argues, less so when he asserts. His style varies from the limpid, poetic and beautiful to passages which are too dense to be any of these. He does not suffer fools gladly - robustly and joyously including among them many whom others regard as sages. I think that, like many combative conservatives, he relishes his unpopularity. I was always struck by his fundamental seriousness: it seems to me that almost every aspect of daily life evokes from him philosophical ruminations and associations. Not an easy companion, I would guess; but surely a stimulating one.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Title, April 11, 2007

By 

McLaren F1 "Brian" (Conifer, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (Paperback)

Gentle Regrets seems to be the perfect title for this work. Especially strong are his writings regarding religion and the Catholic Church, ironic since he is not Catholic. It is also evident that he has suffered through the years from the liberal establishment that holds university life in a vice, refusing to even hear, let alone consider, reasoned dissent. His writing is as strong as his philosophical thoughts.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sketches from the life of a Conservative dissident, March 1, 2009

By 

Sirin (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (Paperback)

It has come to a pretty pass in modern British life that Roger Scruton should be classified as an intellectual dissident. The adage that the right won the economic war, the left the cultural war seems to ring very true when it comes to some one like Scruton. An intellectual pariah, regularly ignored or pilloried in the media (though sometimes justly, such as his notorious cash for tobacco articles scandal a few years back), he is actually an old fashioned intellectual Conservative - which is a complete oxymoron in British Political life. Can anyone name an intellectual Conservative MP in the Commons? Well, perhaps Michael Gove, but that's about it.

Scruton picks out themes from his life. He writes about how he discovered culture with the help of a curious, Larkinesque librarian in High Wycombe with a passion for Mozart; how his political career foundered before it had even begun when he attempted to gain selection for a parliamentary candidacy by mentioning his Conservative 'philosophy' - ouch! Never a good idea amongst the blue rinsers.

He is wryly funny describing a lecture trip to Finland. At first glance it appears as if he is being unnecessarily harsh on the quietly proud, lugubrious Finns, who after all are a minor European nation without the cultural cannons that Scruton can draw on. But after Scruton admitted his efforts to uncover the exact meaning of 'Finlandization' foundered, I did my own brief google search on the term and was none the wiser!

He returns to his familiar, well worn, tweed jacket and yellow corduroy trousered themes of modern architecture (he hates it), classical music (he loves it) and religion (he is slightly fuzzy on this - like many Conservative traditionalists he loves the ritual of the Church, and has become his local church organist, but he cannot intellectually commit to belief in God - I suppose the closest definition he fits is that of 'God shaped hole' man, lamenting the fact that bottomless hedonism has replaced pious belief amongst modern people. Though he does misunderstand the REM song 'Losing My Religion' which, as Michael Stipe pointed out, is not actually about a man losing his religion at all.)

Bung in some superfluous reminiscences of Iris Murdoch in a chapter supposedly about Africa, and a quirky chapter about how he discovered his name - his mother wanted to call him Vernon, but his father thought it unmanly - and you have the ingredients of a decent, short, fragmentary memoir of a book. It is not meaty heavyweight action stuff, but then Scruton has lived most of his life through books, and observing things, so this type of autobiography probably best suits the man.

PC leftists will recoil at some of the phrases Scruton uses - i.e. he refers to Africa as 'the dark continent', but that is just the way Scruton is. He is not a bad man. Merely a sensitive intellectual (Vernon) in the skin of a leathery old intellectual pugalist (Roger).