Customer Reviews

Modern Culture (Continuum Compacts)

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Roger Scruton has written a very good book. He divides culture into three 'forms': common, high, and popular. He is unashamed in his belief in the primacy of high culture, which is linked to common culture, and considers what popular culture offers far less significant than what higher culture gives us. But that does not mean that Scruton merely dismisses popular culture; rather, it takes up at least three chapters, in which Foucault, Derrida and youth culture (including music) are carefully examined and the bankruptcy of their appeal easily exposed. In that sense the book lives up to the title of the series ('An Intelligent Person's Guide to... '), and Scruton is quite clear on this in the preface. Its audience is thus university students and academics, and possibly the interested, educated common reader. I consider the chapter on youth culture ('Yoofanasia') particularly good and it is just unfortunate that those who may well have their eyes opened by it are the least likely to read it - or to be able to read it. This is, and will continue to be, an unpopular book in fashionable circles; after all, it is by an unfashionable man. On these grounds alone, the book demands to be read, and those with strong ideas on culture will not fail to engage with it.

For those familar with Roger Scruton's brillant essays for City Journal, this book offers more of the same. And, while Scruton vigorously argues against the virulent form of nihilism that characterises our age, his own philosophical timidity leaves little by way of solution to many of the problems he lays at the door of modernity and its proponents. In the first chapter, Scruton provides a kind of reductivist anthropological-psychological analysis of religion that would seem to completely demystify Christianity. Scruton notes the important social and psychological functions "ritual" plays in affirming moral identity and transitional phases in an individual's life with respect to the collective an individual helps comprise. Scruton then develops this line of thought by way of introducing his working thesis: when a civilization no longer believes in God, it can either affirm those values that speak to the human Good religion held in place, or it can attempt to find some sense of authenticity and meaning in rejecting the Old Order altogether. Scruton claims his book will argue for the first option, given the destructive, evil nature of the latter. However, herein lies the problem: by adhering to a form of what seems to be little more than a variation on Enlightenment pragmatic liberalism, Scruton himself falls victim to nihilism. His language implies that he himself rejects the idea that there is a transcendent, mind-independent Truth that ontologically grounds man's being. But if this is the case, whatever moral or aesthetic view of the world one adopts will be as arbitrary as any other: reason will not be able to determine a 'fact of the matter' with regard to the Good. In the face of such a state of affairs, Scruton seems to recommend that we avoid those things that are harmful to a virtuous order of things -- this being understood in Aristotelian terms. But if there is no God, then, as the nihilist would say, everything becomes lawful. The anemic version of liberalism afoot here is just that: either you side with the Old Order -- God, Tsar, and Country (in that order) -- or you try and provide people with a reason for believing in empty philosophies. The same revolutionary relativism that Scruton takes to task in modernity has infected Scruton's own philosophical assumptions. This does not change the fact, however, that he offers many excellent insights and critiques of modernity. The latter is what recommneds reading this book.

of which you are so beautiful a part," was a favourite prayer of the man about whom I wrote my doctoral dissertation, the philosopher of religion, William Earnest Hocking. Scruton's conclusion to his work on modern culture reminded me of that prayer. Initially, like many other reviewers on this site, I was annoyed with what I thought were too few answers. And yet the more I pondered Scruton's reference to to the natural piety of Wordsworth, and the ethos of Confucianism, I found myself agreeing with the suggestions he offers.

Again, as with at least one other reviewer, I felt that "Yoofanasia" is worth the price of the book. The tragedy is, indeed, that many of those who might benefit most from these insights are probably unlikely to read the book or this chapter and possibily unable to do so. As one who second career involved thirty years of trying to get adolescents to learn to think, and who refused to buy into the cult of self-esteem and child-centred education, Scruton is right on in this analysis. When I pondered my own experience of how ungrateful were most of these charges of mine, it seemed eminently clear that natural piety could provide some corrective to that and the civility, courtesy, and deference to wisdom of traditional Confucianism could do that as well.

I recommend the book particularly to educators concerned about schools which are warehouses for adolescents and for those who want to make of them anything but. I recommend it for those concerned with media ecology. I recommend it for those whose own hearts leap up when they behold rainbows in the sky, or the warmth of furry, purring kittens, or the smiling, silent face of their beloved.

Catherine Berry Stidsen, Cayuga, Ontario, Canada

Scruton's title is somewhat misleading - he's written, not so much a guide to modern culture, as an extended meditation on its history, beginning with Religion, and continuing on through the Enlightenment, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. As you might expect from this philosopher, he does not approve of the trend - "art is the consolation prize for our loss of religion."

The question is, what is to be done about culture, and why should it matter? Scruton's book is engaging and provocative, but short on answers. It is perhaps worth reading as a brief history of how Western culture lost its way. But those who are hoping for an incisive diagnosis, and a clarion call to arms, will come away disappointed.

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.

The author starts by giving a definition of the concept of culture and states his intention to pursue an "archaeological" method in studying his subject. He then discusses the difference between cult and culture in which he sees religion as the guarantee of social knowledge and asserts that there can be no scientific culture because culture addresses the question of what we feel. Mr Scruton then proceeds by defining the Romantic movement in art and literature and linking it to the decline of Christian faith and the Enlightenment, the aesthetic thus replacing the religious. And so art and literature ceased to be recreation and became studies. Since the aesthetic is the realm of value, the question of taste arises. He underlines the importance of fiction in high culture because it is the product of the imagination. Art being the product of the human spirit, it is higher than nature and apart from it.
Mr Scruton then concentrates on Romanticism which had nature, erotic love and the world before Enlightenment as its dominant themes. Works of art also pose the question of the importance of fantasy and imagination. Modernism is also discussed with the example of Baudelaire, then avant-garde and the concept of kitsch in which advertising is important because it creates a fantasy in which value can be purchased so that price and value are one and the same.
The author then discusses the issue that the relationship between a painting or a novel and its subject is an intentional one, not a material one as opposed to photography.
A further topic is modern music in which it is not the music that is the focus of attention but the singer himself. In the music of youth, the music is at the service of the performer and not the other way round.
Finally the author concludes that culture is rooted in religion and that the role of modern high culture is to perpetrate the common culture not as a religion but as art.
An interesting study of modern values and of the importance of aesthetic principles which shows that "culture" does not merely denote every kind of collective habit.

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.

Roger Scruton, like many so-called "conservatives" has made a noble swing (hence the two stars) at assessing the spiritual and philosophical problems of our day that have produced what Eliot called the "hollow men", but his "conservative" view is not mine.

While he doesn't give a cultural solution, he makes the keen observation that all conservatives can agree upon, by and large, in the first paragraph of p. 82 regarding culture and religion, how the two intersect, and how one derives meaning. Well done there.

He observes how artists have become the new priests, but have turned art into kitsch, (p. 90) and religion followed (p. 92). In this chapter (8), he correctly discusses how the first effects of modernism was to make high-culture difficult, rather than broadly affirming, which was true - hyper elitist, which you can read from works in T.S. Eliot's day and before. Furthermore, culture became kitschy and ultimately banal, via pop culture, ultimately imbuing fake aesthetic values, which I concur with the author's observation. In Anglo culture, pop culture has become, by and large, fake heritage - a commercial phony disguising what has been lost.

In Chapter 10, he makes some apt observations about the totemic iconic status of pop stars. While pop stars have saint-like status, particularly with youth, I think Scruton gives them too much validity, though they are the modern bards, I wish he would have seasoned his thoughts with an analysis on how corporate ownership uses this enculturation to manipulate the public into the reductionistic location of commodity - everything for sale.

Although, I agree with much of Michael Gunther's assessment regarding Scruton's book of meditations, or rather, observations, that is taking a critical observation of the time line from the Reformation, which Scruton calls the Enlightenment (an historical error).

The error that he makes is to pin, like many conservative Roman Catholic thinkers, the problems of Western society onto the Protestant Reformers, particularly Martin Luther, which is the tone on pages 19, 81 and elsewhere, but explicitly on page 23. He attempts to infuse the Reformation with the caustic thoughts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche and others. This is an inaccurate analysis of Western religion and thought. While he introduces some continental thought that is less known today, like earlier German and French literature and art, he tends to merge it all eclectically to seek a salve for his tortured cultural mind. His solution, like many of his ilk, is to decry the breaking up of the Roman Catholic hegemony in the Middle Ages and the retreat of its sacred vision and authority.

But, the fact of history is that the building and erosion of Western culture is a multi-faceted one that is not so convenient to his position. For instance, did you know that Charles V, who was at odds with the Reformation, also sacked Rome and the pope?

While conservative myself, an Anglo "Whig" conservative, I read this book and saw more broadly how the contemporary "liberal" / "conservative" divide is really a loosely held confederation of worldviews, with many overlaps. Scruton is really trying to speak from an English cultural view (we'll say Anglo, because that cultural worldview reaches beyond England). The conservative Anglo worldview changed in the time of the Tudors to a Reformed Protestant one (even that morphed between a traditional Anglican, Puritan Anglican / Non-Conformist, Laudian, Latitudinarian, Evangelical and others). Like ancient Israel, even this has its muddling. In religious history, the rise of the Anglo-Catholic movement undermined and co-opted this history, which made it vulnerable, as Newman would observe of its romantic medievalism. In history, Britain and the Anglo world started to lose its history and memory as it grew out, losing its religion, and getting caught up in colonial concerns that gained the world, but lost its soul; which got it entangled with multi-culturalism, which has become its political warder. The story is too long and interwoven to call it all out, but there are milestones and I think Scruton gets it wrong from the Anglo position. To make it universal is more difficult, which is what many are trying to do today without ties to religious mooring, but through political revisionisms, such as the post-modern views that Scruton aptly scrutinizes.

Much of the post-War angst you can read in such works as the writings of Philip Larkin and the critiques of Peter Hitchens, and I must add, George Orwell; and, in film and TV (e.g. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "Inspector Morse", etc.). This undertow was revealed much earlier in Matthew Arnold's era, like his poem, "Dover Beach". WWI, positivism, socialism, among other elements, helped push it along (the 60s wasn't the origin, it was a cumulative effect). The result has been a tragic ride down a nihilistic path. For those in Britain, the punk movement makes cultural sense as an outcome, but even it too has been submerged into the sale and dance of commodity culture, which is what we have with the loss of tradition. You can now see why human life is devalued and cruelty is the face of pop culture today - but you won't see that in the papers or in advertisements without looking.

Lastly, Scruton makes some keen observations about the Zeitgeist influenced by the usual suspects, like Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Foucalt and others who exported much of their nihilistic poison, which he correctly ties in with the 18th century Jacobins and moving forward (p. 124f). None the less, the soixante-huitards have had their day. But for Scruton, he odes cultural hope without faith and strangely Confucius and not Christ? A truly orthodox Protestant critique, which would have also resonated in the ancient Jewish / Catholic / Orthodox heart - is to trust God and not institutions, which man tends to deify in substitution, which happened at Trent and elsewhere.

Our times are much like the days in the book of Judges. If one looks at Christian and Western history through the glass of the ancient history of the Old Testament Jews, one will get a better look at a truly conservative vision of the history of man (Anglo and otherwise) and God and some light toward a clearer interpretation of man's history - a story of man, with feet of clay, troding back and forth like Bunyan's allegory trying to find himself and his way.

I'd hoped to enjoy the the knowledge and insight of the reviewers as well as the author of the book in question - letting me know whether I should buy it or borrow it through my local library. But I'm frustrated at what I regard as agonizingly intellectual reviews of what appears to be an agonizingly intellectualized analysis of modern culture.

Isn't it possible to address a simpler question: why isn't there a 20th Century continuation of music that provides entertainment, solace, feelings of reverence, joy, and relaxation to larger segments of the public - that much 19th Century and earlier music was designed to do?Think about the ecstatic reception of Dvorak's New World Symphony in Philadelphia in 1895.

Why must such values be relegated to the popular music world? Why do contemporary composers ignore the needs of general audiences, amateur performers, church congregations, and children in favor of following their personal muse, deriving pleasure in techno- or structral musical experimentation in directions that have no possible or even intended links to those outsider professional or cultural elites?

And why aren't the reviewers asking these questions?

This is a great guided tour through the last few centuries of culture. Scruton appears to be an advocate of natural law (the notion that the good will become obvious to the enquiring mind)--believing that the doorway to this epiphany is through high culture. However, he has to go back a century or so to find good examples. It seems that there is nothing worthwhile happening these days. Scruton has a major Wagner thing going on -- they are on the same page as far as the whole twilight of the gods idea goes.

Unfortunately, Wagner is dead and we are left all alone.