5.0 out of 5 stars
A Cultured Book about Culture, Jun 24 2000
This review is from: Intelligent Guide To Modern Culture (Hardcover)
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.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
"May I Know the Whole ..., July 30 2004
This review is from: Intelligent Guide To Modern Culture (Hardcover)
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
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Probing the white underbelly of postmodernism, May 9 2002
This review is from: Intelligent Guide To Modern Culture (Hardcover)
A fascinating tour through the last three centuries of culture. This book gave me my first real grasp of what modern and postmodern labels are all about. Scruton appears to be an advocate of natural law (that which is good becomes obvious to the enquiring mind) perceived through the lens of high culture, music, art etc. However, he tends to go back in time to find relevant examples. As usual with this sort of diatribe there is nothing really good happening in our day. Scruton has a major Wagner thing going on here. His twilight of the gods philosophy goes so well together with Wagner its not surprising. Unfortunately, Wagner is dead. So what is a person to do?
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