Philosopher Roger Scruton is widely considered one of Britain's leading conservative thinkers. In April 2014, a conference was held in his honour at McGill University, called Thinking the Sacred with Roger Scruton. There and elsewhere, he argues that we need a sense of the transcendent to make sense of our lives.

Something can be meaningful even though its meaning eludes all attempts to put it into words, for example the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa; the evening sunlight on the hill behind my house. Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though on the winding unlit stairway of our lives we suddenly come across a window through which we catch sight of another and brighter world, a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter. Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton is a philosopher, author of numerous books, and composer of music. He is considered one of Britain's leading thinkers on conservatism.
 
Scruton's claim to fame - or infamy depending on your point of view - began in the early eighties. That's when he became founding editor of The Salisbury Review.  It attacked issues dear to the liberal left, like the peace movement, feminism, foreign aid, and multiculturalism - all in the aim of wanting to give conservatism an intellectual basis.
 
These days, Roger Scruton is more concerned with the popular idea that science and technology will somehow answer our deepest questions of what it means to be a human being.  And that's why he's looking elsewhere, beyond the reach of the empirical, and the demonstrable.


Books by Roger Scruton mentioned in the lecture:

• The Face of God: The Gifford Lectures, published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2012.

• The Soul of the World, published by Princeton University Press, 2014.

• Notes from the Underground, published by Beaufort Books, 2014.

Related Websites:

• Roger Scruton

• Thinking the Sacred with Roger Scruton - McGill University conference

Additional Listening:

Listen to Roger Scruton's full lecture in 3 parts

Part 1




Part 2




Part 3




Musical performances with soprano Kristi Bryson, tenor Kevin Myers, and on piano: Benjamin Kwong & Alexander Slaby

Performance one contains an introduction Roger Scruton provides to three pieces of music he wrote to the poetry of the renowned Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (born June 5, 1898, died August 19, 1936). The music is based on three poems by Lorca: Casida de la Rosa, Cancio del Jinete, and Despedida. This section ends with Roger Scruton introducing a piece of original music he wrote for the piano called Boreas Blows Not.





Performance two contains the playing of Boreas Blows Not. At the ending of this piece of music Roger Scruton gives a brief introduction to an original opera he wrote called The Minister.





Performance three is contains the playing of The Minister.