![]() ![]() ![]() I am able to create exactly the kind of image of myself that I want the world to see-even if it bears no resemblance to the human being that I am.Īll of these features of the online world reveal a generation trying to run away from the vulnerabilities of human life. I can “mute” another person’s voice, and “block” his ears. Our online “friends” can be deleted, our interactions abruptly turned off. In “Hiding behind the Screen,” he shows that our online dysfunction stems from the sense that we can live a life entirely of our own making. The example that penetrates most into our daily lives is our desire to live in the flattened, frictionless world of the internet. Many of these contemporary diseases spring from the intense and pervasive desire to create a perfect world for ourselves rather than embrace our contingent and limited place in the world we have. Throughout, Scruton challenges the reigning orthodoxies of the day-the modern prejudices and behaviors of both high culture and everyday life. The collection admirably displays Scruton’s breadth, ranging from the love of animals to the proper understanding of the nation from modern art to our inevitable confrontation with death. As Douglas Murray observes in his short introduction to the new edition, “While other people might have been able to have written one of his books, who else could have written them all?” One thing that put Scruton head and shoulders above most other conservative intellectuals was his ability to write so thoroughly and powerfully about all of these subjects, often weaving them together into a magnificent whole. His appeal should be obvious to anyone who has cracked the spine of one of his books on politics, philosophy, aesthetics, architecture, music, or religion. But it is our home nonetheless-a place to be cherished, protected, and enjoyed, even as we sense that it is but one part of a great, ordered cosmos that we cannot fully apprehend.įew conservative voices over the past half-century have been as important as Scruton’s. It is an imperfect and constrained world, populated by others who often get in the way of satisfying our own immediate desires. Or as he puts it, channeling Wittgenstein, “that whereof we cannot speak, we must consign to silence.”Īppropriately, then, Scruton put his ink to use examining the world inside the window. ![]() Its message is that we can neither pass through that window nor describe in words what exists on the other side: Let all mortal flesh keep silence. The length of the essay, a mere four pages, is not incidental. “When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, 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.” In these moments arising from contemplation or from the experience of great beauty, we sense that the deep mysteries of existence are somehow brought before our eyes, but they still defy our attempt at understanding. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.The shortest essay in the recently rereleased collection, Confessions of a Heretic, is entitled “Effing the Ineffable.” In it, the late Roger Scruton speaks of the brief and indescribable glimpses we human beings are sometimes afforded of a world of meaning that seems to exist on a plane just outside of our reach. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. ![]()
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