Roger Scruton: Culture Counts

Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged

Encounter Books, 2007     Amazon.co.uk

Front Flap:

What is culture? Why should we preserve it, and how? In this book renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends Western culture against its internal critics and external enemies, and argues that rumours of its death are seriously exaggerated. He shows our culture to be a continuing source of moral knowledge, and rebuts the fashionable sarcasm which sees it as nothing more than the useless legacy of “dead white European males”. He is robust in defence of traditional architecture and figurative painting, critical of the fashionable relativists and urgent in his plea for our civilization, which more than ever stands in need of the self-knowledge and self-confidence that are the gift of serious culture.

Back Cover:

“Boldly standing up to today’s nihilisms and debasements of taste, Culture Counts offers a noble and compelling defense of high culture and the centrality of rich aesthetic experience for a full human life. The wisdom  of Roger Scruton’s judgments and the elegance of his prose are themselves powerful evidence for the truth of his thesis. Bravo.”  Leon R. Kass Harding Professor, The Committee on Social Thought, The University of  Chicago; Hertog Fellow, The American Enterprise Institute

“Roger Scruton has written an aggressive, provocative, and  persuasive counterattack against the nihilism of modern intellectuals who  would repudiate the high culture of America and the West.”  Robert H. Bork