Roger Scruton
1944 CE – 2020 CE · Contemporary Era
“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
Biography
Scruton was a prolific and publicly engaged conservative philosopher. He wrote over fifty books on topics from aesthetics and architecture to wine and Wagner, but his core project was articulating a philosophical conservatism grounded in love of home, community, and inherited culture. He argued that the postmodern left's deconstruction of Western civilization was not liberation but nihilism, the destruction of the shared meanings that make human life worth living.
Major Works
Key Arguments
Click “Philosophy 101” to read the full exploration of each argument.
Oikophilia: The Love of Home
Scruton argued that conservatism is not an ideology or a set of policy positions but a disposition rooted in oikophilia, the love of home, the attachment to the familiar, the desire to protect and transmit what we have inherited. This is not nostalgia or fear of change but a recognition that human flourishing depends on belonging to a community with shared traditions, shared sacred spaces, and a shared sense of the past. The conservative instinct is to settle, to build, to maintain, to pass on, to treat the world as a home to be cherished rather than a problem to be solved. Scruton contrasted oikophilia with oikophobia, the pathological rejection of one's own culture, the desire to repudiate inherited traditions in favor of abstract ideals, which he saw as the characteristic vice of the modern intellectual.
Why it matters: Scruton gave philosophical depth to conservative sentiment that Burke had first articulated, updating it for an age of globalization, mass migration, and cultural dislocation. His concept of oikophilia connected conservatism to environmental stewardship (we conserve because we love our home), to architecture (we build beautifully because places matter), and to the philosophy of belonging. His critique of oikophobia provided a framework for understanding the cultural divide between cosmopolitan elites and rooted communities.
Beauty as a Transcendental Value
In an age when contemporary art and architecture often celebrate ugliness, transgression, and irony, Scruton argued that beauty is a real and objective value, not simply a matter of taste but a fundamental human need. Beautiful buildings, landscapes, and works of art create an environment in which human beings can flourish; ugly ones degrade and demoralize. Beauty is, Scruton contended, a form of meaning: it tells us that the world makes sense, that order and harmony are possible, that there is something worth caring about beyond utility and efficiency. The deliberate pursuit of ugliness in modern art and architecture is not liberation but nihilism, the refusal to affirm any value beyond the artist's own ego.
Why it matters: Scruton's philosophy of beauty provided a sustained and rigorous defense of traditional aesthetics in contemporary thought. His arguments influenced the architectural traditionalism movement, debates about public space and urban design, and the broader cultural conversation about whether beauty is a subjective preference or an objective good. His BBC documentary Why Beauty Matters brought these philosophical arguments to a wide public audience.
The Sacred and the Secular
Scruton argued that even secular societies need a sense of the sacred, things set apart from ordinary use, commanding reverence and self-restraint. The sacred is not necessarily religious (though religion has historically been its primary vehicle): it can be found in the solemnity of law, the dignity of marriage, the reverence owed to the dead, the beauty of sacred architecture, and the moral seriousness of consecrated spaces. A society that desacralizes everything, that treats nothing as beyond negotiation, criticism, or commercial exploitation, loses the capacity for the experiences that give life depth and meaning: awe, reverence, sacrifice, unconditional commitment. The result is not freedom but a flattened world in which everything is available for consumption and nothing commands respect.
Why it matters: Scruton's analysis of the sacred in secular societies addressed one of the deepest problems in modern philosophy: how, after the decline of religious authority, a society can maintain the experiences of meaning, transcendence, and moral seriousness that religion once provided. His argument influenced debates about secularism, the role of ritual in public life, and the relationship between aesthetic experience and spiritual need.
Lasting Influence
Articulated conservative philosophy for a new generation and mounted a formidable philosophical defense of Western cultural traditions.
Your Reading Path
The Companion Guide
Seven eras of philosophy in one volume — reading lists, key terms, journal prompts · $19.99