History of Ideas Club: Roger Scruton

💭 Can conservatism be a culture of love rather than fear? In this episode, Jack Thomson explores the life and thought of Sir Roger Scruton (1944–2020) — philosopher, writer, musician, and one of the most articulate defenders of beauty, belonging, and the sacred in modern life.

Through works such as The Meaning of Conservatism, Beauty, and England: An Elegy, Jack examines how Scruton sought to recover the moral imagination of the West — a world held together not by ideology, but by affection, duty, and shared meaning.

🎧 In this episode:

• Scruton’s defence of tradition and “the good in the familiar”
• His vision of beauty as a moral reality
• The intertwining of home, nation, and sacred order
• How Scruton’s conservatism redefined love, loyalty, and loss in a secular age

This is the fifth instalment in our Heritage Series, tracing the evolution of conservative and traditionalist thought — from Plato and Augustine to de Maistre, Burke, and Scruton — exploring how ideas of order, imagination, and belonging continue to shape civilisation.

📚 Hosted by the History of Ideas Reading Club (University of Buckingham)
🎙️ Produced by Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian’s Podcast
🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & all major platforms

#BeyondTheText #HeritageSeries #RogerScruton #PoliticalPhilosophy #Aesthetics #Beauty #Conservatism #IntellectualHistory #PhilosophyPodcast #HistoryOfIdeas

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Excellent. We shall get cracking. Uh yeah. Okay. Should I put it in wide spectrum? Yeah. Wide spectrum or just normal? I don't know about the word. I don't really know. Hello online. We're just getting cracking. You haven't missed anything. Great. Okay. Wonderful. Welcome back, everyone.

SPEAKER_06 0:24

We're going to look at Roger Scruton today. And we're going to look at a chapter of this very beautiful book, The Soul of the World. I don't know how many of you were able to find it online. Yeah, perfect, perfect. It's a really great book. It's um sort of looks at the human person, the human person's place in the world, the material, and the the metaphysical or the spiritual side, how they fit together. And it's very beautifully written. I'll get on my page.

SPEAKER_09 1:01

I never heard his name before.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, okay, okay. Not through Buckingham either. Because he was associated with Buckingham. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15

Yeah, um, he was um he was a fairly controversial figure because he was a very unapologetic conservative and of the most traditional and principled kind. Um he had a lot in common with Edmund Burke, who we looked at last week, and last last seminar, um two weeks ago. And he but but he had this extraordinary gift. He he he he he never described himself as a philosopher primarily, but a writer. And he wrote on everything, every every subject he wrote on architecture, music, um uh politics, history, uh philosophy, uh even rock music. Um nothing was off limits for him. And and he also wrote novels as well. A remarkable gift. Um and he um yeah, so I'll tell you a little bit about him. Uh he grew up in High Wickham, uh, with parents who were only nominated. In his uh in his diaries, he talked about how he used to always be arguing with his father over politics. His father was a very liberal figure, even from his his his childhood, he he he he he was um inadvertently being fallen in a very critical mindset and uh and yearning after something like conservatism, although it didn't occur to him from for a long time what it was. Um he went to Cambridge to do natural science but then decided to go do philosophy. He um ended up doing a much later he does a PhD, sort of following that all the way through, and uh does a study in art and imagination uh with Elizabeth Sanscom, who was a quite famous uh philosopher, um of the day. Um during his university year, they did a trip to Paris, and he was in Paris during the famous student riots of '68, and he was absolutely horrified by what he saw there. Um he said, uh I quote, I suddenly realized I was on the other side. What I saw with an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans. When I asked my friends what they wanted, what they were trying to achieve, all I got back with these ludicrous Marxist gobbledygook. I was disgusted by it, and thought there must be a way back to the defence of Western civilization against these things. That's when I became a conservative, and you know I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down. He had a very um very strong feeling about what was going on in Europe and made it his whole academic uh uh career and his whole life work to put forward a positive vision of the alternative.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

It's also a pivotal moment in 20th century um political philosophy, because figures on the left also criticize the 68ers um for in somewhat similar language, sort of kind of making it a bit of a nonsensical movement, a kind of like much more emotional kind of rage movement of the 68 rather than something visionary. So someone like Slavor Zizek on the left of political philosophy also criticizes the 68ers because ultimately what it fell prey to was the integration of revolutionary spirit as far as he's concerned into a broader capitalism. That's when these kind of ideas became commercialised, and actually they didn't really mean anything. So as Scrubman's saying, they didn't really mean anything, it was all a bit sort of silly, and you know, uh left-wing philosophers were also doing sort of making the same arguments.

SPEAKER_06 4:42

It's true, it's it's it's it's it's very interesting to know that. I mean, uh Herbert Marcula was one of the engineers, sort of intellectual engineer uh precursors of what became a student, right? But Herbert Marcula wrote in the 40s, and then his books were sort of rediscovered 20 years later, and these students sort of claimed they were trying to implement some of the ideas there, but Herbert Marcula disowned all of them. You haven't you haven't understood what I read, uh what I wrote. Um yeah, in in part because there was nothing nothing practical about what was going on. Um and indeed, as you say, the sort of that that unbridled revolutionary spirit is easily brought under the auspices of market capitalism.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Yeah, and that's why it became Marxists were commercialized and kind of much more of a kind of like hip movement to be a part of rather than actually meaning anything fundamentally. Yeah, is isn't it like the general thing nowadays with protests that there's a very much a sort of emotional outage more than actually trying to change things just to show your emotions, yeah, and eventually kind of an screen of despair or Scruton's somewhat saying that commenting, saying, you know, it's confused, it doesn't really have an essence of what it is.

SPEAKER_09 6:03

Actually, um Georges Bassani is a singer-songwriter, or was a singer-songwriter, but his texts are very poetic. Uh even they they read them in schools. He wrote a song uh Moyen Paulin Schulz die for a cause. The trouble is only I don't know which cause I should die.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yes, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like choose one pick at random, sort of.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 6:27

Um removes the meaning. I think a lot of people find themselves in that place. Uh definitely.

SPEAKER_09 6:32

But then in Germany it was completely different because there was really something solid there because all the Nazis came back to their previous position. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. People were very frustrated with that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

The Badenhoff didn't get all the sort of left-wing rebellious elements as well.

SPEAKER_06 6:54

Yeah, um, sort of they found their way back into government offices and were kept quiet. There's a there was a certain wisdom that emerged in Germany to do with if you have wealth, you really just keep quiet about it because the Welsh probably came from yeah, and a lot of people in that.

SPEAKER_09 7:15

Yeah, Speer, the architect of his mummy.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 7:19

Um just a bit in prison, and that's it.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

And then as reaction, you have left-wing terrorist groups like the Bademeinhof gang who start trying to take out uh figures who, as you're explaining, are reinstated into these positions after yeah, after that period of time.

SPEAKER_06 7:36

Um in um in 1982, Scruton became the chief editor of the Salisbury Review. It's not so well known, you can find in really old bookstores some some collections of the article that were published there. Um I'm very fortunate to have come across one of the uh one of three volumes that were collected together of essays on conservatism, and it's a really great volume. Um and he he it was it was publicly opposed to satiriz, which is also very interesting, so similar to what you we've just said about the relationship between sort of the new left and traditional leftist sinkers. Saturism is in an analogous relationship to traditional conservatism, it's completely devoid of traditional conservative principles, it's got nothing of the of the intellectual substance to do with um you know like an anthropology, who is man, um, where what is his place in the world, what is the relationship to the state? Satcher's politics is purely economic, it's it's revolutionary arguably in many ways, very much the end of this of small seat conservatism. Yeah, no, I think so, and and and and because that now framed what the Conservative Party identified themselves with, and it's fundamentally libertarian, it's not conservative. Um, they have very different views of freedom, as we'll see um actually on the next slide, I think, um, or slide after, what the conservative view of freedom is. You know, the distinction will be clear. He he became quite um known for being this very ruthless critic of the thinkers of his day. He wrote um uh um thinkers of the new left published that in 1985. It was a series of essays on sort of writing against D.B. Thompson and Royal Ronald Dworkin, who were well-known English historians. Um uh Goldbrace, the American economist, uh Sartre Foucault, also. Um there was a republish of it in 2016 where he did a firebrand. Yeah, Fool's fraud and firebrand and the thing with the new left, where he exchanged it for a lot of new essays on people like Lacan, Zizek, um updated some of his thoughts on Sartre and Foucault. And he wasn't all negative. Actually, it's interesting to read the chapters on Sartre and Foucault in this in the 2016 edition because his criticism is a softer, it is a bit softer because he he recognises that towards the end of Borsinker's life they began to think a bit more. Um what Cruton would characterize it a more scenic way practically.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah. We saw this with when we were doing uh one on Camus, for example, in the later works like That Bread and Freedom. Um a greater analytical approach to how you might structure a society in smaller texts rather than the grand philosophical works that most people read. But Derek, a colleague of ours uh from St Andrews, got me a copy of that as as I idolized these French Newland figures. I got a copy to as a jibe to say read this for five random frauds. Uh so I I proudly have a copy of Scruton.

SPEAKER_06 10:45

Because you're only Scruton. Um one of my favourite things about Scruton is that he went um around this time he went to Czechoslovakia and he founded an underground university during the um Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, and he smuggled in books from the West and he hosted lectures with a friend of it, and he also, while he was there, got to know uh Vaklav Havel very well and he became the president um post post I think uh post follow the Soviet um union. And so Scruton is very deeply revered still in the east. You you find you go to Hungary in Budapest, you find uh cafes for Scruton. He got medals from these uh governments. He was put he was a he was a teacher. Yeah, you yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:32

Well I've interviewed Penn a few times. I did say to Chuck that I would go. Should this young man? I think he has about three.

SPEAKER_06 11:41

They tell me if I'm very the three in one in the restaurant and two are cafes. I've been to one of the cafes. Um he he was he was also the teacher of Victor Orban.

SPEAKER_08 11:52

Yeah. Oh really?

SPEAKER_06 11:53

But I I so I I know a little bit about this because the teachers on my course at Buckingham were friends of Scruton and took over the teaching of the course after he died, and they they say that the relationship was a bit difficult because Scruton was very worried about Victor Orban going much more towards the extreme of the conservative dimension, and I tried to counsel him on certain things. They and so they maintained a friendship, but Scruton intellectually was was was critical. But if Scruton was ever in Budapest, um Orban would drop him everything, hey, come over to the So it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_04 12:36

That's quite surprising for like a bit for Orban to do something like that. Because he again I think if you're an enemy of his or disagreement with him, he'd like cut you off.

SPEAKER_06 12:45

Well that's my own. Yeah, but well, yeah, but I mean the difference was quite probably and my uh my impression of Scruton is someone who tries to express his disagreements fairly charitably, especially with friends. I mean um you know, he very Aristotelian almost trying to will the good in his friend, but doesn't necessarily manifest he would like. Um okay, so uh in terms of his intellectual heritage, um Scruton got a lot from Kant, Emmanuel Kant. Oh yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_04 13:21

Um did Scruton um writes about wine, I'd imagine.

SPEAKER_06 13:28

Yes, he did, yeah. And it's uh and no, seriously, and and it's a really funny book because it's um titled I drink, therefore I am. Um he literally wrote on everything. Um so yeah, so he was he was greatly influenced by Immanuel Kant, um who's very famous for what's called the turn to the subject, where philosophy became less about how we you know how objects um sort of are the the the standards, the their own standard by which we we know them. You know, we we sort of you know in scholastic or Aristotelian philosophy we sort of take the forms from the object. So the object in many ways is the measure of the mind and what the mind knows. Um for Kant it was the reverse that that um philosophy is about discovering human ways of knowing and measuring the world against that. So um so Kant made a very famous distinction between things as they are in themselves and things as they appear to us, and said we couldn't know what things were in themselves, only how they appeared to us. And that means you can it it it yeah, so you look at something like this and you think, well, it had a kind of a scientific order, a r a rational order, but it then also had a moral order in terms of you know, I I use it um you know to to drink and to be social and stuff, and it had an aesthetic order as well, because it's you know it's got shape, and so these were distinct faculties that Kant tried to analyze. Um Scruton follows Kant in in a lot of this, he he describes um the world of human experience as basically moral. Um he tries to understand the relationship between human experience and the brain, and says that he he tries to show that they they're very much related, but that's what the human person is, is not reducible to matter. Um and this is a you know a very dominant topic in his writings, criticizing science as too reductive, um, as trying to reduce the human person to chemicals, and and his problem was that this doesn't tell us anything about how we actually experience the world. If you tell me where love is in the brain, that doesn't tell me anything about my experience of love at all. That was his contention. I I think it's quite persuasive. Um he also took a lot from um the school of the personalists, which who had their heritage from Kant. These were people like Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, who wrote a lot about the I and the Zhao. Um we've had some conversation about this recently, Mr. Um Scruton very interested in in this this I Zhao dynamic that I am a subject, I address you as a subject, and this is sort of a common basis for us to share a we, a community, and that's implicit in our language and in our ethics.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Um Quaker, isn't it? Quakers Quakers only use that on the in their greetings to one another as well. Historically.

SPEAKER_06 16:35

Ah, but it's not so much about the it's not so much about the language as in like the word, it could be it could be you, it could be it could be any word. Oh, right, but it's the fact that creating that relationship. It's the fact that what I am fundamentally is a moral subject. Yeah, is relational or who is accountable to others, yeah, yeah. Yeah, precisely because I address another who addresses me as another. And that's it, that's that's the basic level of of our language and of our experience.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Well, that's quite post-structural relating it to the absent figure uh of of this seminar, Foucault. Um that this is very much like a relational concepts like that in terms of like the definition of the self defined by the relationship.

SPEAKER_06 17:22

Well, it well it comes from Hegel.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:24

I mean it begins in Kant because for Kant this this inner world of this moral knowledge of the subject. Well, I don't want to introduce too many terms because it one easily gets formed in Kant, but it's the inner world of the subject, which Kant also gets from Russo, yeah, is is primary and it's it's sort of the the origin point for all our ways of knowing the world. So Kant does envisage, so he distinguishes the sort of the scientific knowledge from the moral knowledge, the practical knowledge, from the aesthetic knowledge. He envisages that they do have a root in the subject, but yeah, that's the whether he was successful in a long conversation.

SPEAKER_05 18:02

Scruton used used the word face a lot.

SPEAKER_06 18:06

The face?

SPEAKER_05 18:07

Yeah, the face, especially when he goes into architecture, change relation, comes back, sort of seeing the real really the face of someone, and that expresses the soul behind it or the spirit. Uh, because he starts with Hegel's whole theory about um the mythic, the mythic origins and the sort of scientific origins he makes this sort of distinction in which he gives to the mythic origins this theory of Hegel, which it's almost a new story, it's like one story, and then the actual story of humanity just works differently in the phases, then uh do you do you remember what the other story was? Uh yeah, the other story is the realization of uh he so it's with an acorn and a tree, and then the freedom of the human subject becomes the state, and the state is sort of the uh tree of the seed of human freedom.

SPEAKER_07 19:15

Right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:20

And yes, and for that there is a sort of natural uh beauty that needs to envelop in the state and order, uh morality.

SPEAKER_06 19:35

Why why do you why do you think why do you think uh the state is the end result of the of the person why the the tree?

SPEAKER_05 19:48

Well he starts with talking about well Hegel himself about property and then about the household economia, and then from there on the state to the love of neighbors as well, which uh Scruton also goes into. And I think it has to do with gaining autonomy over sort of your own life and and the way how to sort of organize things around you, what create in a way, being creative human beings, okay. Uh so that's also sort of changed from the sort of naturalistic hunting and gathering for survival, but growing into something transcendent in a way.

SPEAKER_06 20:32

Um in terms of what how freedom it would would be characterized in that final development, is it uh an ordered freedom or a disordered freedom? Um I think it's it's an open question. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 20:49

Whether it's disordered or ordered, then.

SPEAKER_06 20:51

My reading, and so we can turn uh but you you've you've told us most of what's on the fly, which is.

SPEAKER_05 20:56

Yeah, what he says is that Hegel says that it is sort of unopened in a way. That it always becomes sort of the tree, just like every seat, right?

SPEAKER_06 21:05

He says you agree with that particular I I thought he I thought he did. It we can we can we can investigate this as we go. He said personhood is the the telos end of each of us, that Hegel said that that personhood strives to be realized in the state, in institutions. So, in other words, freedom is ordered towards and constituted by forms of government that bind us together in laws and in you know in states and communities and so forth that are recognized, that are binding. Umly there does freedom become concrete rather than being abstract and unconditional. And abstract, unconditional freedom is connected to the impulse to destroy the intruder, to cast out the critic, to submit to the powerful leader, to kill, enslave. Violate the captive, which he says, disrupt the work of civilization and must be channelled in other directions or even suppressed entirely if we are to flourish as persons flourish in a condition of reciprocal accountability.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

So this is the inverted camus that deauvoir in the sense of freedom is rebelling against rather than this, which is freedom is the actual operation of the state and its laws functioning well.

SPEAKER_06 22:29

Yeah, uh a very crude way of putting it is that the state gives you freedom. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it's not metaphysically true. It's always you have freedom rather than a it gives freedom a use, yeah. Yeah, a context in which it's effective. Apart from the state, we are intruders and critics and uh enslavers and murderers and you know, all these terrible things he lists there.

SPEAKER_05 22:52

It's interesting if you look at Roseau, he would say when you put a stick in the ground you say, this is mine, this is where all society is corrupted from. Yes, it's Hegel and what Schruton as well says like that's the start of freedom.

SPEAKER_06 23:07

Well, what Scruton had a slightly different a slightly different perspective than Rousseau on what actually it means to put the stick down. Scruton doesn't see it as a one-way thing. He says this the last line here, it it has to do with us being brought into a condition of reciprocal accountability. So the state isn't just about elevating one man over others, but it's actually about rights and duties which are which go up and down in the hierarchy and and also horizontally between the institutions. Um so much like how Edmund Burke in the previous seminar was talking about um how you know the rulers um are in such a position that they um yeah that the the this sense of their duty, of the duty of their office must impress them to the extent that they they they ought to see themselves as servants, in effect. And so so there's supposed to be just this reciprocity in governance, and if you don't have that, you have tyranny, and that's n that's no better than than sort of the former state where tyranny is liable to emerge anyway, but it's just a much more fluid and chaotic tyranny where someone becomes powerful for a f you know a few years and then you know the tribe is disbanded or something because the resources are scarce or some bigger tribe comes along. You know, tyranny isn't sustainable and it's not um it's not the telos of of personhood because there are because it doesn't recognize persons in a tyranny. You're just a use, you're a means to an end, you're not an end in yourself. So personhood is is is this quality which elevates us beyond all conceivable um utilitarian sort of um abuses and and and and being taken advantage of and so forth. We're we we're elevated where the other has to address me in in a manner of respect and and you know and common humanity, and we have and we are accountability to we we are accountable to one another. So this is the kind of uh vision of the state which Scruton.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

It's quite con contractarian rather than contractualist in that sense, that the the reciprocal accountability is coming from the state. Oh, I think we're trying Oh you coming from the state and its institutions, because it could come across at first when you hear something like that with the reciprocal accountability, could come across as quite Lockean in a way that coming out of a sort of yeah, barbaric, potential, ranical uh state of nature, um you need to have, but for Locke, rights to establish those against the potential barbarity savagery. Um but it's interesting that he grounds those much more not in rights, not in sort of I suppose for him, maybe that would still be a bit abstract, and he grounds it in very solid foundations of institutions that have been established over time somewhat in building up to this T Loss, as you're saying, rather than what Locke would say in a similar vein. I think that last line sounded quite Locke in in a way, but Locke would ground it in rights rather than institutions.

SPEAKER_06 26:27

Yeah, indeed. And and I think another and I guess related characteristic of the this difference between Locke and true conservatism would be that I think for Locke freedom is negative, or or the role or the relation or the role of the institution in relation to freedom is negative. So the so the government is there to tell you where your freedom ends. So for a conservative like Roger Scruton, the government is actually there to give you also a positive dimension for how you use your freedom. You use your freedom through these channels because these are what sort of bringing you into the fullness of of your humanity to to to operate within a a juridical framework or a democratic framework. You know, these these are fundamentally human things for Scruton. Um even even on those smaller scale level to operate in a in a town hall kind of where we we we drop all the reasons which would lead us to to treat one another as as as slaves or you know or as people as things to be used, and we we abandon that for the for something else, something higher. Um okay, so the uh she also mentioned civilization this idea of a civilizational miss, and so Scruton is interested in this chapter about um really I guess where this idea of the person comes from and and and how societies maybe emerge to reflect this. Um indeed, where do the kind of civilizations where personhood is protected come from? How do they emerge? Um and he begins with the simple observation that uh when people are settled in a place they experience a dominant metaphysical need, the need for authoritative proof that this place is ours, that we are entitled to it, and call and can call upon the law of the universe to protect our right to it. And then he connects it to brief the primarily the religious foundation, one in which people assemble to protect their household, their ancestors, and their gods, and in which each family gained an enduring foothold. Religion and family go together with a single and eternal imperative, and from their union is born the household, the regime of property, and the sacred sphere of domestic life. Um so two things there: this dominant metaphysical need to say this place is ours, that we belong here, and then it's uh and it's then connected to a religious impulse, which then becomes concrete in first of all the household and then property, and and then goes out from there. I wonder why he chooses the language of the metaphysical need and then the religious need, why not a legal? Why isn't it enough to say, well, I I have a legal or sociological sort of need for um to um why why is it more than that? Well why wouldn't why wouldn't a state on its own maybe be enough to guarantee that?

SPEAKER_05 29:50

Maybe they experience their own uh finite uh being, but they long for so the need for an authoritative proof that this place is ours. And therefore something metaphysical, something eternal, maybe makes it also sort of be protected, give this feeling of a home that never sort of goes away. Um giving the way for generations to come to live there.

SPEAKER_07 30:23

Right. It's like a sense of belonging. Belonging.

SPEAKER_04 30:30

So if you legally own somewhere, you might still not feel right you belong.

SPEAKER_06 30:38

No, indeed, I think that's right. But the um but the mystery is what is this this need for belonging? What is belonging? Why do we want to belong?

SPEAKER_05 30:48

A religious uh professor at my university in Utrecht who wrote almost all his papers on this topic of belonging.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Belong is a in itself is a very personal thing, isn't it? You can probably say you belong in a I don't know, in a room or in a place or in a job, whatever it may be, but whatever your personal feeling is it can be completely different to what somebody else may interpret that, is my opinion. So whether you have belonging is inherently down to the individual and not anything else the way that I would interpret it.

SPEAKER_05 31:22

Well, there's also this I endow thing again that this is given to you as well, which we see here. It's uh authoritative proof that this place is ours, um given by our it is relative towards the other. Um therefore sort of accepting in that place.

SPEAKER_06 31:46

Um do you so do you think that the do you think being able to say this place is is it belongs to me is a precondition to be able to s to address you in a way? Do I need do I need to somehow have a stake in the world in order to to address you as a subject? Is that a precondition for subjectivity or for the eyes out relationship? If I have nothing that belongs to me, can I address you as a moral subject? Am I anything if I have nothing that belongs to me or a place to which I belong? Oh I wouldn't say so, no.

SPEAKER_05 32:35

But in the same way, I feel like relation becomes the most fruitful in a way when you really depend on the other, and the other depends on you as well. That would be the sort of ultimate relation, and then that would be a sort of self-entry, which wouldn't particularly say that you have, but of course, in the first place, you would need to have something yourself to be able to give.

SPEAKER_06 33:12

Right. And and what would you you need then? You would need if you have something if you need to have something to give, you need something that's yours. A place and then property.

SPEAKER_09 33:27

Um but I wouldn't read that as I need a place that belongs to me. I would read it as I need a place I belong to.

SPEAKER_06 33:38

Okay. Ah, right, yeah. And you think that then lends itself more to the kind of reciprocity of the eyes are that Mature is is more interested in? And that's Putin is also interested in.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

This uh sort of place you belong to has is more infinite value than you as uh finally need to tell you I think there's a certain nostalgia, a certain connection, a certain trajectory that UC talked about from ancients to what Scruton's talking about. I mean someone like Confucius talks about the need for ornament, the need for these things that connect us to the past, something that might not be a rational uh a rational kind of build-up of why someone would want to live somewhere, but creates a certain sense of nostalgia of heritage, as the series is titled, um, when he's talking about a metaphysical need, something that transcends practical reasons for um for living in a place um as well. I think that's very much an element of this belonging, um, the sort of uh perennial reason to be placed here. That that is the metaphysical connection, this sort of feeling that there has always been a link back into the past. And yeah, Confucius would call that the ornaments that pass through history, and I think, yeah, I think sort of irrational elements maybe, but but that is that kind of metaphysical side of it.

SPEAKER_06 35:27

Okay, good, good. Uh let me read something from um the middle of the chapter where he he'd actually written this in another book, an imaginary, almost like letter of someone from ancient Greece in Colophon describing the difference between the architecture in Colophon and the architecture in a modern city. It's really quite interesting. I think it's all connected to some of the things we we've all said here. Um she writes, uh, but I have not identified the real difference between ancient and modern colophon, or the real way in which we shape and are shaped by our buildings. These things cannot be understood, it seems to me, in secular terms. Our architecture derives from the temple for the reason that the city derives from its god. The stone of the temple is the earthly translation of the god's immortality, which is in turn the symbol of a community and its will to live. The temple, like the liturgy, is forever, and the community contains not the living only, but also the dead and the unborn. And the dead are protected by the temple, which immortalizes them in stone. So the the base the the basis is the community's desire to express itself and to endure through time. I think it's important then what you say, Stephanie, about it it's a place where I belong, it maybe also is also a place we can belong. It's hard to make that transition from the place that belongs to me. Maybe that's more libertarian, maybe it's the difference that we mentioned earlier. And maybe um yeah, maybe the the desire for belong is something we experience together, and then that's is a how the eye is out. But then it still has this dimension of the of the household and then the property and so forth. So we there's something we had that is ours collectively, which we share, and then from this, you know, new distinctions emerge between what is the property of this household or this this individual and so forth. And then from the community, we just read comes the the first consecration of that in the temple. Um we read also in sort of the second paragraph of this slide that this sense of belonging has a religious dimension to it. Um said the ancient city has a religious tribe, a religious foundation primarily, one in which people assemble to protect their household. Um thank you, Samuel. Um he elaborates on this to try and help us understand why it might be a religious impulse and what that might mean. It is natural to believe that places are made sacred by the temple that is built on them, and by the act of consecration that initiates the building, such as is implied in the Greek and Roman myths in the Old Testament, however, it is the other way around. Patriarchs erect altars, make sacrifices, bestow names on places rendered holy by some encounter with God and his angels, and this feeling was bound up with two others, their conviction that God was a real presence among them, and their sense of the land as a gift, not a gift to the present generation to either to will, but a gift to a people in its entirety and for all time, a resource to be renewed and passed on. Sacred places are protected from spoilation, they are steeped in the hopes and sufferings of those who have fought for them, and they belong to others who are yet to be. What is the religious dimension here? Exactly. What does it boil down to?

SPEAKER_04 39:23

I mean, this might be a guess, but I I think that uh it does touch some points on the future, future generations in respect of the past. And I think the religious kind of dimension places that that certain places are created in a way where we want future generations to use them and also you know places that are being around. Again, our ancestors have used. I I don't know that I could be wrong, but I I'm still not sure if there's any other kind of religious dimension there.

SPEAKER_06 40:04

Well, I think you're right, it has to do with you know this passing of generation to generation. And they they then presumably are handing on something, something which they have themselves received. I think the fundamental dimension is this idea of gift. We've received something inexplicable, we've concretized it. You know, we can make a house, you know, we can build something, but it's more than that.

SPEAKER_05 40:34

Because it's a conviction that God was a real presence and their sense of the land as a gift, right? Yes, yeah, because they erect altars, make sacrifices as well. And what they they feel inherently um obedient in a way. Well, maybe they're not obedient, but uh dependent on a God, because the whole story of the Bible, of course, for example, is a thought and sort of coming back to God. So then to make this beautiful palace and have him dwell in your city is this well, this victory out of uh out of a loss which still lingers in the memory of the people. And so hope to have their God in their presence for the generations to come.

SPEAKER_06 41:35

Well, of course, to to live good and happy, yes. You mentioned the the fall, I think that's quite important also in the biblical context, which you prompting on here.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

I think it's could I just quickly add to that? I think it's also very transactional in the sense that it's an investment of passion, of emotion into these things, whether it be the temple quite literally or just a religious further investment into these things. You know, what are the things around London that you know make one feel nostalgic or connected? It could be uh seeing a column, Nelson's column, and you know, him saying, by God, I've done my duty to protect this sacred land at the Battle of Trafalgar. But it's a that is an investment of emotion, of passion, something again, uh you know, uh irrational. It transcends our practical understanding of what a state is, but it's an investment that was put in, and thereby when we see it, when we interact with it, we get something out of it that connects us to that place, to that period, but a period of history long before us that's passed through to us that we're taking something away from as well.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

Um I think the term as like a gift, it's given to us as a gift, is kind of kind of reminds me um through documentaries or something where they kind of interview you rather these aristocrats, souvenirs a big house or you know, a great place, and and they refer to themselves as a custodian, you know, it's given to their future generations. They live there, it is theirs, but they have to preserve it for others, and they don't almost see that that place, like I guess on a different level with um I don't know Nelson's column that that's owned by potentially I guess all of us, we're custodian, we're we're we we don't own it ourselves. Um they see themselves owning the more cast or safely home, they see themselves custodian.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Responsible.

SPEAKER_04 43:50

Essentially, yeah. Um to pass it on. Yeah, and it's more of a gift that they have the ability to be able to live that. Or the the responsibility to live in such a nice place and then to pass on to others rather than to change it, change the fundamentals.

SPEAKER_07 44:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 44:09

I don't know if you're referring more to if if sacred spaces refer more to like property, or can it refer to other things as well? Or are you are you using it more to refer to other things?

SPEAKER_05 44:22

Let's face it in general. Well I'm just gonna say that sort of out of the sacred space, the temple and the garden, that everything becomes sort of sacred that it's gonna be built around in Ukraine and even the houses and the streets will sort of reflect that border and the openness between the columns as well. Um it's interesting, like what is then sacred.

SPEAKER_03 44:50

Yes. So is it uh pretty important for human dignity um to have buildings that have this dignity, the sense of a sacred and yeah, maybe he's coming on to this to what extent is actually harmful to human dignity or our perception of it if buildings are mainly functional.

SPEAKER_05 45:15

Um yeah, yeah, yeah, if our home has solved that. He's also gonna talk about sort of the banners that are put in front of buildings.

SPEAKER_06 45:24

Yeah, the buildboard. Oh yeah. Like you go, yeah. I mean, I have a picture of this much later on, but you go to Piccadilly Circus, beautiful buildings. This is our Times Square now. There's so beautiful behind the screen we've got the bastardized, but yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Um but also a mosque as well in another phase. A mosque would be built on the highest point and everything would be structured around on the basics of the sacred. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 45:51

Um the the few shreds together. Um that's all very good. Um we've talked about gift. Um we we extend ourselves through what we give on to the next generation, as often what we have ourselves received. And that process of giving and receiving maybe has an inexplicable origin back in time. How long have we been doing this? How long have we been building up an inheritance for the future? Um it already has the character of the sacred because precisely what you say, Jonathan, it hasn't you can't say it belongs to this person, but it belongs to us. Um and I think the question is you know what it is there a more can we understand why Scripture might call this a religious uh idea, let's say, or or connect it to to to civilizational myths, or you know, to use the language of religion to cite the Bible here, indeed, in a way that's more concrete than just sort of the humanist sense that we we give on. And I'm and that's why I was interested in you you mentioned the fall briefly, because this is just precisely where Scruton goes to. And I think maybe this will clari clarify maybe why Scruton's language is actually quite important, it isn't just poetic. That I think that's worth exploring. He says, um, referring to Exodus, that story is also a myth of origin. This myth does not tell of our expulsion from paradise and our separation from God, rather, it tells of our rescue from wandering and conflict by the collective decision to dwell, so as once again to be united, though in another way, with the God who had expelled us from our former dwelling place. The story begins with a temple, and that temple must be fit for the god who inhabits it. It must be a permanent home, expressing an eternal presence in the city. Hence, founding the temple should be it should be stone, it should contain a sanctuary in which the god can both be concealed from his worshipers and revealed to his priests. But it must also be a public place. The temple symbolizes the collective intention to dwell in this place where the community has made a renewed bid for permanence, hence it should be permeable to the city, perhaps surrounded by an open space, and with colonnades, aisles, cloisters, precincts, in which citizens can freely associate in the benign presence of the God who watered over them. Okay, I stopped there. Um the dismiss at the very beginning, the dismiss does not tell of our expulsion from paradise and our separation from God, rather it tells of our rescue from wandering and conflict by the collective decision to dwell. What what does this mean? Thinking also of um of Scruton's concept of personhood, which we discussed.

SPEAKER_05 49:00

How freedom comes about, and maybe what does he make like a a referral to the sort of scientific origin, sort of wandering in conflict and decision to dwell, like us dwelling with human beings? Does he make that sort of reference? Um do you mean is there a transition from a primitive way of living to a yeah, well, in in general, I I find it um difficult for him uh to sort of place how he looks at the fall, because he looks at it as a myth, right? But at the same time it becomes very real because we sort of structure our society around this myth.

SPEAKER_06 49:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 49:54

Um but in a way it also does make this sort of uh change in history because we won't we're like sort of nomads, and then we sort of start to live in structured society or set of hunters and gatherers.

SPEAKER_06 50:14

I think that I think this goes back to the the opening where we read about freedom being concretized in in here in the collective decision to dwell. Now personhood emerges for the first time and we're no longer wanderers, vagrants, intruders, you know, uh violent people. For scrutiny the fall is is characterized by an atomism. So we're scattered and we don't belong anywhere, and we're violent towards one another.

SPEAKER_07 50:49

And this is characterized as our separation from God.

SPEAKER_06 50:58

And the Bible and the biblical story, the Exodus narrative is the story of the collective decision to dwell, so as once again to be united, though in another way, with the God who had expelled us from our former dwelling place, to build a temple, a tabernacle, have him dwell in a paradoxical presence and absence in the tabernacle, as a as a reminder of this decision. Of course, the Exodus story, they're actually called out of slavery as well, but they're called into the wilderness in order to found a to found this temple.

SPEAKER_03 51:34

So it seems there's at least partially a human yearning to wander and to move through the desert. Um, and I wonder if those in that state almost lose sight of the deeper yearning, which is to dwell, which is to be at home, and they're not able to uh realize that deeper yearning until they actually are at home. Um some people have this like as a conversion experience that they thought that they didn't want to have this conversion experience, but then they talk with it as though they they've arrived home once they've had that experience. Um it's almost like they needed to go through that wandering and that experience of grappling or something of not being at home. The anxiety to settle as well, yeah. But then it takes a community, it seems, is that collective decision to dwell. So maybe it's hard just to dwell on your own, so you're waiting for a community, it seems, to make that decision.

SPEAKER_06 52:42

Yeah. And I think part of the apprehension is because a collective decision to dwell enjoins responsibility, that your freedom becomes part of something greater. And you yourself become part of something greater, but not without sacrifice. But then that brings you into the fullness of who you are. Um, and it's characterized here really as redemption. Um Scruton's interesting take. We're just going to continue a little bit of logistics, and we're going to continue maybe for another 15 minutes, 20 minutes or so. Um Okay. Um great. How does how then does the um does the temple in its architecture express these things we've just been discussing? Um the text that we have here. Um we read the temple's uh symbolize this is from some about the fourth line about the middle. Uh the temple symbolizes a collection intention to dwell in this place where the community has made a renewed bit for permanence. And it's also before that actually, it's given some description as well. How did the temple communicate this um collective intention to dwell?

SPEAKER_05 54:49

So they invite God, which I think is a beautiful thing, uh because well, to invite another being to stay with you is water. It's that which rescues you. Um they make a sacred space for him, make it beautiful, um, but also enclosed. I get you some more issue. So if if God is especially this uh well he who who represents this this shift towards freedom in the sense of settlement, in the sense of belonging, if he is that who makes it sort of able who enables that for civilization, who is this um representation of um community in a way, but of the sacred of we have found our home, and you invite it and you create a space in which it's it's well enclosed, such that if we want to go there, we really need to be sure that we are that we actually told ourselves, like, yes, I want to be here, I want to settle here, I do off with my sort of old nomad way of living, and I make myself pure, and then I can go, and those are the presents.

SPEAKER_03 56:33

I think, in connection with that point, I think um there's a paradox in that uh I I noted from somewhere else in the chapter the architecture architecture of the temple must point away from this world. Yes, and that struck me that in order to somehow feel fully at home in a building, that building needs to point away from the world as well as being open to people to come from the world. And if we had a building that was only worldly, worldly pointing, we can never feel fully at home there because the soul yearns for something more. Um, and yet, so yeah, it talks about this, it's not simply stone but a witnessing stone, it must just point beyond in order for us to belong.

SPEAKER_06 57:19

Yeah, it's a second paragraph on the exactly very good. The temple is not fully part of the city, metaphysically speaking, it's a place on the city's edge, a place filled by the god. And architecture must show this, it must point away from this world as well as being open to the world's transaction. It's not simply a stone that surrounds us, but a witnessing stone, stone brought alive by carving, moulding, light and shade, for us to stand beside us in an observing posture. Um thing about the uh in the in the excerpt from the um colophon narrative, which I haven't put on here, the this fictitious writer describes the temp the the temple's columns as pillars of light. Because the carving in to it creates shadow and accentuates the the stone in this way against the shadow. And it's called a pillar of light. I thought that was brilliant. The subtle detail that you find in um in in architecture that communicate precisely this um this idea that it's this is a place which in order to signify what dwelling means, which is a metaphysical need, perhaps a religious need in a more serious sense, and uh looking beyond the present, looking intergenerationally forward and backward, it's gotta have this um this paradoxical element about it where it stands for something beyond itself.

SPEAKER_05 58:44

Um even throwing pillars at the emblem of the uh reading club of the reading club itself.

SPEAKER_02 58:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 58:54

History of ideas.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 58:57

That would kind of bright lights bursting inside of it.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

We have some I suppose this is why humanism that's purely materialistic ends up not even being humanism, from my understanding, in that if human beings need something transcendent and you're giving them just a materialistic existence, then you end up not even valuing the human and the whole humanist project falls apart. Indeed, indeed.

SPEAKER_06 59:30

Um I think it's it's really yeah, really quite brilliant. This is the um I think this is in Sofia, in in uh yeah, this is in uh um Bulgaria. Bulgaria, Sofia, yeah. That's um the Russian Orthodox temple, uh cathedral. And that's obviously the uh the the Pantanon and the uh Acropolis in Ashens. Um on the edge the way it the way space is used and everything is around it, and it's distinct, it's clearly distinct in every respect in the in the architecture, in the in the location, the space given to it, the the posture, the crowning, um the use of the yeah wow um going into this paradox a bit deeper, we have uh Saint Paul. Um I uh yes the source of this feeling um this I guess this this idea that the city that the temple is on the edge of the city but also open to it. This paradox and then by extension also the paradoxical presence and absence of of the God in all these different cultures in a in a tabernacle. Um the source of this feeling of the in the human psyche is touched on by Saint Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? The human body is the place where the other is both present and hidden, protected from me, but nevertheless revealed, when the right words are uttered and the right gestures made. There is but one temple in the world, wrote Novalis, and that is the body of man. We touch heaven when we lay on our hand, sorry, when we lay our hand on a human body. In everyday life we don't see things in quite that way, but in the intimacy of love, anger, or desire I encounter the other as haunted by himself.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:52

I look into him, and he becomes the presence that I sense, but which flees from my attempt to come into face with me. It is on this experience that we draw in your body.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:15

So now that everything we've been saying about the paradox attempt of tried to cancer is brought into our own experience of ourselves and of the other. Um an experience that I don't share with animals. I don't find the Zhao in the animal, but I find the Zhao in you.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:32

Well, it's especially beautiful because we don't always sense sort of the divine thing in a human being, but sometimes we do. And so it's in a way hidden, just like in the temple, there's this hidden place where God dwells, but on the outside there's these pillars, right? And the light just can shine through it, as it were. But in a way, it comes from somewhere else, but it dwells in you, and we still get to to sense the expressions when it comes out here. So yes, you see the the similarity, so beautiful in the um between the temple and the human body. Not really in the sort of very direct sense, like it's not like I see a temple right now, but if you see it as that the expression, the face, right? That expresses that which inhabits you there, which is so enclosed. The human body does actually, you can't have a temple.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:43

Splendid.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:45

The rest of the chapter um are we here? I think we're there. Uh addressing the world. Oh no, addressing the world. Ah, great, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:54

Um we'll now see Scruton try and connect this insight into the human person back into architecture. The chapter basically is this back and forth between the world and us. Um so before a sacred place or artifact I stand back in a posture of respect. This bit of the world, I believe, is inviolable. Just as the subject appears in the human face and lays before the assassin and the abuser, the absolute no, so does an observing, questioning, interrogating eye appear in the sacred place and command us to respect it. The experience of the sacred is interpersonal. Only creatures in with eye sorts can see the world in this way, and their doing so depends upon a kind of interpersonal readiness, a willingness to find meaning and reasons, even in things that have no eyes to look at them and no mouth to speak. What does he mean here?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:24

Well primarily just the sort of human saying. How do you see human beings say that this is one thing?

SPEAKER_06 1:05:39

But it it it it seems to be the recognition of of something.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

So it's a a human person perhaps inspired by God has designed it and implemented it. And in a in a beautiful building, in a traditional sense, there's that imprint, I suppose, of human. A bit like a human being as an imprint of our creator, in contrast to a functional building, whereby there's just how can we do this for the cheapest possible way? And there's not a clear sense of design on it. So, yeah, here we go. This has got the a clear imprint of its human author. And maybe other community as well, yeah. Does he talk about how it um announces its existence as an end in itself?

unknown 1:06:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:38

It is good in itself, and then functionality follows.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:41

Exactly, exactly. So I mean, most of these are functional. We have a doorway, we have a balcony and a terrace. Um but the doorway is just full of grace and and and full of these sort of these additional signals of what this is. I presume this is a this is a side entrance to a chapel or a church or something. Or maybe it it probably is a main entrance to a church, it's just because you can't see how big it is. Um because I think if I look in it's hard to tell, it might just be Baroque actually. It is Baroque architecture. Anyway, um on the on the left. On the right, this is a bit more modern. You know, no one has to design a building in this way, but in the additional way that we see that these places are inhabited by subjects, by people with eyesolves, as Crutman says. Um the buildings themselves are more than um more than brick, more than concrete, more than dust, and more than plaster. Uh these elements are united in a way that communicates with subjective significance.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:48

These are places we really want to dwell in, these are communal spaces, these are um places of beauty, um signal um when he says then function as he follows because one angle on that is if it's clearly something that is to be cared for, people will care for it and look after it, and then they'll probably draw carry on being well oiled, as it were, because people care about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:19

I just thought I'd give a little visual for the people online. Oh, I'll have to do it again now.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:28

Um and uh I think this is um the King's Island, uh I don't know the name of it, the the King the King's Island in Stockholm. The same as so you go down the road from the from where the King's castle is, is uh and you have this wonderful it's the old town basically. Um so beautiful. Um again the collective desire to dwell, in all the richness of what that means. Um the the the um yeah, it's because you read his very beautiful descriptions of architecture in the book, and then you look at places like this, yes, it is illuminated. Okay. Um we mentioned a little bit earlier about desecration of the public space. Um public space is not an unowned space, but one in which the many spheres of ownership come to a negotiated boundary. That boundary may be a street, a sequence of facades, a skyline. It represents a side-by-side settlement of private owners and the way of life that they share. And it's when the boundary is punctured or stolen by some private interest, we react to this as a desecration, especially true in cities whose contours record continuous dialogue over centuries between neighbors, those who build nearby in the Anglo-Saxon terms. Um the culture of consumption sweeps across them like a tornado scattering in its wake, the doll-like images of advertising models which wash up across the building and hide their face from view. Um, you see, you've got these are these great examples. This is in Budapest and this is in uh Piccadilly Circus, um, where we have these such beautiful buildings. I mean, I'm absolutely in love with the buildings on Piccadilly and Regent Street, they're really nice. You can totally walk past them. We have these huge billboards that we just put in discriminately in front of them. Defacing the the building then highly on.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:28

I guess as far as being devil's advocate, uh, you could say that the billboards have created it, the space as it is it as it is today. Well, well it it again you could laugh, but then we think about these but it's when we think about we could do these circuits, we think of the billboards if they weren't uh if you think about uh of it in the same sort of way.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:53

Are they not attribute to our new sacred which is commercial capitalism?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:03

No, no, no, I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

It's a good observation. I mean, you still got that, I'm guessing that's a theory there, but it still adds AC.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:12

I'm coming back onto the screen. One second, there we are. This is what we're discussing at this point.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:17

I guess that's why people say why Times Square is so popular, because of the billboards, because of the bright lights.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:24

I mean, yeah, it doesn't matter. So this sense of popularity doesn't give like a sense of belonging. And if it gives a sense of belonging, it doesn't give a sense of belonging that is as eternal, as God-given as the buildings without uh billboards would convey to the population who lives in industry.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:47

I do it's worth a pop though.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

Right, we're back again.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:58

So this is um oh sorry, uh my bad. Um this is uh on the left we have Berlin. This is uh yeah, uh uh uh a corner of Berlin, uh graffiti up. Berlin had a very urban culture, very edgy, very edgy post-war and east to east west divide thing. On the right, we have guess where this is? This is Paris.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:23

Which part? I was gonna say Buckingham, huh?

SPEAKER_06 1:12:28

You can see uh this image is a bit difficult, but it's in the south. Um probably not because there would be there should be more but for the library is large, but is this central Paris? Um it's no, it's not sort of it's um I I'm nearby actually because central Paris you only have one tower, which or one.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:54

Yeah, um exactly that's why it was built, I think, in the 17th or the 18th, it it it uh got a name because I think Paris is a very good example actually of sort of uh what Scruton is talking about, which is really good architecture and nothing sort of points above the other building.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:16

No, it definitely like those. Yeah, the opera, the town hall, the church and the cathedral. I mean you still see the old Hauchmann architecture in the 19th century on the on the side street, and then they just built this. It's also very strange. I lived in Paradise and then I moved to London.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:33

Oh, yeah, the the primary um change I I experienced is that here there are so many buildings sort of pointing out between everything. Well in Paris everything was flat, and then you had La Defense, which was just outside of the centre, um the centre where all the big buildings were. So it was and it it really yeah was a difference. It was a difference.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:00

Yeah, yeah. What does all this mean? What do we take from this? Um I mean we've already heard the distinction between the utilitarian and the purely pragmatic and and something more. Can we contrast these two, for instance? Utilitarian, uh this is the from the promenade, the two-mile-long promenade that goes out for a boulevard or whatever the proper name it that goes out from Chowchester's Palace from Romania in Book of Great. It's the same block copy-paste it. The Soviet architect is really fascinating because they have the they they come up with a design for a block, and it had everything you need. It had a bus stop, it had parking space, it had a tree. Maybe two. And then they just duplicate it. They calculate everything that people need in the you know uh an initial duplicate. In Bucharest, in Sofia, very similar. Um, but it's a bit more, a little bit more variation, but it's still got this kind of cold element to it that this was just this was planned in the strictest sense of this word. Uh and then you contrast this with Venice. This field lived in in the in the richest sense, it's nothing organic. You use it, but it's also it's it's it's it's it's more than this. However, of course.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:17

We'll be there another hundred years. No, however, however, of course, something which does relate back in an interesting way, again to Scruton, but also to postmodernity, is that these originally utilitarian spaces of former Soviet nations of the Bonnie in Paris in terms of the in terms of the kind of outskirts of Paris, in terms of somewhere like the Barbican, a project of at least socialist, you know, sort of modernist projects. Um whilst built utilitarian, are in their own weird way in our generation starting to cultivate a certain emotional attachment that never was supposed to be there when they were originally built. I know, and and for for those of us who love our traditional architecture, it seems strange, but there is a whole swathe of people who now see an emotional rather than practical attachment to these. But this only serves to reiterate a certain cultural significance, a certain demographic significance that does evoke a sense of place and a sense of belonging, and in some ways justifies the discussion we've been talking about, even if it's not a religious one. It's still something irrational, it's still something emotional.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:34

It's building the made to fit that sense of belonging. I mean, I've Eiffel Tower's a great example of this. When that was first built, everyone hated it. Now you can't think of power without it. It'd become home. It's true that that dynamic does exist. It's it's curious. Um there's there's some stran I mean, I was in Madrid a couple weeks ago, there was this strange modern building, uh modern sculpture that had been built there, which I wasn't so fond about, but apparently everyone loves it. It sort of become quite emblematic of Madrid, the spirit of Madrid. Um closing paragraph from Scruton. Um Although by definition intrinsic values cannot be translated into utilitarian values, it does not mean they have no utility. Ordinary aesthetic judgments concern what is right and wrong, what fits, what harmonizes, what looks and sounds appropriate. Dressing right for a party, setting a table, decorating a room, and so on are all aimed at the right appearance, and the pleasure taken is inseparable from the judgment that things look as it should. There's an internal relation here between preference and judgment has become answerable to rational beings for our ascetic choices, um also for our planning, city planning. Uh so these choices we are creating presences in the world of others. Presences in the world of others, I think this is the sense in which buildings have an eye, because they were altered by a subject who envisaged the world in a certain way and who designed a building to reflect it or to not reflect it in a negative way or you know with a lack of inspiration, you know. Um those um and what they think of the result is part of how it matters to both them and us. In designing our surroundings, we are bringing them within the sphere of accountability to others and theirs to us, and in that sense, we are providing the world with a face. We deface the world when we scribble me all over it and invite others to do the same. Beauty of the face of community and ugliness, the attack on that thing by the solid system, the scavenger.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:36

Um and of course, community is about creating a safe space, it's about creating something yes, which has belonging, heritage. There are other thinkers, Jack, that also like to create safety in the state. They want to steer the ship of the state out of danger. Yes. Those two thinkers, a Disraeli and Oakshot. And we hope you will be joining us in two weeks' time.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:00

One week's time.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:01

Oh, one week's time, yes, yes, it's Disraeli and Oakshop. Benjamin Disraeli and Michael Oakshop. So we hope you'll be joining us for that. And in the meantime, have a wonderful couple well, wonderful week. And have a lovely rest of the evening. Yeah, thank you for joining us this time. And thank you to everyone online.