Roger Scruton - Harming Oneself and Harming Other (1 of 5)

[efa0tz]

I am sceptical to everybody preaching "we western democracy, liberal, etc etc" when they built those "democracies" on plunder, colonialism, deceit and exploatation.

[johnsammyanfal]

'mental and spiritual harm'....sounds like Scruton is but one step away from advocating a Western type sharia theocracy of your own. Actually the USA Constitution is not primarily about liberty; but rather a road map to the pursuit of the 'good life'. Scruton is the logical conclusion of a modern neoconservative; defiantly defending the ruins of a civilisation that he has necessarily come to despise and externalising his anger against cultures he half understands.

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 things and to try and dissect a fascinating issue myself, namely, how on earth it occurs that anybody acquires such a perverse world view and convinces anyone that it is intelligent. Thumbs up for your comment though, anyone who tries sincerely to follow reason I respect, but for that reason, I will only be honest about what I think. :)

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 no support and therefore stop people taking drugs’, that ‘pornography is seriously addictive, more so than alcohol or perhaps cocaine and more damaging to society, and corrosive to the moral sensibilities’… is not going to be a frequent event. Of course, there is much to discuss and debate, and I would love a debate with Scruton to try and clear up the mess he has made of thinking about

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 promoting libidinousness to small children in sexual education classes, that those in favour of decriminalising drugs are in favour not because of copious empirical research and rationality or even (as is admittedly more common) out of their own enjoyment of drugs which no earthly reason to be criminalised but instead, because they believe that ‘taking away support will teach people there is

[Samgurney88]

television is a corrupting force in society, that Islamic militancy should not be tolerated out of religious toleration (which must include religion’s duty to tolerate others), that the family is an important social value e.t.c. But, where I agree with him most, I disagree most with his ignorant and irrelevant treatment of the topic. That said, agreeing with a man who believes that our schools are

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 My low estimation of his intelligence is less related to weather I agree with him or not, although inevitably there will be a reasonable degree of correlation. I consider myself ‘left wing’, although my honesty and love of reason and actual care for love, perhaps make me unwelcome amongst a doctrine of tremendous dogma, piety and often ludicrous indignation. I agree with him that the

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 gestalt, nor any comprehension of the true relations of affairs of a given issue other than what others have said or written about it, viz. a viz. he speaks and sees through other thinker’s mouths and other thinker’s eyes and subsequently his dissections are bloody, tangled messes which makes everything look hideous, where a proper one would illuminate the beautiful truth.

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 approach philosophical issues, has absolutely no merits as a thinker, only a commendable degree of erudition which can never compensate for even two minutes of clear thinking. Of course, I can understand how it may appear that he approaches things systematically and logically, especially with all his distinctions and dissections of other’s arguments, but in reality he has no perception of

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 philosophical issues is cloaked in the same ‘properness’ and ‘orderliness’. I take no issue with cold frogs- Bertrand Russell was the coldest of them all and yet his scientific dissection of philosophical issues always had a clarity and tidiness in their execution and thus, when he erred, the his thought was naked and the point at which he erred clearly identifiable. Scruton, in his endeavour to

[Samgurney88]

@Marcoz588 referred to those ‘cold, English frogs’. Thoreau recognised it, saying ‘there are now professors in philosophy, but no philosophers’. What reveals Scruton’s lack of intelligence is his inability to grasp subtlety or irony; he likes to consider himself as rebelling against analytical philosophy and presumably that ‘cold frog-ness’ which characterises it, yet his attempt at systematic analysis of

[Portubed]

This is really great!

[Francesko263]

The most prominent intellectual of british conservatorism and tories.

[butteryblue]

I just don't understand the hair.

[denkbeeld]

@butteryblue hehe ;-)

[FatherWarhol]

His description (6:00) of the single mother who neglects her child to keep her live in boy friend is so familiar to me.

Then I think about left-wing devils who sneer at the conservatives who even so much as speak out against it.

To them I say this: you will never win.

[Xenostrobe]

'bliss was it in that dusk to be alive'

Scruton

Well, I'm not enjoying the dusk of civilization.

[polymath7]

It's just delicious to read the comments on this board, and snigger at how these conservatives think they've found themselves an intellectual -a pilosopher even!.

Too cute.

[illuminati800]

The intellectual foundations of conservatism are robust.. Consider the insight of Burke, Tocqueville, and Hegel.

[polymath7]

(chuckle) What leads you to suspect I haven't?

One could equally well say the foundations of Cartesian dualism and schoolasticism are intellectually robust; but they've few if any respectable proponents today.

And I must say I've no respect whatever for Hegel.

Just to avoid semantic confusion, what is your definition of "conservative" in this context?

Or, as Carl Sagan wittily asked, what are consrevatives conserving?

[polymath7]

*conservatives

[polymath7]

*scholasticism

[justwannawatchvids]

The day I call my leftist enemy "cute" or "asshat" and then pretend to be smart with long-windedness, I'd hide my face in public.

That is just how different we are in unimportant areas. Everything about your side is odious to me and I would protect what you would destroy. That is exactly where I am interested in conserving or preserving something.

[TKTsunami]

@polymath7 First off, I want to note as a classically educated philosophy student, you ARE an arrogant prat, as is anyone who prefaces their remarks with a condescending chuckle.

Secondly: Cartesian dualism is robust, but not in the same way or degree that scholasticism is, because while we got some use out of Descartes' metaphysical reduction of all things to quantitative reasoning, it failed. BADLY! In his life! See the debacle of his claiming to understand medicine demonstrably.

...

[TKTsunami]

@polymath7 As to whether scholasticism has "respectable proponents", there are many; you just don't know them, because you are not as world-wise as you may fancy; and even if it had none, its truth is not dependent upon the number of its supporters. Indeed, modern cognitive science is beginning, especially in accounts of synaesthesia, to corroborate the Aquinas-Aristotle theory of the inner senses, which supports the notion of a hylomorphic immaterial soul.

...

[TKTsunami]

@polymath7 And this is what conservatism conserves: a historical tradition which bears certain habits of thinking and speaking about the universe in order to explain reality as cosmological, something which Sagan thinks he gets but sincerely does not, and of which Scholasticism is the picture writ large, albeit not with modern science. But it's beginning to get a lot of new corroboration.

"There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

[croscream]

@polymath7

Well, i pity your empty retoric.

[polymath7]

Don't pity me (or my rhetoric).

I am vastly more intelligent than Scruton, or you, or anyone who is going to come across this board any time soon, and I can effortlessly fill what you consider my hollow rhetoric with argument sufficiently dense as to crush Scruton's to a fine powder.

I just hadn't bothered because the traffic for this video is so low.

But rest assured I can do it.

*grin*

Would you like you see?

This will be fun.

I'm on my way the door, but when I get back...

[croscream]

@polymath7

That is empty retoric, pointless bullying: you will never amount to anything in your life, so you go to these videos and make accusation and empty threats designed to fool people into believing you are intelligen. But most people here quiekly realise that when they read you talking that you are not saying anything, which makes people pity you and laugh at you.

[flefft]

@polymath7 - A truly intelligent person wouldn't feel the need to make such declarations. But a conceited and arrogant twat would.

[JekyllBoote]

It is necessary to pay very close attention to Scruton's lucidly expressed arguments, and to try to ignore the regrettable fact that he is - strangely for an experienced lecturer - an indifferent public speaker.

[chrish12345]

wot wrong wiv it?

[Tenor2ba]

It is typical of the intellectual dishonesty of the left to resort to ad hominem attacks when confronted with irrefutable logic as expressed by Dr. Scruton.

The dribbling buffoon is in the mirror.

[polymath7]

Since the advent of affordable, widely available internet access, my exposure to the term "ad hominem" must, without exaggeration, have increased at least one-hundred-fifty-fold.

More often than not, it is entirely misapplied. Such is the case with you my friend.

The term is NOT interchangable with "insult".

Jackass

A logical fallacy has been committed only if the insult is intended to modify a proposition.

I just called the man a dribbling buffoon. YOUR comment wa an ad hominem. Asshat.

[R0undAboutMidnight]

"when confronted with irrefutable logic"

That's a bold assertion.

[polymath7]

Dribbling buffoon.

[sast89]

America needs intellectual conservatives like Scruton.

[LikeAGlassAsterisk]

His form of conservatism would never be accepted in America. America is too foregone with liberal intuitions to even consider the validity of public values.

[masterfeatherpen]

@LikeAGlassAsterisk Too true, too true...

[Spoonman518]

@sast89 That is the last thing they need. His political and moral views are skewed to say the least. Consider the case of the broken marriage in which constant animosity and violence poison a child's upbringing....a society that "privileges heterosexual marriage and the committed family", whatever the fuck that would entail, wouldn't seem to protect a child from this would it. Blanketing prejudiced views towards homosexuality in elitist moral and philosophical terms does not make them legitimate

[written12]

I second Jaaproos' thank you.

Scruton's arguments are always astute and eloquent.

[jaaproos]

thanks for adding i was looking for this video for a while...