Roger Scruton - The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope

Philosopher Roger Scruton argues for a culture of reason, responsibility and irony in the place of the dangerous fallacies that derive from false optimism.

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[westwaytv]

Thanks for posting. Please put up the questions from the audience too.

[theRSAorg]

@westwaytv Hi, if you go to the RSA website you can find a podcast of the event in full including audience q&a. Go to the audio section and search for Roger Scruton. I hope that helps. BTW all lectures are recorded in full and available on podcast. Cheers Becca :)

[T3mporal]

No, there's no need for religious beliefs for the well being of a community. Love and goodness are not things that can only be archived through supernatural thinking.

.

If anything, up to my understanding, most religion(in some shape or form) provides 2 contradictions to what was said:

1)An excuse to NOT value THIS life, by talking about an INFINITE AFTERLIFE;

2)In exchange for afterlife, the person must be RELIGIOUS, but not exactly a GOOD person. Almost NEVER religion and ETHICS get together.

[kirshara]

great thinker

[ARIZJOE]

David Bowie's more erudite, conservative older brother.

[kinkyplunk]

@SecularNumanist agreed

[MarkoKraguljac]

He mentions "human nature" as something relatively fixed and existing. We are mostly reflections of our environment. If that is truth, his whole talk could be quite different and turned upside down. Worth listening tho.

[SecularNumanist]

@2gentrs

in a debate he had with AC Grayling, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens he referred to himself as a "lapsed methodist"

[SecularNumanist]

Clearly not much of a public speaker, but a brilliant writer.

Im reading his "A Short History of Modern Philosophy" at the moment and he has a fantastic way of summing up even the most complicated of philosophers such as Hegel/Hume

[wyattwerp10]

@T3mporal...when asked by a companion what the prophet meant by the words 'it is confirmed' the prophet explained that heaven had been confirmed for the moral man and hell for the immoral. Now this is merely one example of the many in the islamic tradition that is evidence against your assertion. Furthermore, Islam states the opposite of your first assertion that religion doesnt ask us to value this life. Rather, what it asks of us is not be devoted to it as though we will stay here forever.

[wyattwerp10]

The prophet Muhammad was with his companions when they saw a procession carrying the body of a dead man who happened not to be muslim. Those carrying him told the prophet that the deceased had lived a highly principled life and was a moral man, although not religious. The prophet replied 'it is confirmed'. Another procession came along some time afterwards and those carrying the deceased informed the prophet that the deceased had lived an immoral life. The prophet replied 'it is confirmed'....

[Xenostrobe]

@Xenostrobe Speaking of monkeys and fallacies (the Bonobo Fallacy) experiments on Capuchin monkeys give insights into the problem of the so called Zero Sum Fallacy. And so too the Ultimatum Game, people are very prone to point scoring, outdoing the Jones'... maybe that RSC talk on Education Paradigm sheds more light on this...

[Xenostrobe]

A patron the Orangutan Foundation? Perhaps not, but a very clever monkey even so.

[Francesko263]

Professor Scruton is today the most influental conservative intellectual. He supports tories and especially Cameron's new vision of conservatorism. I'm not against him, some of his points of view are rights. We must take him as a turn of the tide of nowadays british politics.