Public intellectual and ‘token reactionary’
Sir Roger Scruton, who has died aged 75, was a philosopher and academic variously identified as “a public intellectual,” a “token reactionary” (his own description), and even “the thinking man’s skinhead.”
The contentious Scruton operated as an academic, journalist and prolific writer, and a lightning rod for criticism and abuse from the political left. He was regularly shouted down in universities and prevented from speaking, yet he enjoyed a reputation as a first-class professional philosopher among academics of all political persuasions.
Scruton was a barrister, teacher at Birkbeck College (part of London University with a tradition of a working-class intake), editor of the ultraconservative Salisbury Review, and enthusiastic fox hunter.
Although he was sometimes credited with inspiring Margaret Thatcher’s embrace of the free market in the mid-1970s, Scruton aligned with a more settled, patrician conservatism.
Scruton had a wide and deep understanding of the history of Western philosophy as a whole, and some of his best work consisted of explaining clearly how different Western philosophies relate to one another.
Roger Vernon Scruton was born Feb. 27, 1944. He studied philosophy at Cambridge in the 1960s and, years later, law.
Scruton worked with the Jan Hus educational trust, named after a 13th-century Czech reformer and martyr, to provide books, support samizdat production and to teach. He learned Czech and became immersed in Czech culture.
After the collapse of communism, he formed a consultancy to make contacts between Western businesses and the new government. He was awarded the Czech Republic’s highest civilian honour.
An accomplished pianist with a love of 20th-century music, he wrote operas in his free time.
In 1992 he accepted the post of professor of philosophy at Boston University, but in 1995 returned to Britain.
In 2002, Scruton was criticized in The Guardian for having written articles about smoking without disclosing that he was receiving a regular fee from a tobacco company, a revelation that led the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal to drop him as a columnist, Chatto & Windus to end negotiations for a book, and Birkbeck to remove his visiting professor privileges.
That and the ban on fox hunting led Scruton to return to the U.S., where he held part-time academic positions. There, he wrote I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine.
The Scrutons returned to Britain in 2010, where he continued to write.
Scruton was knighted in 2016 for “services to philosophy, teaching and public education.”
He is survived by his second wife, a son and a daughter.
AN ACCOMPLISHED PIANIST WITH A LOVE OF 20TH-CENTURY MUSIC, HE WROTE OPERAS IN HIS FREE TIME.