Modern Culture

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

What do we mean by 'culture' This word, purloined by journalists to denote every kind of collective habit, lies at the centre of contemporary debates about the past and future of society. In this thought-provoking book, Roger Scruton argues for the religious origin of culture in all its forms, and mounts a defence of the 'high culture' of our civilization against its radical and 'deconstructionist' critics. He offers a theory of pop culture, a panegyric to Baudelaire, a few reasons why Wagner is just as great as his critics fear him to be, and a raspberry to Cool Britannia. A must for all people who are fed up to their tightly clenched front teeth with Derrida, Foucault, Oasis and Richard Rogers.

Reviews

"...Scruton offers both a trenchant critique of pop culture and a defense of the opposing "high culture".... Many readers may find themselves asking whether moral aestheticism, without any explicit religious element, can deal with the more destructive aspects of modern culture."- Robert Grano, Touchstone, October 2006 * Touchstone: Journal of Mere Christianity *

Author Bio

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over 50 books. A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; University Professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic of the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.