Culture Counts
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Product Description
Product Description
What is culture? Why should we preserve it, and how? In this book renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends Western culture against its internal critics and external enemies, and argues that rumours of its death are seriously exaggerated. He shows our culture to be a continuing source of moral knowledge, and rebuts the fashionable sarcasm which sees it as nothing more than the useless legacy of "dead white European males." Ranging widely over the arts and philosophy, Scruton defends what Eliot called "the common pursuit of true judgement" against the dismissive attacks of the new academicians. In his striking account of music, and its role in moral education, he defends the classical tradition as well as the American popular song, and points to the damage done to the psyche by the new forms of pop. He is robust in defence of traditional architecture and figurative painting, critical of the fashionable relativists and urgent in his plea for our civilization, which more than ever stands in need of the self-knowledge and self-confidence that are the gift of serious culture. Scruton points to the damage done to Islam by the loss of its culture, which has left the stark belligerence of untempered dogma in full possession of the field, without the cultured voices that once subdued and corrected it. It is precisely because we have not yet lost our culture that we can enjoy the tolerance and the open-ness that distinguish Western civilization from its current self-appointed enemies. Let's keep it that way, so that we can face down those who threaten us in full confidence that the conflict is their doing, not ours.
About the Author
Roger Scruton lives in Wiltshire.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The book offers an apologetic defence of high western culture as a surrogate for its religious foundations. This in contrast to multiculturalism, with postmodern, oriental and ethnocentric power based perspectives coming under scrutiny. The paucity of self critical humour in current manifestations of Islamic expression are repeated sufficiently to identify the authors polemic and the risk that he is taking. The absence of a critique of the inequalities that derive from elite western culture leaves one asking whether the aesthetic really can be a source of moral compassion. Never the less, his appeal for teaching and learning to accomodate 'knowing how to feel' is well made.
5 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In his book Culture Counts, Roger Scruton's simple reply to, what benefits an ordinary child gets from high culture: 'It may not benefit the child - not yet, at least. But it will benefit culture. And because culture is a form of knowledge, it is the business of the teacher to look for the pupil who will pass it on.'
In my view it is the business of the teacher to teach, looking for 'the pupil' at the expense of all others seems a little unfair. Who knows what the others could have come up with whilst studying something else. I strongly believe the pupil who could recognize the baton will find the teacher. We just need to make sure every pupil is aware of what is accessible.
In my view it is the business of the teacher to teach, looking for 'the pupil' at the expense of all others seems a little unfair. Who knows what the others could have come up with whilst studying something else. I strongly believe the pupil who could recognize the baton will find the teacher. We just need to make sure every pupil is aware of what is accessible.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
The Contemplations of Roger Scruton.
3 Sep 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Just about everything Roger Scruton writes I enjoy reading. He has one of the most penetrating and illustrious minds in all of conservadom, and Culture Counts is a book worthy of his reputation. Scruton is the type of intellectual heavyweight who can score points on every page which is exactly what he does here. Central to his theme is that western education exists to preserve knowledge and transmit it to the generations which follow. Our accumulated observations, values, and judgments must be conserved. Educating individuals is a secondary, and never the primary, goal of organized schooling. One's education is bigger than his person.
The idea I found most intriguing is that no information is superfluous or unworthy of accumulation. Almost every fact we gather in life adds to our general understanding of the world and is, thus, invaluable. Most people don't seem to comprehend this and act as if they are above many things and many individuals. Such attitudes are counter-productive, and are what make an ignoramus an ignoramus. The intrinsic merits of contemplation are today largely forgotten, but not to Mr. Scruton. He reminds us Aristotle regarded contemplation as being the highest good. I also appreciated his short section on the importance of laughter and the way it saves us from despair.
My only criticism is that, at just over 100 pages, Culture Counts is really more of an extended essay than a complete book. Twenty dollars is too expensive a price in my opinion. Of course, the great thing about Amazon is that stuff always sells at a discount here. Furthermore, the z shops have been a godsend for my wallet and I am sure they have been for yours as well.
The idea I found most intriguing is that no information is superfluous or unworthy of accumulation. Almost every fact we gather in life adds to our general understanding of the world and is, thus, invaluable. Most people don't seem to comprehend this and act as if they are above many things and many individuals. Such attitudes are counter-productive, and are what make an ignoramus an ignoramus. The intrinsic merits of contemplation are today largely forgotten, but not to Mr. Scruton. He reminds us Aristotle regarded contemplation as being the highest good. I also appreciated his short section on the importance of laughter and the way it saves us from despair.
My only criticism is that, at just over 100 pages, Culture Counts is really more of an extended essay than a complete book. Twenty dollars is too expensive a price in my opinion. Of course, the great thing about Amazon is that stuff always sells at a discount here. Furthermore, the z shops have been a godsend for my wallet and I am sure they have been for yours as well.
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
"Skewering The 'Culture Of Repudiation'"
11 Nov 2007
Format:Hardcover
Roger Scruton's "Culture Counts" is much more than just another tiresome, stale screed attacking the postmodernist establishment. Instead, it is a refreshing defense of the actual, if neglected, inclusiveness and meaningful "multiculturalism" of traditional Western culture, and, simultaneously, an expose of the rigid orthodoxies and crude censoriousness which mark that allegedly open-minded, postmodernist "culture" flourishing at our universities, one he calls the "culture of repudiation." This regnant "culture" he sees as unworthy of a university, since it is in grave contradiction, for it argues that all cultures are relative and therefore of equal value, at the same time as it demonstrates a fashionable self-loathing by bashing traditional Western culture as beyond the pale. It is, in fact, merely nihilist and has nothing substantive to offer in place of what it would destroy.
Scruton is equally provocative in suggesting that current education has things just backwards. To him, the purpose of education is not merely the private benefit to the student, but rather the benefit to the culture, of which a truly educated student will himself be a future guardian. (Pace, John Dewey!)
Finally, it should be pointed out that Scruton is as versed in contemporary art, architecture, music and literature as he is in the traditional, and thus he does not follow his serious analysis with a counsel of impotence and despair, seeing instead convincing "rays of hope" in such current practitioners as, for example, Jacob Collins, Quinlan Terry, David del Tredici, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq, Alain Finkelkraut, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Paul Johnson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and James Wood.
Scruton is equally provocative in suggesting that current education has things just backwards. To him, the purpose of education is not merely the private benefit to the student, but rather the benefit to the culture, of which a truly educated student will himself be a future guardian. (Pace, John Dewey!)
Finally, it should be pointed out that Scruton is as versed in contemporary art, architecture, music and literature as he is in the traditional, and thus he does not follow his serious analysis with a counsel of impotence and despair, seeing instead convincing "rays of hope" in such current practitioners as, for example, Jacob Collins, Quinlan Terry, David del Tredici, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq, Alain Finkelkraut, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Paul Johnson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and James Wood.
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
A highly recommended, thought-provoking philosophical treatise.
8 July 2007
Format:Hardcover
Written by Roger Scruton (Research Professor, Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia), Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged declares that rumors of the demise of Western culture are greatly exaggerated. Countering academic, external, and internal critics of Western Culture, such as dismissive attitudes toward the legacy of "dead white European males", Culture Counts reveals Western cultural contributions to moral education, defends traditional architecture and figurative painting, and urges renewed respect for the positive achievements of Western civilization. "We should see culture as Schiller and other Enlightenment thinkers saw it: the repository of emotional knowledge, through which we can come to understand the meaning of life as an end in itself. Culture inherits from religion the 'knowledge of the heart' whose essence is sympathy. But it can be passed on and enhanced, even when the religion that first engendered it has died. Indeed, in these circumstances, it is all the more important that culture be passed on, since it has become the sole communicable testimony to the higher life of mankind." A highly recommended, thought-provoking philosophical treatise.
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