On Defending Beauty

Tony Watkins — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:59:28 +0000

I was struck by these comments about the loss of beauty in British life by the philosopher Roger Scruton:

In the ’50s and ’60s, when my generation was growing up, British people were actively recruited by the educational system and the worlds of art and religion to an aspirational culture. Those were the days of Henry Moore and Benjamin Britten, of Graham Sutherland and Michael Tippett. W. H. Auden was an important voice, as was the ex-American T. S. Eliot. Britain was a place of deep historical and religious significance. You were privileged to belong on its soil, and all around you the national history had left the signs and portents of a higher way of life. At the risk of exaggeration, it could be said that my country, in those years when the baby boom generation was advancing toward its lifelong immaturity, was an experiment in redemption. Its art, culture, and religion were devoted to the ideal of a community in which decency, puzzlement, and self-denial held sway. And there remained, as a kind of leftover from wartime propaganda, the belief in the gentleman, who faces life in a posture of self-sacrificing devotion to nonsensical ideals — nonsensical, that is, from the point of view of the cynical observer, but not nonsensical at all, given the spirit in which they were accepted.

The American visitor to Britain today, and especially the visitor who retains a memory of that extraordinary world in which decency, self-deprecation, and the stiff upper lip were the ruling principles, often recoils in shock at what he finds. The public culture is one of appetite and satire, and the whole country seems to be “in your face,” as though sticking out a collective tongue. Many American friends tell me this, and speak sorrowfully of the change from the Britain that they used to visit with a sense of coming home, to the Britain that they visit today, which is a land of strangers. The interesting thing, however, and the response to my film seems to confirm this, is that many of the British people agree with them. The British people too are in a land of strangers, and the culture that rules over them is one to which many of my countrymen cannot in their hearts belong.

via spectator.org

Posted via email from Tony Watkins

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AC Grayling equates Dawkins with Jesus

Tony Watkins — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:17:52 +0000

British philosopher AC Grayling was interviewed in The Observer on Sunday (5 July 2009). It’s a series of soundbites rather than anything detailed. This one caught my eye:

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

What? The first sentence suggests Grayling knows very little about Jesus and yet is prepared to idly speculate on what he might be, without engaging with the evidence. Second, how on earth does he make the link to Dawkins? Is Dawkins a moral reformer in any sense at all? He may be an outspoken defender of a particular position but it hardly makes for an equivalence with Jesus, even if you do reject Jesus’s divinity. Grayling is a very bright man, and I always enjoy listening to him on Radio 4 discussions, but this quote betrays his blind spot and bias.

I was also struck by this comment:

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.

I wonder what Grayling means by this. The Bible is God’s self-revelation and the account of his dealings with human beings. What story could start with the apple falling on Newton (a historically dubious event anyway)? The story of the growth of modern science and the way it has replaced religion with hard-nosed rationalism? The growth of modern science is a great story, but it doesn’t start with Newton and it has not supplanted religion. There are very many people who have see no conflict between the two, but rather synergy. Is it to be a bible in the sense of a handbook of essential knowledge about a particular subject? If so, I still don’t see why he’s starting with Newton. Is he wanting to imply that Newton’s insights about gravity are a significant moment of enlightenment, when human beings first realise that things don’t fall as a result of God’s direct and immediate action?

I know this is one of those infuriatingly brief and shallow interviews which are so popular these days, but surely a philosopher of Grayling’s ability is able to be speak concisely without these dubious connections.

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Tony Watkins » Philosophy

On Defending Beauty

AC Grayling equates Dawkins with Jesus