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The Significance of Common Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London
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Extract

The doctrine of a ‘state of nature’ is at best a metaphor. Nevertheless it enables us to describe with vividness the distinction between those goods which might precede, and those which can only result from, the formation of society. I suspect that the goods which establish our well-being as rational creatures (over and above whatever goods might benefit us as animals) belong exclusively to the latter class, so that a rational creature is necessarily a zōon politikon.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 207 , January 1979 , pp. 51 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

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References

1 Locke, John, ‘Second Treatise on Civil Government’, in Two Treatises of Government, Laslett, P. (ed.), and edn (CUP, Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

2 SirSnow, Charles (later Lord), ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, Rede Lecture 1959 (CUP, Cambridge, 1959).Google Scholar

3 See, for examples, the remarks by Hampshire, Stuart, in ‘A Ruinous Conflict’, The New Statesman (4 05 1962)Google Scholar, and by Wollheim, Richard in Socialism and Culture (The Fabian Society, London, 1961), 17–18.Google Scholar

4 Leavis, F. R., Nor Shall my Sword (Chatto & Windus, London, 1972).Google Scholar

5 I am greatly indebted here and elsewhere to unpublished work of John Casey on the theory of virtue.

6 The need for this ‘non-accidental’ relation is established, I think, by the examples presented by Gettier, E. L., ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, in Analysis (1963).Google Scholar

7 The opposition of ‘dread’ and ‘innocence’ is already suggested by gaard, Kierke, in The Concept of Dread, Tr. Lowrie, W. (Princeton University Press, Princeton).Google Scholar

8 Cf. also Casey, John, ‘The Autonomy of Art’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, Philosophy and the Arts, Vesey, G. (ed.) (Macmillan, London, 1973).Google Scholar

9 To make this distinction between universal and particular emotions fully dear is not easy. I have explored the matter at greater length in ‘Attitudes, Beliefs and Reasons’, in Casey, John (ed.), Morality and Moral Reasoning (Methuen, London, 1971).Google Scholar

10 But see my ‘Reason and Happiness’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, Nature and Conduct, Peters, R. S. (ed.) (Macmillan, London, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See the discussion of these matters in Putnam, H., ‘Is Semantics Possible?’, and ‘The Mental Life of Some Machines’, in Collected Papers, II (CUP, Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar, and also Wiggins, D., ‘Locke, Butler and the Stream of Consciousness: and Men as a Natural Kind’, in Philosophy (1976).Google Scholar

12 Cf. the argument in Oakeshott, M., ‘On Political Education’, in Laslett, P. (ed.), Philosophy, Politics and Society (Blackwell, Oxford, 1956), 13Google Scholar. This has been suggested by Wolff, R. P. in The Poverty of LiberalismGoogle Scholar, against the tenor of whose arguments these remarks are directed.

14 And is the adopted stance of Wolff's book, for all its anti-liberal pretensions.

15 Mill, J. S., On Liberty (1859), passim.Google Scholar

16 See for example, Hayek, F. A., The Constitution of Liberty (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1960).Google Scholar

17 This point has been argued in unpublished work by Sira Dermen.

18 This paper, originally prepared for a conference on Political Thought in Exeter College, Oxford, January 1977, owes much to initial conversations with Dr John Casey, whose ideas have influenced its content. I am also very grateful for advice and criticism from Mr Mark Platts, Mr Anthony Savile, Miss Moira Archer, Dr Malcolm Budd and Professor David Hamlyn.