Good-bye, Roger Scruton

Good-bye, Roger Scruton

Joaquina Pires-O’Brien

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Roger Scruton on 12 January 2020, aged 75.

Scruton was shunned in his own country for exposing the follies and fallacies of the demi-Gods of the Left, such as Foucault, Derrrida, Althusser and Gramisci. In spite of all the hardships that he had to face, he succeeded in attaining the ‘good life’, which is the mark of all true philosophers.  May his life serve as a warning to all societies, of how easily it is to misjudge people, giving unwarranted praises to some and shunning the truly merited. The curse of postmodernism  exacerbated considerably this error of judgement.

I had the honour of meeting Scruton in 2012, in London, during the book signing section that followed the debate between him and the literary theorist and critic Terry Eagleton, promoted by Intelligence Squared. Having introduced myself briefly, I told him that I had created a magazine called PortVitoria, hoping to disseminate the ideas of classical liberalism to a Portuguese and Spanish audience. I mentioned that I would like to translate some of his essays to publish in PortVitoria, and that I had already published there a review of his book Green Philosophy: How to think seriously about the planet. When I explained that PortVitoria was a start-up and still unknown, he put me at ease by telling me that he too had edited a magazine that had only some twelve hundred subscribers. He was referring to The Salisbury Review, a ‘quarterly magazine of conservative thought’ founded in 1982, which he served as chief-editor for 18 years. Although The Salisbury Review has a digital edition, its original paper edition survives to this day. I was very happy when he told me that I could translate his essay ‘The Green and the Blue’ into Portuguese and Spanish, to publish PortVitoria. I will always treasure my signed copy of his book The Face of God (2012), where he wrote “To Jo, with best wishes”.  Good-bye, great philosopher.