Philosophy
Roger Scruton on why beauty matters and the cult of utility
I first came across the name Roger Scruton through his books being recommended to me on Amazon. Make of that what you will. One book was entitled How to be a conservative, which I found unpalatable and so I avoided exploring further.
That is until I found a video of Sir Roger in conversation with Douglas Murray. Murray’s book—The Madness of Crowds—was one of the funniest and most incisive books I had read this year, so I thought I might be missing a trick.
Answering the demand
It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, “Who are we?”
I have always been obsessed with the Big Picture. It’s why my most valued possessions are the years of notes I’ve gathered on everything from physics, to psychology, to psilocybin. They are my flags and reminders as to why the world I live in looks and acts as it does—my own take on higher education.