In the March 27, 2006 issue of National Review (link for subscribers only), Roger Kimball reviews Roger Scruton's memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life. Excerpt:
Scruton comes bearing news about permanent things, one part of which is the evanescence of human aspiration. Hence the governing word “loss.” There is a sense in which conservatism is anti-Romantic, since it is constitutionally suspicious of the schemes of perfection Romanticism typically espouses. But there is another sense in which conservatism is deeply Romantic: the sense in which it recognizes and embraces the ineradicable frailty, the ultimate futility of things human. “And so,” Scruton writes at the end of his chapter on Burke, “I acquired the consciousness of death and dying, without which the world cannot be loved for what it is. That, in essence, is what it means to be a conservative.” Which is to say that without the consciousness of loss, there is nothing a conservative would find worth conserving. It is only by facing up to necessary loss, Scruton writes, that we can build on the dream of ultimate recuperation.The philosopher Leszek Kolakowski once wrote that religion teaches us how to be a failure. In the essay “Regaining My Religion,” which concludes Gentle Regrets, Scruton endorses that insight and shows how one of the most harrowing depredations of the modern world is to rob us of the religious sense, which is to say the sense of loss. Too often, he notes, “there is neither love nor happiness — only fun. For us, one might be tempted to suggest, the loss of religion is the loss of loss.” The central teaching of this wise and companionable book is that the acknowledgment of loss is not the end but the prelude to the possession of joy.
I think I'll order a copy of the book this week.
Happy Easter to all.
Posted by oscarjr at April 16, 2006 01:58 PM | TrackBack