Music’s Address

“Music,” writes Roger Scruton (Soul of the World, 175) “addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world” and thus “requires us to respond to a subjectivity that lies beyond the world of objects, in a space of its own.” It’s one of the intimations . . . . Continue Reading »

Dualism and Teleology

At the heart of Scruton’s  Soul of the World is a plea for a “cognitive dualism” that he sets in opposition to all “nothing but” reductionisms - music is nothing but sounds, painting nothing but pigments on canvas, the world nothing but matter in motion, humans . . . . Continue Reading »

The Sacred and the Covenant

The sacred is Janus-faced, writes Roger Scruton in Soul of the World(15): “Sacred objects, words, animals, ceremonies, places all seem to stand at the horizon of our world, looking out to that which is not of this world, because it belongs in the sphere of the divine, and looking also . . . . Continue Reading »