A little more on that Roger Scruton dustup with the deputy editor of the New Statesman. When you’re righteous, you don’t necessarily have to be right, nor civil:
On Roger Scruton and his defenders:
– There is no context in which it is ok to refer to a “Soros empire” (an anti-semitic trope).
– Or to refer to Chinese people as replicas of each other (a racist trope).
– Or to refer to Islamophobia as a “propaganda word” + Muslim “tribes”.
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) April 10, 2019
I take the claims of ‘Ismologists’ with a grain of salt; especially when there’s professional incentive to have one’s Nazi/non-Nazi list at the ready with those who politically disagree. The identity game is so tired yet still so damaging, the intellectual bar so low yet still so influential, that I think I’ve stopped noticing the constant whine of my bullshit detector.
Update: Scruton responds here. There is a lot of social and professional incentive for Eaton to act in such a way.
Our politics and civil debate is engulfed in similar ideas, and like the Brits, Canadians and Aussies, our politics will still be necessary to maintain civil society.
Smearing Roger Scruton https://t.co/WikAz5V0xq
— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) April 10, 2019
What am I missing?
Apparently that Jordan Peterson/Slavoj Zizek debate will occur on April 19th, 2019, in Toronto:
http://www.sonycentre.ca/calendar-event-details/?id=563
On this site, see:
Slavoj Zizek In The New Republic: Responding To Adam Kirsch
Mr Scruton was pretty much excommunicated from British academic life and civil society for his views. It’s actually possible to have a civil debate, you know, but just don’t expect it from most people, much of the time, especially identitarians (political enemies are morally evil…because politics seems to function as a religion):
In the Q & A afterwards, Scruton receives about as pointed a post-lecture questioning on his metaphysics as I’ve seen.
In the final moments, Robert George also posits that Scruton’s four presented categories actually rather resemble Aristotle’s Order of Nature and three of them Aristotle’s Practical Reason.
Interesting presentation by an interesting thinker, indeed.