An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture makes an argument for high culture and aesthetics as a civilizing force. The author, Roger Scruton, is a philosopher, a conservative writer, and a critic of postmodern ideas in philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences. His stated purpose, in the preface to the American edition was to explain what culture is and why it matters. That overstates his point, which is that the critical appreciation of the humanities is being displaced by a less critical, postmodern cultural studies of popular culture. The displacement has occurred in colleges and Universities, and in the arts and entertainment industries. It is manifested by the destruction of critical standards, the chaos of postmodern art and literature, and the fragmentation of culture. The core of the argument is that literature and the arts, like religion, express social emotions and play a vital part in maintaining an ethical culture.
The book is short, at 158 pages, and clearly written. It span several topics - the concept of culture, the influence of culture on ideas and emotions, the history of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the ethical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a theory of aesthetics, and the idea of cultural studies.
His starting concepts are Johann Gottfried Herder's definition of culture as the flow of moral energy that holds society intact, and Wilhelm von Humbolt's idea of culture as something that is learned as a social inheritance, subject to critical scrutiny, and consciously imparted to succeeding generations. The first concept, when applied in a critical way, leads to the anthropologist's idea of common culture, the attitudes and social emotions of an identified set of people - a tribe. Within a common culture, human beings are able to make judgments about social behaviour. The ethical principles embedded in the common culture are founded in collective experience and tradition, and maintain the peace and happiness of the whole tribe. Culture is vital to human identity. In spite of variations - wide variations - it is not accidental, random or spontaneous. It is founded in a real core of human needs. It is an intellectual and emotional web, involving historical attitudes and prejudices under the strain of current needs and impulses.
Article comments
1 - Eric Berlin
Excellent work here, Tony. I personally have trouble with these almighty "judgments" that refuse to allow that art is personal and meaingful to each individual in widely varying ways. That's the very meaning of art, isn't it? I like your line: a story can be a story. Exactly: the audience derives meaning from the entertainment, if they're open to it and if the art is executed with skill and passion and etc.
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