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From Wikimedia Commons: The Village Church (Benjamin Williams Leader, 1894) 

A philosopher and cultural warrior, Roger Scruton (1944–2020) dedicated his life to defending the principles of liberty, beauty, and tradition against the high tide of revolutionary ideology. In a modern world seduced by utilitarian and utopian doctrines, he stood firm, rooted in the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke and emphasizing the importance of continuity, moral order, and the transcendent value of culture.

Scruton’s lifelong commitment to liberty went beyond “armchair heroism”—it was a lived reality. Throughout his career, his ideological enemies (e.g., Marxist academics and journalists) exposed him to malicious harassment. Despite hostility from various quarters, he never wavered, though. An exemplary courage was evident in his support for political dissidents whom he personally visited behind the Iron Curtain. Abiding by the very values that he preached, he lent his voice to those struggling for freedom at the cost of career, privileges, and personal safety.

Highlighting the implications for our self-perception as humans and loyalty to a particular community (belonging), Scruton insisted that “beauty matters”—less as a “luxury” than as a “necessity for human flourishing”. He took issue with cultural nihilism, e.g., soulless modernist architecture, believing that the spaces that we inhabit and the art that we cherish shape our souls and societies. For him, beauty, apart from aesthetics, was about meaning, memory, and identity.

A cornerstone of Scruton’s philosophy was his reverence for “vernacular architecture”—the traditional, locally rooted building styles that arise naturally from a community’s history and environment. He saw these forms, not as antiquated relics but as living expressions of a people’s collective memory and cultural continuity. To him, the “vernacular home” was a sanctuary, embodying a tangible connection to the past, the land, and the shared narratives that define a community.

Scruton believed that the neglect of architectural traditions led to widespread alienation. Modernist architecture, with its universalizing, abstract forms, severed people from their sense of place and belonging. This rupture, he warned, produced a state of “cultural homelessness” where........

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