Claire wrote about her memories of Roger Scruton for Reaction. She begins:
Roger Scruton was renowned as hating communism. So how on earth did he form an unlikely liason with me, the publisher of Living Marxism? In turn, why would I become such an admirer of Europe’s leading conservative philosopher? He famously declared that he became so angry watching students (“middle class hooligans”) in Paris in May 1968 smashing windows and overturning cars, that he actively became conservative. He then admitted that I would have been the type who might have rioted.
He had a particular animus for Jean Paul Sartre (see his Thinkers of the New Left), while I revered Sartre, alongside Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. It is a miracle we could tolerate each other, let alone get on.
But the truth is that Roger was a revolutionary, far more anti-establishment and definitely more courageous, than many on the ‘social justice’ left today. His dissident work in the 1980s, such as smuggling books into Czechozlovakia, his secret philosophy lectures, his encounters with East European armed guards – these were not the actions of some sedate armchair reactionary, but firmly place him in the freedom fighter camp. And, ironically, he lived freedom just as the existentialists demanded.
Read the full article at Reaction.