Terry Eagleton in conversation with Roger Scruton 

I think it's *great* that these two, *polar opposites* in their politics, can maintain a civilised and respectful debate, this is so often lacking these days

Two true brilliant gentlemen, debating and disagreeing seriously with grace, humor, and respect. May they be contagious.

Sir Roger Scruton, R.I.P. (1944-2020)

An intelligent, insightful debate which, despite containing radically opposed opinions, was conducted with decorum and respect. One must be awed that in times of Trump and political correctness, such delightful conversations still take place.

It is beautiful and enriching to disagree with grace and respect, a pity that we have only one of the two alive today. We need more of these!

I mean who would dare debate Roger Scruton. The man has an almost pure instinct for sticking to the argument, never swayed by cheap emotionality. Wish I had heard him in my younger days, the man is a genius.

Is that a young Ash Sarkar getting the last question in? Of course she had to give all that pre-amble only to respond to Scruton's answer by accusing him of "only listening to music made by dead white men". What an embarrassment.

Eagleton gives a very stimulating and witty lecture about Christianity at Yale U. called "Christinity: Fair or Foul". He criticizes Hitchens and Dawkins in ways I would not have expected from a Marxists. You might find it enjoyable. Cheers!

I like Scruton, but the moderator, Hannah, is the true icing on the cake;

Thank you for sharing. Sir Roger is a joy to listen to - he is, perhaps, our leading philosopher of aesthetics, after all. Terry Eagleton is interesting too.

They're both for the decomodification of culture, which is huge.

This is such a wonderfully English debate, punctuated by praise and 'if I may say so'. Gents.

That last girl who accused Roger of only listening to the music created by 'dead white men' is quite spectacularly rude and ignorant. I wish someone had put to her: in what circumstances would she consider it remotely acceptable to turn up to a discussion between two philosophers and sneer at a culture of "dead black men"?

Wish there were more like Eagleton. This would be a much more humane world. What a brilliant, beautiful human being he is!

2 respectable gents for sure. But Scruton is a different class of intellect and reason to Terry. Scruton’s viewpoint accepts human nature and has practical relevance. Eagleton is a jargon machine

I'm a huge Eagleton fan which made this so fun to watch; I've never seen him get bopped on the head with such incisive wit. What a show!

Roger is once again brilliant here. Terry, I'm not so familiar with, but he reminds me of the Mole from Wind in the Willows.

I must commend the lady moderator for her beautiful posture and pleasant demeanour.

How could you not continue watching after an introduction like that, lol.

It's wonderful to have these videos of Sir Roger in his pomp. I wonder what he would have said about what we have gone through in 2020-21. What a loss his untimely death was.

"Let's assume there is some truth in what you're saying" LOL

If you have no in-depth knowledge of the Marxian canon, please refrain from commenting. This is not a polemical argument, as is stated many times in the video. Both men make good points and some dialectical reasoning is agreed upon.

What a truly enjoyable time I spent listen to these two gentlemen this just goes to show you what can be done with two people with differing opinions having a discussion or if you will civilize argument without rancor I totally enjoyed this going to listen to do it again

Two of my favourite intellectuals. Thank you for hosting and posting.

Did I hear it correctly or did Terry really said that one of the reasons he is a marxist is because he doesn't like to work? Also, that lady at the end just HAD to ruin a productive and interesting debate with that comment, didnt she? -.-

They have more in common than not. Terry Eagleton implicitly demonstrates Scruton's point about culture given he is only able to participate at this level of debate because he is culturally literate. I sense that both struggle with living in our time, which is like trying to breathe without oxygen. The "high/low" culture dualism is unfortunate and gets in the way of clear thinking. Both would have benefitted from remembering Wittgenstein's notion of "intermediate cases".

I find Terry Eagleton to be so abstract in his thinking as to be unintelligible while I find Scruton to be much easier to understand. I say this as someone who is trained in the sciences and has a great love of the arts.

Good conversations but TE, as much as I love you, should have given more of a chance to RS to speak. RIP RS. Thanks to IQ2.

What a great debate! Very high level!

The disdain and prejudice shown toward Eagleton in the comments is incredibly undeserved. He is an eloquent writer and a penetrating thinker. He did very well in this discussuon

Which is more important here, the contrasting ideas, or the civility and respect in which those ideas are spoken?

Holding on to what we love, peacefully with compassion to all, protecting freedom, think, be, speak.

34:49 "One reason why I'm a Marxist, quite apart from just enjoying annoying people, is that I don't like to do any work, I don't really like working." A surprisingly honest admission.

This is how Left and Right should always debate

Thanks for this polite and thoughtful exchange of ideas!

In 1949 the family arrived in Tanganyika from Italy to join our father in the town of Arusha. As I could not attend Primary School until I could speak and understand some English, I used to help the local person in the garden, and started learning his language, till an Indian family with children came to live across the road. These, on seeing me looking at them, waved me over to play. Thus I started learning English from them, till one day my father spoke to me on what some British Officials had told him .... "European children must not play with Indian children" and that I should stop doing so. I was quite upset since I did not feel that I was different from them. I will not write of how this attitude was aimed against non-British. However I have to thank the event as it started applying a vaccine against discrimination towards others.

I'm guessing that Scruton gets about 10% of the discussion time and still makes about 90% of the intelligent points. Eagleton is clever, for sure, but anybody who knows anything about Scruton knows that he is a polymath and a genius. And far sharper on his feet.

Is that the actress Rosamund Pike at 59:38? Sitting beside the chap with the microphone, wearing orange.

I am enjoying this a lot. Thanks.

"Let's assume that there is some truth in what you say" ~Roger Scruton

This is so good.. I think it is fair to say and everyone can agree that a culture in which people can disagree reasonably and with deference to one another is the way forward and I don't think that this is open to deconstruction.

Terry * in the middle of a monologue the length of a Bible. Roger: I must say this is all a caricature of history. Terry: You can come in in a moment, Roger. Roger: It will be if this goes on for longer.

What a great chap Roger Scruton truly was ... and TE a very worthy companion on stage.

'‘Given that there’s a long tradition of a certain kind of conservatism and a certain kind of leftism, both hitting, as it were, a mainstream, bourgeois, capitalist - whatever you’d like to call it - establishment, the question that then arises for me is this - and this is for me is a fundamental question in addressing people of your position - given that you have that sort of distaste for those activities [Thatcherist market stuff], given that you equally have a distaste for the coarsening and the cheapening of cultural life, you nevertheless remain firmly committed to the very economic and political system which in my view is largely responsible for that cheapening and diluting and sensationalising and vulgarising of culture.. that’s what I really don’t understand.''

Two very intelligent men having a civilized discussion.

22:00 "There's been a somewhat callow cult of the outsider and exile and migrant". Good a place as any to jump in. Scruton says belonging is important. I would agree it's an important component of the pursuit of happiness, and this because as a tribal species we are hard-wired to want to belong to bigger things, and can't really help it. However, while recognizing this we also have to acknowledge the dangers inherent in pandering to our tribal nature, as seen in the history of twentieth-century totalitarianisms (throw in reference to the Nuremberg defence, the Milgram experiment, etc). Today, we are surrounded by things we can belong to without cost (even the minimal cost of reflecting on what it is we are signing up to). For example, the Net is full of people happily signing up as footsoldiers in the Gender War, on the assumption that being one gender or t'other is a free gift (comes with the gonads, innit) and not something you have to work at (if you want to). So while I get where Eagleton is coming from (assuming he's talking about the posers, those who talk the talk but have never walked the walk) I think it's dangerous to write off the rite of passage, i.e. the assumption and interiorization of exile as a place we all need to know, and keep coming back to, if we are to become more than cogs in a machine (Bonhoeffer's wholesome reserve). The night in the church, alone, listening to the owls and sleeping on your sword. One view of culture (the one I espouse, and suspect Scruton does too) is that it gives us access to the collected history and wisdom of people who slept on their swords, i.e. deliberately or accidentally found themselves cut adrift from belonging, and were forced to experience life as individuals, and were able to find something of value they could pass on to others in a comparable predicament. Personally I think the idea that there is a crisis or a universal dumbing-down is greatly exaggerated: of course there's been some sacrifice of quality for quantity in higher education, but we've never had it so good in terms of adult literacy, widespread scientific knowledge, or easy access to cultural commodities, e.g. last weekend I was able to read both Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's charming riposte online for nothing, and before coming to this video I was listening to a magical concert rendition of Petroushka on YT, again for nothing. Beats growing up in the seventies listening to Deep Purple on Capital Radio, I'll tell ya that. I'm old enough that I can do the cantankerous nostalgic old git thing "back in my day, everyone was composing Latin verse at the age of three" as well as Scruton, but I've learned you have to back such things up with actual data, and I don't have any, or at least any that supports the view that we are about to witness the collapse of civilization. If you have some, feel free to jump in here.

Wonderful combination ! Both outstanding awesome!

*asks a normal question Roger: a HUGE question

Might be my ability to understand thats lacking but I find Terry Eagleton is using the most complex way of explaining his beliefs, because he can't really explain them. He seems to struggle to put them into understandable terms so as to not have to defend them. However im clearly no academic. I believe great minds find a way to put complex theories into terms simple minds can understand and relate to.

Interesting how two intelligent people come across and how they effect your listening to and understanding of them. If these two gentlemen were travel guides to a location I had never visited before, I would sense I would experience and learn more, and know why, from Scruton than I would from Eagleton. It is about getting to the essence of a thing, and every time Scruton speaks, I listen so that I don’t miss the telling word or phrase that both encapsulates and clarifies the point he is making. His death is a very sad loss indeed, considering the butchery of culture that we are currently experiencing in the West and in the UK in particular, and the few voices of wisdom available to counter it.

Eagleton:"We're in danger of agreeing..." Scruton: "Always happens when I talk, people say to me, 'I'm in danger of agreeing with you'." 😂 (@26:30)

Polytechnics were the idea to supply people for work, while universities were more academic. The art colleges were non academic, though became more so with the qualification for the course, however high culture is about learning of the tradition of the past, but expression took a major role in the subject. Culture also moves with time, but when Roger Scruton mentioned supply, then it also implies work knowledge and much depends on education, but not high culture.

Obviously the worship of Scruton is strong in this comment section, however I really feel Eagleton did a great job of nailing the hypocrisy and lack of self-awarness that so many conservatives demonstrate starting at around the 1:11:44. "The trouble with the right is they have a lot of theories that just don't like calling them theories...what you carry in their bones without a need to argue"

35:50 The notion that culture is neglected because our energies are directed to work and profit seems utterly bogus. What is an architect without builders and masons? What is an author without printers, distributors and booksellers? Nothing but effete dreamers. Our ability to create and spread cultural products is a result of work. Profit, wealth have enabled the commission of great works. Who would Louis Le Vau be without Louis XIV?

scruton does well here. once again reminds you of the possibility that left orientated politics espoused by the likes of terry eagleton and his ilk is largely a less intelligent or common sensical, genuinely thoughtful mind set that clings to peoples words- and as is shown here marxism is the most overly milked. his doctrines do the real work for so called progressive ideologies. i.e. the huge but ultimtely necessary task of prescribing a solution for a society that embodies all the ideals they hold (justice, egalitarianism, equality, unity etc). looks more like intelectual laze and hifalutin big word spewing than a deep or complex insight more often than not

An excellent discussion. Eagleton is correct in saying there's a kind of conservative who should ally themselves with a certain kind of Marxist, especially where the university and the arts are concerned

Rosamund Pike in the audience at 59:40. Always strange to see famous people where you don’t expect to see them.

Roger Scruton is very clear explaining his thoughts but unfortunately I don't understand the other gentleman, he is not very clear in his explanations...

There is any transcript to this debate?

Eagleton: The trouble with the Right..." Scruton: "Oh, God..." Eagleton: "You see, he even won't accept the word 'Right'..." Scruton: "In the other sense, I do." 😂 (Minute 1:11:20)

I wish I understood a word of it

Eagleton seems to have an odd view of the conservative position as articulated by Scruton. It doesn't attempt to preserve things in aspic without change of challenge, but to make changes carefully and slowly with much thought always keeping in mind that those of us in the present making the changes know a great deal less than we think we do and should respect the fact that any cultural output that has survived a long time must have been thought worthwhile by a great many very intelligent people. The conservative position in this way in fundamentally one of humility before the accumulated genius of History.

respect to both gentlemen

‘They stopped you burning widows’

Terry Eagleton in conversation with himself.

A lot of Terrie's argument was just a dismissive display of "whataboutism" rather than really engaging in disagreement.

Incredibly enlightening.

Rosamund Pike @ 1:00:00 !

A very good debate. Scruton gives a good account of himself, in the face of Eagleton's superior rhetoric. I found myself in sympathy to both accounts of culture, in particular.

Something which wasn't addressed in Eagleton's side of the conversation, yet is seriously vulnerable to criticism, is his insistence on dialectical language. Every time he uses the phrase "late stage capitalism" I started fidgeting in frustration. Likewise when he lamented the time-consuming amount of work still required of people in this "late stage of human history", or during the question time used the phrase "a stalled dialectic". These kinds of historicist notions really are absurd, and once you dismantle them his suggested solutions seem to fade away. Following in the Leftist "tradition" of criticising effectively (whether rightly or wrongly) but then failing to deliver an alternative. This is the exact same vice seen in the deconstructionist Left. Arranging one's priorities and activities on the basis of an entitlement to something never before seen on this earth is quite an astonishing thing to do when you think about it, but it is made doubly so when one claims that this entitlement is somehow dictated by the laws of the universe (another poor stand-in for God I might add) as inevitable. This really is just a way of fabricating legitimacy from nothing instead of making practical arguments. It's actually the problem with the entire tradition of "utopian" socialism, or any other utopianism for that matter. Striding with unearned confidence towards a radical change has very little success rate when contrasted with making gradual improvements with humility and caution. This is the difference between revolutionaries and reformists too. You can quite clearly see how revolutionaries, armed with their criticisms and zealous optimism, always set about smashing up the institutions around them which conservatives may have preserved for hundreds of years, only to start fighting over the rubble when paradise fails to materialise. It's such an immensely high cost to pay that I find Leftists' casual bandying about of the idea offensive, even when its a Leftist as reasonable as Eagleton. When they go beyond that and start militating in favour of it I start to get the impression that I really am faced with something Mephistophelean.

I adore his talk already.

PhD in pole dancing....try an Irish university. Dumbing down could happen under either system...Capitalism has given us some of our best cultural heritage.

As an extreme leftist I must say that Roger Scruton is one of those relatively rare conservatives who actually has something to say, and some of the time it's even worth listening to! My list as it stands, each in their own idiom, is limited to him, Peter Hitchens, and G. K. Chesterton. A huge portion of conservative outlets and writers are just transparently broadcasting the lowest propaganda, and there is simply no point in engaging with it. These men are the exceptions which prove the rule. Do any of the conservatives in this comments section have any more recommendations for right wing thinkers who actually have something worth hearing to say?

Love both of these guys.

Didn't we do an social experiment of marksism on territory of USSR, Chine and North Korea? I thought all the world saw how it worked and didn't try on own territory.

Does Eagleton have to end his sentences with "yes?"

Terry Eagleton is epic. He brilliantly evaluates concepts to their ends. He does reflect extreme intelligence and confidence of being able to find beauty in as well as critize accumulative wisdom. On the other hand, Scruton finds solace in positioning himself as a person who flourishes in high culture, and it seems that his seemingly intelligent capacity of sticking to a point is just a lack of critical thought.

Absolutely brilliant.

I see what you mean, but we must encourage each other to try and create new economic systems that do work. We shouldn't forget the past mistakes, but we should envision SOME SYSTEM working well for everybody.

Easterners can push and honour their cultures where they belong - in the East. This pathetic kowtowing to colonisers is ridiculous. Can't they see the irony of moving en-masse to another land (where the vast majority of the natives never wanted them) and systematically undermining and denigrating the cultural knowledge and traditions of the host culture? Are they completely oblivious to the irony? Or do they simply view it as a form of historical/ancestral justice/revenge?

Great minds don’t fight, they talk.

Roger Scruton you are deeply missed.

Mr. Scruton certainly seemed to grasp the direction in which that penultimate question was heading early on. The discussion had obviously been framed in the context of the Western canon, but the young woman was determined to make it about oppression and perceived Imperial chauvinism.

41:30 sir roger nails it!!!

Identity politics and cancel culture at universities has proved Roger to have been right on and Terry lost in the bushes.

High-powered brilliant consideration with both men.

Very enjoyable conversation.

He is utterly brilliant in this debate. eagleton is actually very insightful and much of his observations are correct but, scrutons pragmatism, rational rebuttals and insistence of palliative remedies were utterly disarming and something, eagleton simply couldnt provide!

As a conservative, I must admit that without the left my music collection would be significantly smaller. I will be more sympathic of the leftist position when it ceases to require me to reject my history, family, morality, traditions and God.

Marx was a determined champion of human liberty, a child of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, and he abhorred dictatorship and oppression of all kinds. He also recognized that capitalism was a revolutionary force that was changing the world radically and in ways that, in some respects, were beneficial for mankind as a whole. If you read the first part of the Manifesto, you will see that Marx had enormous respect for the way in which capitalism had increased the productive forces.

Great discussion and debate between two great English thinkers. Chair should have steered Terry a bit to keep the contributions even and fair, that aside. Very good.

Oddly vapid posturing from the student Marxist in failing to acknowledge Roger's evidential point regarding Sati in particular along with the British regard for Indian high culture. Being anti-colonial yet willing to inflict tyranny and command economy Socialism on our tiny nation indicative of the relentless dissembling which is the notable feature of far left 'thought'.

Just finished watching the whole thing. I found Scruton to be clear, precise and coherent, Eagleton much less so and often losing himself in verbosity. If it can be said, it can be said clearly and simply. Otherwise the suspicion is that the speaker either has no clear idea of his own thoughts or else is unable to communicate them (Eagleton's case).

Se você quer saber quem está ganhando um discussão basta ver (1) quem NÃO interrompe a fala da outra parte e (2) quem usa menos adjetivos e se concentra nos fatos.

I have read some of Eagleton's books which show his snobbish Ivory Tower, he does not even reognize his own snobbery in his Academic Language.

If you want to live a cheap life, you don't have to work hardly at all. It's because people want to have a high standard of living that they work a lot. You can live in an apartment with one car and have decent stuff for not a lot of work. That is a dramatic improvement over 150 years ago.

In our discordanat times, it is always reaffirming to see two intellectual men disagreeing civilly. Our politicians could learn much from them about good manners. Unlike most intellectuals, however, Scruton's comments rest firmly on a philosophical or moral premise rooted in human experience rather than than an ideology. He is one of the few voices defending the right to make moral judgments in a world that is naively non-judgmental in order to appear tolerant. In other words, he recognizes and defends merit, translated into workable standards that guide conduct in human affairs. The socialist left, by contrast, wishes to deconstruct standards and even the meanings of words themselves to reduce all human achievement to the level of the lowest common denominator in the name of equality. In fact, civilization advances primarily on the work of extraordinary thinkers and artists, who defy any attempt to reduce excellence to democratic sameness. All men are endowed with equal rights by birth, but they are not endowed with equal abilities, and we should not be embarrassed to recognize it. Roger Scruton was one of those extraordinary minds. We will miss him.

Academics who actually can talk & discuss with one another in a way which the general audience can comprehend (most of the time). Still looking for something like that on the continent... Fun fact: a great admirer of Rudyard Kipling was... Bertolt Brecht

I would say Terry Eagleton didn't act with much grace. He is quite dominating, however, this shows the weaknesses of his arguments as he says very much and dominates to make few good points.

So many youtube academics talking about who's intelligent and who isn't.