Where Are Britain’s Conservative Philosophers? - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Where Are Britain’s Conservative Philosophers?

Obituaries do not just mark the end of a life but reflect the state of the world that public figures leave. They are of interest, then, not just for what they explicitly say about the past but for what they implicitly say about the present.

With the death of Sir Roger Scruton on Sunday the Prime Minister paid tribute to “the greatest modern conservative thinker.” This view was shared by many commentators, with Michael Brendan Dougherty of National Review calling him “the most important conservative thinker of his generation.”

This is a fine tribute to Scruton, and well-deserved. But there is a mournfulness to the sentiment that transcends even the sadness of the great man’s passing, reflected in Douglas Murray’s justifiable observation that Scruton seemed “bigger than his age”. The question lurking behind these sentiments is: who is the next greatest British conservative thinker?

Read the rest over at Unherd.

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