Here’s great news for south Louisiana conservatives: this week, the British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton is coming to the area to deliver three lectures. On Wednesday Tuesday evening, he will deliver a free lecture at LSU on conservatism and the environment. Excerpt from a short piece I did for the BR Advocate today:
In his recent book “How To Think Seriously About The Planet,” Scruton steps away from environmentalism’s rigid politics and considers the challenges environmentalism poses more philosophically.
What if the root of our environmental problems is not just big government and big multinational corporations, but bigness itself?, he asks.
Conceiving of the environment and its enemies as vast abstractions makes it harder to think about what ordinary people can and should do to care for the places in which we actually live.
What’s the answer?
It starts with cultivating what Scruton calls oikophilia — a Greek word meaning “love of home.”
A Scrutonian revision of the popular globalist bumper sticker would read: “Think locally, act locally.”
“Nobody seems to have identified a motive more likely to serve the environmentalist cause than shared love for our home,” he writes.
On Wednesday, Scruton (who, by way, is an Anglican), will give two lecture in New Orleans — one in the morning on Beauty, one in the evening on Faith. Here’s the schedule for them all:
ON ECOLOGY: How to Think Seriously About the Planet, Tues, Oct 1, 2013, 5:00pm, LSU Geology Building, Howe Russell Hall, Rm 130, Baton Rouge
ON BEAUTY: Why Beauty Matters, Wed, Oct 2, 10:30am, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 400 Chartres St, New Orleans
ON FAITH: Our Church, Wed, Oct 2, 7:00pm, Loyola University, 114 Miller Hall, New Orleans
