Portrait of a thinker who modelled kindness: Roger Scruton

The last time I saw the philosopher and writer Sir Roger Scruton in person, we talked about death.

It was October 2017, the night before Sir Roger would deliver his keynote at painter Kathleen Carr’s Catholic Art Guild event at the Drake Hotel in Chicago.

Scruton died Jan. 12 after discovering last July that he had cancer. On that October night of our last meeting, mortality was very much on my mind. I was between visits to the doctor, in a state of unknowing about test results, wondering if I would very soon receive grim news.

A group of us had set out from the hotel, planning to dine at a nearby steakhouse, but no seating was available. 

With us was Father Joshua Caswell, a priest from Chicago’s St. John Cantius Church, who knew an Italian restaurant a few blocks over  where he thought he could finagle us a table.

I had a good chat with Roger on that extended walk to dinner, and he knew my thoughts about my health were hanging over me like a dark cloud.

I first got to know him when I discovered his book Xanthippic Dialogues. For years we only knew each other by the letters we wrote. That old-fashioned correspondence began by post, not by email.

Still reeling from his untimely death, I have yet to bring myself to dig up our letters and reread them. Just looking over our emails from 2019, my heart aches as I see us making plans for our next colloquy in person.

I remember writing a letter to him many years ago, telling him my three favourite books of his were Xanthippic Dialogues, On Hunting, and Modern Culture. He confessed being particularly fond of them too.

We kept in touch over the years, as we discovered we were both deeply fascinated with the thought of French Catholic thinker René Girard, as well as the poetry of Hesiod.

I finally got to meet Roger in person in 2013, when my confrere John von Heyking brought him to Vancouver to speak.

As John writes in his lovely tribute to Scruton, his favourite book by our mutual friend is I Drink, Therefore I Am. (I have happy memories from John entrusting me with a small fortune to buy Roger’s favourite wines for his Vancouver visit.) 

Since 2013, I was able to get together again with Roger in person a handful of times. What remains with me vividly is his remarkable kindness and generosity. His warmth, gentleness, thoughtful manner, and capacious sense of humour were truly unforgettable.

I will leave it to others to explain in their obituaries and eulogies what a great thinker and writer he was. Roger is rightly noted for his many books on philosophy and politics.

But because he touched my life with memorable acts of encouragement and magnanimity, it is those actions that I cannot stop thinking about. Rather than focus on more objective achievements, all I can reflect on is how he subjectively modelled for me how to treat others.

As he put it to me that October night, what is so special and beautiful about each one of our lives is that it is a life that is mine. (It made me think of the Beatles song In My Life.) In response to the delicately unrepeatable gift of life given to each one of us, the only appropriate response is gratitude.

I told Roger then that I had just re-watched the 1 1/2-hour- interview he gave to Dutch television, Of Beauty and Consolation. I remarked that in that program he seemed to summarize all his most important thoughts. 

He told me that he had begun writing a book aiming to compile all his key ideas. I don’t know if it will ever be published, but perhaps it will be posthumously.

He also went on to observe that at the time of that television interview he was the same age as me. Similarly, at that time of life, he was grappling with the thoughts of mortality I was having that very night.

He encouraged me by saying these thoughts were necessary to spur me on to do what I needed to do in the time that remained.

I’ll never forget his kindness that night and also on the other occasions where he extended it. I know I am not special in this regard, because I have met many friends of Roger who have testified to how he touched their lives.

I shall also always recall how Roger used the time that remained for him after that Dutch TV program. For example, his sagacious 2010 Gifford Lectures, The Face of God, are a magnificent expression of his religious philosophy.

Even more precious to me are his two recent novels, Notes from Underground and The Disappeared, while it is his work in music, art, architecture, and literature that moves me the most.

I venture to speculate that those works of his which I have named above will endure as a lasting legacy of beauty.