Abstract

Few philosophers have published at the impressively prolific rate that Roger Scruton has. Of the forty-two books by Scruton listed in a special bibliography at the end of Scruton’s Aesthetics, no fewer than nine of them have been devoted to topics in aesthetics. The present volume, edited by Andy Hamilton and Nick Zangwill, arises out of a 2008 conference devoted to Scruton’s seminal work in this field. While sympathetic in tone, the majority of the essays critically engage with Scruton’s views on a number of topics in aesthetics, with particular attention devoted to issues of music and of architecture. Although Scruton’s frequently discussed and sometimes provocative views will be familiar to most readers, the contributions to this volume manage well in reconstructing enough of the background to be intelligible to the reader not already well-versed in Scruton’s wide-ranging body of work