Roger Scruton - Sexual Morality for Heathens

[@SaintNektarios]

Scruton starts @4:50.

[@plekkchand]

Conservative Puritan thank you.

[@AntonSlavik]

_"Sexual advances made by the unattractive"_ I've been looking for that wording for years. What a mountain of a man. May he live forever.

[@silasabrahamsen7926]

;(

[@krileayn]

What a wonderful discovery Roger Scruton is.

[@woke2woke153]

Superb, intelligent, sensitive, insightful. Deal with the man. Don't just insult him with current faddish prejudices.

[@kasperm.r.guldberg7354]

It's good to have some Scrutony into this subject.

[@ManInTheBigHat]

I wish I'd heard Scruton's view (and had the brains to listen to it) before growing up wild in the 1970's. A collected a lot of good stories, but not really that good a middle age as a result.

[@peterdarley5161]

Roger is great! It's a pity that most of the people who 'comment' here are not quite so wise but, there's time and nothing stays the same but God.

[@user-rz6ss9hh3s]

remarkable, thank you most sincerely for your wonderful words, Roger Scruton.

[@winmine0327]

"Conduct your life so that jealousy is something that you'll never have to suffer". Goodness, how?

[@paulwillisorg]

By reading the New Testament. If that's off-putting familiarize yourself with Jung. Then read the New Testament

[@grosbeak6130]

+paulwillisorg at the real root of all jealousy is some kind of sensual craving. Read the Dhammapada. To relent and see through all sensual craving is to be free of jealousy or coveting. The Buddha's emphasis on this was truly insightful.

[@paulwillisorg]

+grosbeak Sensual craving? How about just craving? Why add the word sensual?

[@grosbeak6130]

+paulwillisorg because without the sensual component there can be no craving. The sensual produces craving. without the senses there can be no craving.

[@woke2woke153]

Wizmut. By subscribing to moral values and practices that don't bring such unnecessary suffering upon ourselves.

[@rottenaudiobooks2310]

1:20:30 "...the shameless person is beyond the moral pale..." Ie the Marquis de Sade!

[@GeraBizuneh]

Its is interesting how he arrived at similar conclusions with christian morality by mere human reasoning ! Bottom line is that the world needs moral a compass which ever way we arrived at it - at the heart of it is our longing for truth and the author of the truth is trusted to reveal or lead us in our human reasoning. Roger scruton - what a beautiful soul !

[@coreycox4193]

Roger Scruton was an Anglican.

[@plekkchand]

The Q & A is replete with self-advertising bores, safe to ignore it.

[@woke2woke153]

I can't speak too highly of the humaneness of Roger Scruton's argument here: His principal point, which his detractors below seem determined to dismiss for what seems to be pretty much the same reason, is that in it's uncorrupted, non-truncated form, human sexual desire is a desire for another person (of the complementary sex), not just a desire for sexual pleasure in which objects capable of satisfying it are essentially interchangeable. The nub of his argument is the unique quality of human self-awareness, which uniqueness some of the criticisms below take issue with in defence of the proper status that animals should be accorded but which they feel Scruton's argument does not accord them. These criticisms of Scruton's argument fail, because, in asserting a fundamental similarity between human self-awareness and that of animals, they either underappreciate and dehumanise human being, or inflate the capacities of animals through a kind of sentimental anthropomorphism. In fact, Scruton's appreciation of human uniqueness satisfies a very easy test: Do animals naturally use conceptual language to the extent that humans do? The answer is that they do not, which is why they don't enjoy the key breakthrough afforded by our use of conceptual language: comprehensive human self-awareness. Animals certainly have self-awareness, and that must involve rudimentary concepts of what things are, but that conceptuality does not extend to superseding instinctual adaptation to relatively narrow ecological niches. The human capacity for conceptualisation, with the aid of spoken language, does supersede instinctual adaptation, so that we can postnatally and culturally adapt to almost any environment we choose to. That is the quantum leap that qualitatively distinguishes humans from animals, and Roger Scruton is absolutely right to insist that we recognise it, and recognise what it signifies in our sexual natures.

[@lovingsingleton]

I feel I should point out thinks some forms of homosexuality are not perversion and the crux of his argument is on interpersonal relationships and not heterosexual complementarity. He specifically sees such arguments as tenuous.

[@Lomirffm]

The volume of the audio-file, or the "audio-part" of the video, is too low. Look if you can edit the video and make it 50-100% louder!

[@irawise8315]

There have been cases of an animal like a lionness or a female jaguar showing signs of "guilt"/ "remorse" at having killed a pregnant antelope. (precisely those emotions, which Scruton claims animals are incapable of experiencing). Since, upon gnashing open its stomach and discovering the foetus, she refuses to eat the carcass, even though it is clear the lionness has not satiated her appetite. Why would she do this, if she was only driven by her appetite alone? Yes, animals do not always behave as we humans would, but what gives us the right to presume we know what's going on in their minds and claim that they are not "self-conscious" simply because they don't contrive a set of "rules and restrictions" for themselves in the same way that humans do...?

[@R4V3NFTW]

Religiously speaking I believe the difference between man and animal is the breath of God. Man has it and animals do not.

[@cmjcj2ktn]

We were made in His image, nothing else was.

[@R4V3NFTW]

Sorry, my dude, but the Bible says that man is the only creation that received the breath of God. All else is mud. I believe what the bible says literally. Though you are welcome to believe that, I'm just saying its not according to the Bible is all. Though it does say were were formed of mud as well, but afterwards, we were breathed into. And image may not mean imagination, but likeness in appearance, though that may be debatable. I wouldn't rule either out.

[@R4V3NFTW]

I may be funny, but at least I'm not full of myself :3

[@R4V3NFTW]

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul Nowhere does it say that God breathed life into creatures, just man is made in his image.

[@woke2woke153]

Hadmen Yadongplease. That's one way of putting it.

[@ryanfrizzell736]

Interesting. Now I know more about sexual morality.

[@7hi5on35]

The substructure of the human sexual instinct predates the emergence of our self awareness by millions of years...Trying to comprehend an instinct which predates the various mechanisms we use to comprehend things is akin to trying to understand colour through language alone. While I am fond of Scruton, his insights, on this matter at least, are nothing but elegant rationalisations.

[@woke2woke153]

7hi5 on3. The substructure of the human sexual instinct is not specifically what Scruton was trying to comprehend in this lecture, and so I think your criticism is wide of the mark right from the beginning. In fact, what you are doing is trying to reduce the reality of what he was trying to comprehend - namely, the human person in his or her sexual dimension - to it's instinctual substructure, which actually obviates the need to use the prefix 'sub'. You're argument is premised on sexual instinct not being a substructure, but an unmediated determinant of sexual behaviour. That's what Scruton referred to as an 'already demoralised' starting point, since morality is precisely the principal moderator of the human sexual instinct, and, by his argument, is intrinsic to human personhood. That's his entire point. He's saying that our reduction of human sexuality to a mere 'desire for sex', is not just demoralising, but depersonalising. I agree with him.

[@honeyinglune8957]

yes, it was telling when he conveniently neglected to mention schopenhauer when he was talking about how philosophers dont talk about sexual desire

[@thistles]

Animals do have a sense of justice. It's been shown in repeated experiments that monkeys and dogs etc. won't continue to work for food if they've been cheated. Sometimes their peers will even refuse to work if another one has been given a lesser reward for the same work. They have a concept of fair pay! This is painful to listen to.

[@woke2woke153]

Whisperingmists. It pains me to hear you grossly exaggerate animal capacities for feeling cheated and so on, to the point where you equate them with the human conception of justice. The key word here is 'conception'. No research, old or recent, has suggested that any animal's capacity to conceptualise comes even remotely close to the human one, which is why the human sense of justice, as such, is vastly more developed than that of any animal. Why do you exaggerate the significance of the facts here? Some other prejudice must be at play in your thinking? You're not coming clean.

[@thistles]

It's been two months since I listened to this in full, but I believe Mr Scruton said that animals don't have a concept of in/justice. This is not so. Their sense of justice may not be as developed nor as intricate as our own, which I never claimed, but it does exist. For example, Frans de Waal conducted some fascinating experiments with Capuchin monkeys which indicated that they have a concept of fairness and equal pay, and I think something similar has been shown in dogs. Nowhere did I say it is exactly equal in every way to human notions of justice. Why are you ignoring facts and torturing my language to create a straw man? What's your prejudice?

[@woke2woke153]

Whisperingmists. I understand what you're saying, but, again, I feel you're labouring it to the point of nitpicking. Scruton is not saying that there is no overlap between human consciousness and animal consciousness. He's saying that there is a qualitative difference between them, which he, just as well as you or I, knows very well is due to the huge development undergone by the human compared to the animal. It's like when you point at something for your dog to see, and it just keeps looking at your finger. It's obvious what Scruton is saying, but it's in the nature of language that if your primary concern is absolute precision, then what you want to say becomes virtually unintelligible to a general audience like the one he was speaking to. An animal may well be able to feel cheated by another individual or group that it belongs to, but it certainly will not have a generalised sense of justice in the human sense, because that sense requires general concepts of individuality, and generalised individual responsibility for the general consequences of one's actions. We all act on the understanding that this type of consciousness is facilitated by our use of language, which animals do not have. When Scruton talks about the sense of justice, he's using words, and understandably anticipates that his listeners will know that he's referring to what the word 'justice' generally refers to, namely, the fully developed, lingually mediated, sense of justice that we humans generally have, and which animals do not. His point about the antelopes was spot on. An individual mother who's lost her kid to a predator, almost certainly will grieve her loss, but she will not feel her loss to be a deplorable infringement of her rights as an antelope for which the predator should be punished. How can we know this? Because those kinds of feelings require abstract generalised language which only humans have. Why have you found this obvious meaning of what Scruton was saying, so elusive, like the dog looking at the finger instead of the thing being pointed at? Of course there's overlap between animal and human capacities, but this is not grounds for taking the view that the obvious huge qualitative difference between animal group dynamics and the human sense of justice is not a self-evident fact. Your protest that Scruton painfully fabricated a false difference between animals and humans, based on the finding that some animals possibly have a rudimentary sense of unreciprocated cooperation, is premised on the presumption of a continuum between the animal's lesser development and the human's greater development. This ignores the qualitative transformation from animal to human that takes place that makes human relationships qualitatively human and not animal. Humans are not just intelligent animals. They're uniquely human. If we deny this, we deny not only our own, but other people's humanity, which is a virtual act of aggression against them - what, in the context of Scruton's argument, he described as 'objectification' much as feminists have done in the past.

[@woke2woke153]

Whisperingmists. Just as an aside, the nearest either of us got to torture, was your complaint that Roger Scruton's comments had inflicted pain upon you, which is why I responded as I did.

[@thistles]

Would you feel the loss of your child to a predator to be unjust or merely unlucky? Consider how your intuitions might change if you substituted "predator" with "murderer" or "tornado." This is a rabbit-trail, but in order for something to be unjust it must be committed by an agent capable of knowing better or doing otherwise. The antelope example was a poor one. Humans are just intelligent animals. The thing that makes us so unique is our placement on the continuum. You're beginning from the presumption that humans aren't mere mammals. We are. We are more advanced than our fellow earthlings on many axes, but the origins of our behaviors and capacities are evident in non-human animals. Why is it aggressive to deny that humans are something other than intelligent animals? You made a bunch of enormous leaps in the last few sentences. Do you distinguish between materialism and objectification?

[@winmine0327]

4:49

[@FadiAkil]

30:05 "nothing is more offensive, especially to a woman, than to be seen as a mere sex object" This's plainly wrong lol

[@blainem2258]

Dogs evolved methods to communicate with human beings . Mammals are more intelligent than other species . We are simply a more intelligent animal. We should afford mammals basic rights by being kind & not cruel to them.

[@woke2woke153]

Bkaine M. You're wrong about this. There comes a point where quantity - the 'more' that you speak of - permits a qualitative transformation. Human consciousness is qualitatively different to animal consciousness, even though the precursors of human consciousness can be seen in pre-human animals. There is a specific difference between human being and animal being, a difference which human beings themselves recognise but which animals do not. This is seen very clearly in your call to give animals basic rights. No animal would ever call for this or even desire it, because while animals can love other beings, they do not express or demonstrate any moral values. Scruton illustrates this very well in his observation that bulls may feel rage, but not indignant anger in the way humans so often do. Your argument denies human uniqueness, but your moral protectiveness of animals demonstrates that very uniqueness. In other words, you're contradicting yourself.

[@poetryinmotion8112]

This subject is a huge mine field and perhaps we need a slightly more feminine perspective on it. But respect for other people is critical.

[@rh001YT]

I generally agree with Mr. Scruton but wish to add a note to his claim that animals don't have anger because they don't have a sense of being wronged. It seems to me that dogs living among humans do sometimes, often, exhibit a sense of being wronged when they are unfortunate enough to have an *sshole as a master.

[@rottenaudiobooks2310]

Incels should listen to this