From Wikipedia Commons: View of Salisbury (John Constable, 1820)

Intellectually related, Edmund Burke and Roger Scruton are prominent members of the conservative tradition. Burke (1729–1797), reverently called “the father of modern conservatism”, emphasizes the importance of tradition, inherited institutions, and gradual change. Repulsed by events abroad, where ideological orthodoxy merged with orgiastic bloodshed, he found it imperative to warn against radical revolutions. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), he argues that tearing down long-standing institutions in pursuit of abstract ideals inevitably leads to chaos and tyranny. A conservative of our own generation and the founder of The Salisbury Review, a quarterly magazine, Scruton (1944–2020) builds on Burke’s foundation, presenting conservatism as a philosophy grounded in the “precious things” — home, customs, language, religion, and law — that hold a society together. He sees conservatism as a defense of what we love against the forces that would uproot and destroy it.

In an age increasingly defined by rootlessness, alienation, and cultural upheaval, the ideas of Burke and Scruton provide a deeply resonant vindication of everything time-proven, familiar, and beautiful. Though separated by centuries, both thinkers articulate a distinctly conservative position on change: denying any resistance to change as such, they insist that it must be grounded in continuity, love of home, and reverence for inherited wisdom. From politics to architecture, Burke and Scruton warn of the destructive potential of radicalism and the spiritual costs of ugliness. Instead, they propose a humane and moral order rooted in tradition, beauty, and the slow organic development of civilization.

Burke, writing in the late 18th century, became the philosophical anchor of modern conservatism with his impassioned critique of the French Revolution. In response to Jacobin exercises in proto-totalitarianism, he argues that society is a partnership, not only among the living but also with the dead and the yet unborn. For him, institutions such as monarchy, the church, and common law are not arbitrary constructs, but represent the accumulated wisdom of countless generations. The impatient-destructive willingness of revolutionaries to discard this inheritance in favor of abstract ideals (e.g. “equality”) amounts to a conceited, reckless, and menacing rupture with moral order.

According to Burke, revolutionary radicalism originates from cynical-brutal, uncompromising, and fanciful ideas about power and welfare. Civilization, by comparison, is a balanced edifice built over time through customs and reverence. Its precipitous destruction in the name of “rationality” or “justice” is likely to precede terror and tyranny rather than liberation. Instead of a different — and higher — civilization, revolution paves the way for pure barbarism. True progress, Burke contends, must explicitly be “evolutionary”, not “revolutionary” — preserving the social fabric while carefully reforming its flaws.

Writing two centuries later, Scruton extends Burke’s insights into the cultural and aesthetic realms. Central to Scruton’s philosophy is the concept of “oikophilia” (a term coined or at least popularized by him) — the love of home. Far from being indicative of nostalgia or nationalism/chauvinism, it refers to a profound emotional and moral attachment to one’s culture, traditions, and surroundings. Scruton sees this love as essential to the human condition. Ultimately, our attachment to a special place, language, religion, and heritage prepares us to care for the world and each other.

Oikophilia in the sense stated stands in stark contrast to the deracinated cosmopolitanism and ideological fervor of modern life. While Burke dismisses revolutionaries as fantasists tearing down society in preparation for utopia, Scruton warns of contemporary intellectuals and activists who seek to destroy the moral and cultural foundations of the West — its history, religion, family structures, and aesthetic traditions. If not intent on wholesale destruction before building a “perfect” (totalitarian) society from scratch, they must be blissfully ignorant of the intolerable consequences for civilization of their nihilism. At any rate, they have no credible replacement.

For both Burke and Scruton, loyalty to what is near and familiar is not exclusionary. On the contrary, it is the real basis for moral responsibility. The two thinkers believe that abstract, universal schemes (like those of the French Revolution or modern technocracy) erode the vital sense of belonging.

For Scruton, the fate of architecture becomes a potent symbol of cultural decay. He passionately champions “vernacular architecture” — the traditional, regionally rooted styles and forms that reflect local materials, climate, and culture — because it embodies the shared wisdom, historic values, and identities of communities. In his view, structures born of necessity and aesthetic instinct rather than ideology express a people’s identity and way of life. Evidence of attachment, they foster continuity, rootedness, social cohesion, and individual well-being (autonomy). 

In contrast, Scruton condemns much of modernist architecture as inhospitable, alienating, and aggressively “ugly”. Inspired by abstract principles rather than lived experience, modernist structures tend to ignore human scale, history, and meaning. Concrete towers, glass facades, and brutalist monoliths, in Scruton’s eyes, reflect a deeper cultural malaise — the substitution of ideology for love, of function for form, of novelty for beauty. Aesthetic expressions of disruptive (pseudo-)rationalism, they manifest the same hubris that Burke fears in politics and warns of: the belief that we should remake society — or space — entirely from scratch.

For Scruton, beauty is not a luxury but a moral and cultural necessity, asserting the historic inheritance, integrity, and continuity of communities. Burke, too, values the “unbought grace of life”, meaning the organically developed institutions and customs that bring beauty and meaning to society. Both men view the revolutionary overthrow of moral and aesthetic institutions as a harbinger of spiritual and social disaster.

Burke and Scruton believe that Western civilization — its legal systems, philosophical traditions, religious institutions, and artistic achievements — represent, not perfection but an extraordinary achievement built painstakingly over centuries. Although susceptible to improvement, it should never be treated as disposable. To reject its foundations in devotion to revolutionary purity or cultural relativism is tantamount to forsaking the Judeo-Christian ethics that governs our concepts of liberty and responsible citizenship, thereby inviting chaos.

Scruton worries about the decline in civilizational confidence. With reference to the erosion of traditional values taking place in the face of relativism, consumerism, and ideological activism, he considers it a particularly fateful challenge of our time. Swayed by Marxist conspiracy theories, postmodernism, and other fads, Western intellectuals view their own traditions with less gratitude than suspicion or even contempt. In education, art, and architecture, this loss of reverence converts into a celebration of transgression, irony, and iconoclasm — what Scruton calls the “culture of repudiation”. He argues that our civilization is under threat from those who forget or reject the past — whether through radical politics, cultural amnesia, or architectural brutalism.

Staunch defenders of Western civilization, Burke and Scruton regard it as a complex organism rather than an infallible system, produced by centuries of moral, legal, and aesthetic adaptation. At the heart of their thought is a deep suspicion of revolutionary ideology. Whether political or cultural, radical movements promise liberation, but deliver destruction and anarchy. They tear down institutions, symbols, and ways of life without appreciating their purpose or value. Burke learned this from the French Revolution which degenerated into violence; Scruton observes equivalent phenomena during the cultural revolutions of the 20th century, from Marxist-regime carnages to the “woke” psychosis of the West.

Both thinkers acknowledge that beauty, tradition, and continuity go well beyond aesthetic or sentimental preferences — they are conditions of human well-being. When revolution replaces them with pretended rationalism, ideological zealotry, or dehumanized abstraction, it impoverishes humanity itself.

Burke equates revolution with destruction of social order, the removal of traditional constraints leading to tyranny, not liberation. Scruton echoes this fear in his critiques of 1968-style radicalism, Marxism, and modern critical theory. Thus, he argues that revolutionaries typically replace the time-proven with nothing meaningful or beautiful — only power struggles, ideological purges, and ugliness.

Burke and Scruton remind us that civilization is not something that we build overnight. It is a fragile inheritance, sustained by love, customs, and beauty. In a de-Christianized world dominated by revolutionary or Islamic ideology, welfare policies, and uncultivated hedonism, their conservatism calls us back to the things that truly matter: home, tradition, reverence, and care. In defending these things, they do not resist change, but seek to preserve the conditions under which change can be meaningful, humane, and beautiful.