Blog - Director's Desk
Director's Desk
There are a number of responses that can be offered against oikomachia. The most obvious one is the very opposite: oikophilia, love of home. And as Scruton’s biographer Mark Dooley has suggested, the huge diversity of subjects on which Scruton has written in his hundreds of scholarly articles, scores of magazine and newspaper columns, two operas, two novels, a book of poetry, and at least 50 other books are unified by one theme. Whether he’s writing on philosophy, religion, architecture, aesthetics, opera, the environment, globalization, animals, fox hunting, sex, dance, poetry, culture, West civilization, England, politics, the human body, wine, literature, psychology, history, Islam, Lebanon, terrorism, screens, death, music, or beauty, you’ll find some element of oikophilia in all of them.
According to Sir Roger Scruton, "conservatism tells us that we have collectively inherited good things that we must strive to keep. In the situation in which we, the inheritors of both of Western civilization and of the English-speaking part of it, find ourselves, we are well aware what those good things are. The opportunity to live our lives as we will; the security of impartial law, through which our grievances are answered and our hurts restored; the protection of our environment as a shared asset, which cannot be seized or destroyed at the whim of powerful interests; the open and enquiring culture that has shaped our schools and universities; the democratic procedures that enable us to elect our representatives and to pass our own laws—these and many other things are familiar to us and taken for granted. All are under threat. And conservatism is the rational response to that threat."
by Erin Doom Feast of St Raphael of Brooklyn Anno Domini 2021, November 6
The second in a series of reflections on Director Doom's 2019 visit to England, this one focuses on Sir Roger Scruton as a philosopher and his view of philosophy as a vigilant presence in culture.
The first in a series of reflections on Director Doom's 2019 visit to England, this one focuses on his time in Birmingham and his introduction to Sir Roger Scruton in a small collection of essays titled Confessions of a Heretic.
A Word from the Fathers is back in an expanded form with an introduction, annotations, study questions, and ancient prayers.
A toast to John Senior, the Patron Hero of Eighth Day Institute, who created the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program and serves as an inspiration and model for the work of Eighth Day Institute.