Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left

by Roger Scruton

Overview

A devastating critique of New Left thinking.

In Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Roger Scruton first surveys and then deconstructs the golden idols of left wing thought from the 1960s to the present day. He dissects the hollow works of Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson, Galbraith and Dworkin, Sartre and Foucault and exposes the lack of coherence in the works of Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou and Žižek.

Scruton ponders why the humanities have become so unambiguously aligned to the left, and reveals how fully such thinking has seized the academy in its grasp. In this provocative, compelling and highly entertaining book he explains why empty rhetoric abounds over careful analysis and blatant nonsense over respectable logic, in a shattering demolition of some of today's most fashionable philosophers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408187357
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/08/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books. A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London and a visiting professor at Oxford University. Scruton died in January 2020.
Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books.

A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; University Professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic for the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 What is Left?
2 Resentment in Britain: Hobsbawm and Thompson
3 Disdain in America: Galbraith and Dworkin
4 Liberation in France: Sartre and Foucault
5 Tedium in Germany: Downhill to Habermas
6 Nonsense in Paris: Althusser, Lacan and Deleuze
7 Culture Wars Worldwide: The New Left from Gramsci to Said
8 The Kraken Wakes: Badiou and Žižek
9 What is Right?

Index of names
Index of subjects

Editorial Reviews

08/03/2015
Eminent British philosopher and polymath Scruton gives a sharp-edged, provocative critique of leading leftist thinkers since the mid-20th century. In this revision of his earlier polemic Thinkers of the New Left (1985), he examines John Kenneth Galbraith on consumerism, Richard Rorty on pragmatism, Antonio Gramsci on hegemony, Edward Said on colonialism, and Slavoj iek on the Other. He also looks at influential French intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan. For the left, according to Scruton, the source of injustice lies not in human nature but in established power and dominant classes. He notes that leftists exalt principles of equality, emancipation, and social justice but claims that they rarely describe actual or corrective models of social order. Through a “relentless campaign of intimidation,” he writes, the left tries to make the right unacceptable, yet gives no coherent definition of what constitutes it. If any critics deviate from its premises, “you are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned.” Scruton finds relief from contemporary anomie in the rule of law and promotion of liberty. This complex and erudite study is neither an easy read nor a reactionary screed. The overly zippy, alliterative new title does not indicate the depth or seriousness of the analysis. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Eminent British philosopher and polymath Scruton gives a sharp-edged, provocative critique of leading leftist thinkers since the mid-twentieth century ... complex and erudite” —Publisher's Weekly US

“Caustic, highly recherché, and simply great fun to read for the questing intellectual soul.” —Kirkus Reviews

“From the standpoint of a serious conservatism, it honestly assesses the political and philosophical contributions of the Left. The book also addresses what is likely our most pressing question: 'Can there be any foundation for resistance to the leftist agenda without religious faith?'” —Catholic World Report

“Since he no longer has a university career to protect, Scruton can now tweak the nose of academic leftism to his heart's content… Scruton is at his best, (and funniest) when trying to make sense of [Alain] Badiou's weird confection historical materialism and Platonic mathematical theory” —Prospect

“The book is a masterpiece ... In crisp, sometimes brilliant prose, Mr. Scruton considers scores of works in three languages, giving the reader an understanding of each thinker's overarching aim and his place within the multifaceted movement known as the New Left. He neither ridicules nor abuses the writers he considers; he patiently deconstructs them, first explaining their work in terms they themselves would recognize and then laying bare their warped assumptions and empty pretensions.” —Wall Street Journal

“I enjoyed this immensely, both for Scruton's dry, British wit as well as for the sheer breadth of intellectuals covered in his survey” —Against the Grain Blog

“Highly recommended” —Powerline US Blog

“Here Scruton thoroughly and fairly debunks the ostentation, obfuscation, and terrible writing and downright deceitfulness of much of postwar Marxist-inspired philosophy. For Scruton the culprits are mainly from France and Germany-beginning with Sartre and carrying through to Foucault, Habermas, Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Gramsci, and Said-and he carries the attack forward to Badiou and Žižek. Even Galbraith and Dworkin take a few hits. Scruton writes from the perspective of an old-school conservative. His sympathies are with the virtues of the countryside and historically rooted associations of every sort, from churches and the US Constitution to volunteer fire departments, brass bands, and the local Grange. His personal point of view could be called sentimental … but his arguments against his foes are substantial and deep. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” —CHOICE

From the Publisher

2015-09-03
Prickly and terrifically entertaining skewering of the left's darling male thinkers—both European and American, from Sartre to Said. The problem with the socialist "template," English academic and prolific author Scruton (How to be a Conservative, 2014, etc.) asserts with barbed panache in this reworked set of essays first published in 1985, is the rejection of the tender, malleable human element. Scrupulously delving into the work of these left-wing writers (all male, which is a big weakness in this "revision"), the author aims to prove how the twin liberal orders of "liberation" and "social justice" are empty slogans and collapsible newspeak. Where writers like Michel Foucault rail against "structures of domination," Scruton sees only "instruments of civil order," such as common law, property, custom, hierarchy, family, even manners. Marxist intellectuals have had to readjust their utopian visions since the collapse of the Soviet Union—and well before that: since the fall of Stalin and Mao—yet continue to see the world in terms of power and struggle. They demonstrate resentment of those who dominate and a determination to repudiate what "we, the inheritors of Western civilization, have received as our historical bequest." Scruton takes on the big leftie ideas with relish: class struggle in British authors Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson; disdain for consumerism in American writers John Kenneth Galbraith and Ronald Dworkin; existential, anti-bourgeois malaise in French authors Sartre and Foucault (and later "nonsense" in Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, and Gilles Deleuze); and the "culture wars" provoked by Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said, among many others. Refreshingly, Scruton does not mince words, exposing the wooden abstractions and frequent absurdities of these untouchables, especially with regard to the manipulation of language. Caustic, highly recherché, and simply great fun to read for the questing intellectual soul.

Kirkus Reviews