Roger Scruton

I thought I could escape the Beast … but he already devoured my heart. When the Beast took me and dragged me back to his cell, I thought my life was over. In the darkness, he watched me. Yearned for me. Tasted me. He loved my scars, called me a beauty … Made me irrevocably his. Until his owner finally let him out … And his final task was to destroy my father. The only thing that stood between them was me. Faced with an impossible choice, I run. But even the beauty can’t escape the claws of the Beast.

In Plato's dialogues, an idealized Socrates expounds the ideas for which Plato will, until the end of history, be famous. The world of Forms; the ideal Republic with its totalitarian masterplan; the tribute to Eros, god of love (or at least of homosexual love); the promise of the soul's salvation - all this has come down to us in the distinctive tone of voice of Plato's teacher. But how much of it did Socrates believe? Were Plato's contemporaries really taken in? Who was Plato anyway? And what lay behind his philosophy, from which the real world of men and women so rigorously excluded? Until the discovery of the Xanthippic Dialogues, we had no answer to those questions. Now at last the real Plato is revealed to us, by the women whom he banished from his arguments. In this brilliant and witty exposé, the mask of abstraction is lifted, to reveal the truth that lies beneath. And the truth is Xanthippe: wife and Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, and Founding Mother of the Western world. This is a book that no feminist can afford to ignore. -- from back cover.

"Received by the British press with equal acclaim and indignation, this book sets out to define and defend high culture against the world of pop, corn, and popcorn. It shows just why culture matters in an age without faith, and gives an extended argument, drawing on philosophy, criticism, and anthropology, against the "post-modernist" world-view. Scruton offers a penetrating attack on deconstruction, on Foucault, on Nietzschean self-indulgence, and on the "culture of repudiation" which has infected the modern academy. But his book is not only negative. It is a celebration of the true heroes of modern culture and a call to the higher life." "The American edition of this famous and notorious work has been revised to take account of the controversy which it has inspired, and contains new material specially directed to Americans."--BOOK JACKET.

"His wife of twenty-three years has been murdered. His faith in God is crumbling before his very eyes. Now, with his estranged son, he sets out to find the supernatural stones spoken of in the Bible. Stones that will enable the two of them to hear the audible voice of God. Stones that may rekindle their dying faith and love."--Back cover.

"The genius of the West is that it has discovered how to give concrete expression to liberty through the institutions of religion, property, family, and neighborhood. In great part, the assault on the Western heritage is carried out by zealots whose goal is to undermine those pillars that express and support our liberty. Roger Scruton, along with the distinguished essayists whom he has recruited for this volume, has now deprived every intelligent person of any excuse for not knowing what is at stake in the debates over Western Civilization and what will be lost if those critics are allowed to have their way.--James Piereson Author of Camelot and the Cultural Revolution" "An essential volume of essays commissioned by The American Spectator and edited by the philosopher Roger Scruton, Liberty and Civilization examines the intellectual and spiritual traditions of our belief in individual liberty, from the Judaco-Christian origins through Enlightenment philosophy. As we are confronted by militant atheism at home and jihadist Islam abroad, Liberty and Civilization is an invaluable tool for understanding why it is critical that we defend the cultural, religious, and intellectual institutions that have made our civilization great. The essayists include Brian C. Anderson, Anne Applebaum, Robert Bork, Remi Brague, Robert P. George, Seamus Hasson, Paul Johnson, Jeremy Rabkin, Roger Scruton, and Christina Sommers."--BOOK JACKET.

vii, 400 pages : 24 cm