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By reason of Roger Scruton’s recent death, we are currently seeing in Poland a growing interest in his work and in him as a person. In your opinion, is this only a temporary resurgence or a type of posthumous victory of Scruton’s thinking and we Poles will now start to examine his work more closely?

I would put it this way: Scruton’s influence is two-fold in the standards he proposed and in what he taught us. Firstly, because of what he wrote about the new left and the dangers of this ideology. So that is Scruton the thinker, a man whose work is being studied, a man whose arguments are being assimilated, Scruton the intellectual. The second aspect which makes Scruton important to Poles is the warning he gave. A symbol of all that has happened in the West and from which Poland must defend itself. Scruton, the man who in 1985 published his book “Thinkers of the New Left”, as that’s what it was called, met with something that today we refer to as a wave of hatred. The book received numerous negative reviews. Of course, negative feedback in itself is nothing extraordinary, but these reviews completely discredited him and portrayed him as a man who knows nothing, who understands nothing, and is no thinker. This wave of criticism was followed by an attempt to remove him from public life. Authors wrote to their publishing houses that they no longer wished to publish their books through them, with bestselling writers withdrawing their work. The process of hounding Scruton began, which eventually led to his removal from the academic environment. That is why I want to portray Scruton as a thinker who simultaneously warns us of danger, which is so prevalent in the West and which Poland is currently beginning to experience.

Let us return to these events, these processes which the West underwent 30 years ago. Was Scruton the “last of the Mohicans” of traditional European thinking, or are there more of such “Scrutons”, maybe slightly smaller and less known?

The West is not a uniform concept. We are talking more about the situation in Great Britain. I would like to mention two things that struck me: First of all, in 2019 Scruton was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland from the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda. The British Ambassador to Poland was invited to the ceremony; however, he did not attend because he was busy organising the Equality Parade at that time.

- You could say - Signum temporis

Exactly, this example is illustrative of the official attitude of the British state towards Scruton. When a citizen of a particular state receives such an important award, it is natural that a representative of that state takes part in the award ceremony instead of getting busy with something else.

The second matter is quite recent. Scruton died on 13 January this year, and two weeks before his death I published an interview with another British Conservative, Peter Hitchens, in “Do Rzeczy” weekly. This interview was, on the one hand, an exceptionally in-depth and poignant description of reality, but on the other, it was very sad. He spoke of Britain’s downfall and described it as a place where high culture was destroyed. The overwhelming rule of the left means that people with conservative views are practically removed from public discussion. This means that they can meet in private, they can exchange their thoughts with each other, but when it comes to intellectual life, to academic life, the media, they are simply excluded from it. This is the second thing that needs to be said when referring to Scruton as one of the “last of the Mohicans”; there are still a few of them left, but this is not enough, at least at the moment, to reverse the course of events.

The “Mohicans” are staying within the boundaries of their intellectual reservation?

In my opinion, they have been pushed into it because it is not like they have locked themselves in by their own volition or have nothing important to say. On the contrary, when you read the most recent analyses of Hitchens or Scruton, you can notice a lot of freshness and perspicacity there. But here’s how things stand – it may be hard to believe, but let us imagine that many elements of living a life in communist Poland are transferred to the democratic system, but they are no longer considered oppressive but democratic. The motive, however, remains the same. Dissenters and anyone who thinks differently are banned. Scruton pointed this out; it forms a part of his intellectual heritage – emphasizing the significance of newspeak. In his books, he pays a lot of attention to newspeak and discusses its essence where humans create their world through language. For him, language is no longer a reflection of reality.

A letristic expression?

Yes.

Is it possible for Scruton, hounded in his own country, to find spiritual descendants in Central Europe?

The very fact of him receiving awards in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary already proves that point. He also said that he had found a sphere of intellectual freedom in Poland. We should be very happy about it, but it’s also very sad, because if Poland is the last bastion where a person can speak freely, this shows Poland in a good light, but the situation is entirely different in his place of origin. I think the same about other countries in our region, namely Hungary. Why do we have this area of freedom here? Our region comprises countries which have experienced state communism, so they are particularly perceptive to ideology and appreciative of the freedom of speech. In this sense, Scruton can be a patron and a reference point for the citizens of these states. It pays to take arguments from him in the ongoing political discussion and to draw conclusions from his work. So that these negative phenomena, which for the most part took over Western states, do not prevail here. If this takes place, Scruton’s thinking may need to find another home.

Thank you for the interview.

Interviewer: Marcin Bąk