Scruton and family
"Society exists through authority and the recognition of this authority
requires the allegiance to a bond that is not contractual but transcendent,
in the manner of the family tie. Such allegiance requires tradition and
custom through which to find enactment. But tradition is no static thing.
It is the active achievement of continuity; it can be restored, rescued and
amended as grace and opportunity allow."
(Scruton, R. 1980/1984 p.45)
Transcend: go beyond, or climb above. By a transcendent bond Scruton
appears to mean that a bond goes beyond our consent or choice. The bond is
prior to, and superior to, any possibility of contract.
"The view of society as requiring forms of allegiance, and a recognition of
authority, both of which transcend the operation of any contractual bonds,
is a view not of this or that community, but of the essence of civil life.
It is this transcendent bond that constitutes society, and which is
misrepresented by the liberal theories of contract and consent. Moreover,
one particular tradition, which both embodies a transcendent bond, and also
reinforces social allegiance, has survived all the upheavals of recent
history. This is the tradition of family life. Even a `revolutionary state'
will find itself dependent upon it, and placed under the necessity to
create (usually through the old expedient of belligerent foreign policy)
the corresponding bond of social unity".
(Scruton, R. 1980/1984 p.44)
"Associations can be distinguished into the contractual and the non-
contractual. [Marriage is a non-contractual association] Its obligations
arise in another way - one might say, from its autonomous nature, and not
from the agreement of the parties. This difference between contractual and
non-contractual associations is also vital to political theory, since a
quite different structure of human relations pertains to the two kinds of
union. Much will depend, therefore, upon whether one takes the first or the
second as the model for the organisation either of civil society or the
state."
(Scruton, R. 1982 Entry under "contract")
"We are apt to think of children as having a responsibility towards their
parents, a responsibility that in no way reflects any merely contractual
right, but which is simply due to the parents as a recognition of
the filial tie. This sense of obligation is not founded in justice - which
is
the sphere of free actions between beings who create their moral
ties - but rather in respect, honour, or (as the Romans called it) piety.
To
neglect my parents in old age is not an act of injustice but an act of
impiety. impiety is the refusal to recognize as legitimate a demand that
does not arise from consent or choice. And we see that the behaviour of
children towards their parents cannot be understood unless we admit this
ability to recognize a bond that is `transcendent', that exists, as it were
`objectively', outside the sphere of individual choice. It is this ability
that is transferred by the citizen from hearth and home to place, people
and country. The bond of society - as the conservative sees it - is just
such a
`transcendent' bond, and it is inevitable that the citizen will be disposed
to recognize its legitimacy, will be disposed, in other words, to bestow
authority upon the existing order. He will be deterred from doing so by
acts of unjust or arbitrary power, or by general `unfriendliness' in the
public order, of the kind experienced by the deprived and unfostered
child."
(Scruton, R. 1980/1984 pp 32-33)
In his A Dictionary of Political Thought, Scruton has the following
entry under Piety, which, he says, derives from the Latin root
pietas. He says that there is:
"a religious tone...detached from any religious doctrine, in Wordsworth's
evocation of `natural piety'. Conservatives who are attached to that idea
are often accused of `pious cant' - i.e. fragrant venerating words which
fail
to give grounds for any true obligation. They are also accused - because a
defence of piety towards existing institutions may involve a neglect of
social justice - of a lack of `pity', to use a later Christian derivation
from the same latin root."
(Scruton, R. 1982 Entry under "piety")