That is to say he is an expert in the field of aesthetics. He does not, to my knowledge, perform manicures professionally. He is the author of, among many other things, two online articles which I enjoyed reading. They concern beauty, primarily and are both published by the American Enterprise Institute where Scruton is a resident scholar. Scruton wrote a book on this topic, inexplicably called "Beauty" (Oxford, 2009), which I have not read.
The first article, "The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty," addresses a matter very close to home for me, (in fact, it is exemplified by my home), which is the ugliness of many North American cities. Scruton seems to advocate treating aesthetic judgement "as the expression of a community." He also defies the infuriatingly pervasive notion that beauty is entirely subjective.
The second, "Beauty and Desecration," charts the decline of beauty that has accompanied the rise of modernism. Scruton argues that originality has replaced beauty as the goal of art — that beauty is thought almost kitsch.
I am a firm believer in the idiocy of modern art criticism and I find Scruton's perspective immensely refreshing. However, I am confident that he would be dismissed by most casual consumers of art because of his political conservatism. Furthermore, there is always the danger in criticizing any 20th-century art of just not "getting it."
Scruton is perpetually the object of some controversy and I know very little of his work, but I cannot recommend these articles enough.
Nicholas Wroe of The Guardian has written a very comprehensive profile of Scruton. Please see it for more information on the man.
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