The Last Speech: “A Thing Called Civilization” (Sir Roger Scruton, February 26th, 2026, Imaginative Conservative)
What is Civilization?
Let’s leave aside the idea of Western civilization. After all, it depends which way you’re going around the globe whether it’s West or East. Look instead at the idea of civilization. What is it? What is a civilization? It is surely a form of connection between people, not just a way in which people understand their languages, their customs, their forms of behavior, but also the way in which they connect to each other, eye to eye, face to face, in the day-to-day life which they share.
This is something which has ordinary dimensions in the workplace and in the community, in our day to day. But also it has a high culture built upon it, works of art, literature, music, architecture, and so on. These are our ways of changing the world so as to be more at home in it.
I think that is the distinctive feature of Western civilization, that it is a comprehensive civilization constantly giving us new ways of being at home, ways of being in relation to each other, which bring peace and interest as the primary bonds between our neighbors.
It is the universalism that distinguishes us and, effectively, makes the West the only civilization.