I offer a novel interdisciplinary approach to understanding the communicative task of listening, which is under-theorised compared to its more conspicuous counterpart, speech. By correlating a Rylean view of mental actions with a virtue ethical framework, I show listeners’ internal activity as a morally relevant feature of how they treat people. The listener employs a policy of responsiveness in managing the extent to which they allow a speaker's voice to be centred within their more effortful, engaged attention. A just listener's policy of responsiveness avoids unwarrantedly dismissing speakers’ messages on the basis of peripheral attention alone.

Apart from being a prolific philosopher, Roger Scruton is also an accomplished writer of novels, poems, short stories, libretti and literary memoirs. In this article I will explore how Scruton's literary writings relate to his philosophy. I shall argue that one concept, pivotal to Scruton's philosophy, is also a main Leitmotiv of his literary work: home. The longing to be at home in the world is integral to our human nature. Several phenomena, as Scruton shows in his philosophy and literary works, are indispensable in order for us to be able to fulfil the desire to belong: beauty, oikophilia, and the ability to engage with each other as persons.

Art is the one corner of human life in which we may take our ease. To justify our presence there the only thing that is demanded of us is a passion for representation. In other places our passions are conditional and embarrassed; we are allowed to have only so many as are consistent with those of our neighbours; with their convenience and well-being, with their convictions and prejudices, rules and regulations. Art means an escape from all this. Wherever her brilliant standard floats the need for apologies and exonerations is over; there it is enough simply that we please or that we are pleased. There, the tree is judged only by its fruits. If these are sweet, one is welcome to pluck them.1

I respond to the five papers of criticism in this issue of Philosophy. I argue that my cognitive dualism, which may be open to the theological objections levelled by Fiona Ellis, is vindicated by its ability to explain both freedom and inter-personal relations. I defend the inter-subjectivity of aesthetic judgment against Simon Blackburn's argument from ‘the acquaintance principle’, and my vision of cultural decline against the sceptical arguments of Samuel Hughes. The crucial role played by subjectivity in my fiction, discussed by Alicja Gescinska, enables me to add to David McPherson's account of existential conservatism, with which I largely concur. I end on a note of puzzlement, as to why such innocent arguments should be the target of such implacable hatred.

During the last century, most Western artists abandoned the traditional forms of Western art. Two closely related questions arise at once: why did artists do this, and were they right to? Scruton is famous for arguing that the answer to the latter question is no. His response to the former question is, by contrast, little known. In this paper, I investigate Scruton's discussions of it, arguing that a more complex and equivocal picture of the relationship between tradition and modernity quickly emerges. Scruton actually gives two mutually inconsistent genealogies of the flight from tradition. The first, surprisingly, is inconsistent with Scruton's defence of traditional forms, as well as with a number of his other commitments. The second coheres better with his other commitments, and on one version is consistent with his traditionalism. To vindicate his traditionalism this way, however, Scruton would be constrained to make an interesting and significant commitment.

This essay articulates a kind of conservatism that it argues is the most fundamental and important kind of conservatism, viz. existential conservatism, which involves an affirmative and appreciative stance towards the given world. While this form of conservatism can be connected to political conservatism, as seen with Roger Scruton, it need not be, as seen with G. A. Cohen. It is argued that existential conservatism should be embraced whether or not one embraces political conservatism, though it is also shown that existential conservatism imposes constraints on our political thinking. In particular, it is argued that Cohen's ‘luck egalitarianism’ stands at odds with his existential conservatism and that one should be a sufficientarian rather than an egalitarian with regard to economic justice.

Cognitive dualism offers a defensible conception of theism, and Scruton is right to endorse it. However, he retains a commitment to the ontological dualism it is his purpose to reject, and this leads to a deep tension in his position which leaves him unable to make sense of there being a route to the Divine. I argue that this tension stems from a residual commitment to a Kantian framework, and that this framework is not mandatory. I propose an alternative model which is compatible with much of what Scruton says, but which offers a more consistent and satisfactory theistic picture.

I argue that a careful consideration of the internal relation between the expression of an emotion, ‘I am angry’, and the description of the object of that emotion, ‘That was wrong’, illuminates the sense in which emotions are intentional, and perhaps also rational, as brought out in cognitive accounts of emotion. It also throws light on the moral and interpersonal aspects of our emotional life, which I instantiate through a discussion of the different perspectives on what has happened between the parties in a quarrel and the kinds of failures of understanding that may take place in such cases.