Music and Morality - Roger Scruton

In a culture which seeks to be ‘non-judgmental’, music is no longer exposed to true criticism but only to ‘technical analysis and know-how’, even though music can have a profound impact on its devotees. Using a quote from Plato’s Republic, ‘The ways of poetry and music are not changed anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city’, the author argues that music has a profound impact on our human character and, consequently, on how our societies are governed. Pop music, which enjoys ‘a status higher than any other cultural product’, is at the centre of the argument as it is responsible for a ‘regression of listening’. The elusion of a rhythm in pop music and the fact that it is more often ‘overheard’ than actually listened to, result in a deterioration  of social expressions of music – one dances at instead of with. Thus, in stressing submission, pop music could have the tacit effect of imposing a culture of ‘non-judgmentality’ on its listeners and, consequently, society at large.

© The American Spectator (Arlington, VA)