Conservative Advice

To the Editors:

Martha Nussbaum says many false things about the contents of Sexual Desire [NYR, December 18, 1986]. She also says false things about its author, one of which should be corrected. I am not an adviser to Mrs. Thatcher, whom I have never met. I am more conservative, and therefore less Conservative, than Martha Nussbaum imagines.

Roger Scruton

The Salisbury Review

7 Lord North Street, London SW1

Martha Nussbaum replies:

Under Roger Scruton’s picture on the jacket of Sexual Desire (New York edition), the following text appears:

Roger Scruton is Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, and a founder of the Conservative Philosophy Group, which advises the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

I assumed that this information was (a) true and (b) printed with Scruton’s approval. If this is not the case, he has a quarrel with The Free Press, and not with me.

If Scruton believes that I have made false statements about his book, why didn’t he say what he thinks they are? Conservatives and nonconservatives can surely share a respect for open rational argument, in preference to insult and innuendo.