The last elective of my college career was a philosophy of aesthetics class. Little did I know that the class was geared to first- and second-year students in English and humanities degrees, making it less than challenging for a fifth year architecture student (a fellow classmate also enrolled in the class but dropped it after only one or two classes in favor of something else). The professor, James Hamilton, realizing that I might be bored, but I think also looking to flex his brain muscles on the subject of architecture, invited me for some one-on-one discussions after class. Our "textbook" was this book by Roger Scruton, the back cover of which says it "establishes architectural aesthetics as a legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry." Our discussions, spread over some weeks, came at a time when Deconstruction was the rage in architecture, meaning architects were borrowing from philosophy, though clearly not writing philosophically — logically, that is. So we focused on examining Scruton's arguments for what in architecture was good and bad, right and wrong. Given Scruton's writings on architecture since, it's easy to grasp on which side certain buildings fall for him (the two ends of the spectrum can be seen on the cover); at the time, though, we used logic in our conversations to scrutinize his arguments, so matters of taste decreased in importance. Nevertheless, all these years later I'll crack open the book to recall those conversations rather than to absorb Scruton's conservative position.