Now that the West is colliding with a resurgent Islam for which God is very much alive, Eagleton’s insights are particularly...
"Atheism is by no means as easy as it looks," insists prolific author Eagleton (Literature/Univ. of Lancaster; Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America, 2013, etc.).
Since the Enlightenment, philosophers have attempted to displace the perceived superstitions of religion as a basis for Western civilization and to replace them with secular reason, with limited success. In this rich, complex work, the author traces the course of this intellectual quest from 18th-century Germany through the Romantics and the writings of Matthew Arnold and Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously proclaimed the death of God, into a postmodern era of extreme relativism. One recurring problem has been the difficulty of translating academic theory into a viable popular culture, or as Eagleton puts it, "[n]o symbolic form in history has matched religion's ability to link the most exalted of truths to the daily existence of countless men and women." Consequently, "[r]eason must stoop to myth and image if it is to address the masses, but how is this not to be the ruin of it?" Another problem is the tendency of attempted surrogates for religion, such as nationalism, to take on mystical attributes, rites, saints and martyrs, indistinguishable from the characteristics of religion itself—the Almighty manages to return by the back door. Eagleton deftly explores the shifting relationships among reason, religion, culture, myth, art, tragedy and the modern sensibility of the absurd, all expressed with a dry wit and provocative epigrams. The book, however, is neither intended nor recommended for general readers. This wealth of content can only be contained in a slender volume by assuming that readers are already familiar with philosophers from Kant to Kierkegaard; without this background, it will prove slow going, though still rewarding.
Now that the West is colliding with a resurgent Islam for which God is very much alive, Eagleton’s insights are particularly timely.Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-300-20399-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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