For many enlightened, liberal-minded thinkers today, and for most on the political left, evil is an outmoded concept. It smacks too much of absolute judgements and metaphysical certainties to suit the modern age. In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defence of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artefact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world. In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason. In the process, he poses a set of intriguing questions. Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all?
| ISBN | 0300171250 | | Pages | 192 | | ISBN13 | 9780300171259
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 240 | | Publisher | Yale University Press | | Published in | New Haven | | Imprint | Yale University Press | | Previous ISBN | 9780300151060 | | Format | Paperback | | Height (mm) | 210 | | Publication date | 01 Apr 2011 | | Width (mm) | 140 | | DEWEY | 111.84 | | Spine width (mm) | 14 | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | | Academic level | General |
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"'Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution attacks the new atheism as a kind of secular counter-fundamentalism... Better than any previous book of its kind.' (James Wood, The New Yorker) 'Jaunty and surprisingly entertaining, Eagleton's argument is subtle, intricate, provocative and limpidly expressed... A valuable contribution to a debate as old as Adam and Eve and as contemporary as 9/11 and Abu Ghraib.' (John Banville, Irish Times)"
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