Terry Eagleton gets his head around (as in higher cognitive thinking, not Linda Blair) the difficulties faced by western intellectual. That is to say, he manages to put words to the wispy, ephemeral notions occupying the exurbian denizens who fancy themselves the oligarchical gatekeepers of higher terms of discourse in the West. (Exactly; I find them boring and in love with themselves, too.)And what rag ... journal features Mr. Eagleton's meanderings amidst the ruins of Christendom? None other than Commonweal (of course). Here is a sampling:
Part of what has happened in our time is that God has shifted over from the side of civilization to the side of barbarism. He is no longer the short-haired, blue-blazered God of the West-well, perhaps he is in the United States, but not in Porto or Cardiff or Bologna. Instead, he is a wrathful, dark-skinned God who, if he did create John Locke and John Stuart Mill, has long since forgotten the fact. One can still speak of the clash between civilization and barbarism; but a more subtle form of the same dispute is to speak of a conflict between civilization and culture. Civilization in this dichotomy means the universal, autonomous, prosperous, individual, rationally speculative, self-doubting, and ironic; culture means the customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective, unironic, and a-rational. Culture signifies all those unreflective loyalties and allegiances for which men and women in extreme circumstances are prepared to kill. For the most part, the former colonizing nations are civilizations, while the former colonies are cultures.If you so desire, you may read all of it here. Personally, I find it as edifying as root canal work, being captured by a bore at a cocktail party, or the ordeal of listening interminably to the speech of Tolkien's Gollum.
But what it does provide is the state of ontological and epistemological vacuity of western intellectualism. You want to know what passes for current "higher knowledge"? Here it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment