Terry Eagleton is an influential literary theorist and Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster. He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), and, most recently, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (2009).
Terry Eagleton: The reason I write so much is, actually, I don’t share this habit of reading other people’s books, which I’ve always found extraordinarily intrusive, to peer into people’s private space. If I want to read a book, I just have to write one, you see, so this is why Ajaz can’t keep up with me. I can’t keep up with myself, either. It’s delightful, always, to be back in Columbia, and I’m very grateful to Akeel Bilgrami in particular for inviting me here, rescuing me from Notre Dame for a couple of precious secular days, as it were. There we are.
Why are the most unlikely people, myself included, suddenly talking about God? I mean, why is it that just when the Almighty, like some aging celebrity, looks set for a well earned retirement from the public stage, no doubt glumly surveying the squalid course of the history he’s created and bitterly regretting having fashioned the slightest particle of matter, not least Dick Cheney – I mean, why is it that at this supposedly post-metaphysical, post-religious, post-historical point perhaps, He’s been whisked abruptly back on center stage, besieged by paparazzi, jostled by professors? Why have bookshops, at least where I come from, suddenly started sprouting sections called, “Atheism,” which they certainly didn’t have before? Why is it that Richard Dawkins and myself have been asked to contribute front-page articles on the so-called God debate? To what? No, not The Church Times, not The Guardian, but The Wall Street Journal, circulation 20 million I believe. What’s going on here?
I told The Wall Street Journal editor I’d be delighted to contribute, as long as my last sentence could be, “Jesus would never have been invited to write for The Wall Street Journal.” I mean, why in the world is the world suddenly thronged with atheists who are obsessed with religion as puritans are with sex? This is true even in England, where religion is generally a rather moderate sort of slightly shamefaced, discreet sort of thing where people are likely to believe that once religion starts to interfere with your everyday life, it’s time to give it up. A little like alcohol, perhaps, you know? One can’t imagine the queen’s chaplain asking you whether you’ve been washed in the blood of the lamb. He might ask you to pass the sherry, or something of that kind. That would be more his liquid, I think. You know, we are a moderate race. We like doing things gradually. If ever we decide to drive on the right hand side of the road, we shall do so gradually.
Though I think, perhaps, one must linger a little here over the word “atheism”. I mean, in order to reject religious faith, an atheist, presumably, must first grasp something of what it entails. That would seem a fairly simple, straightforward condition for being an atheist. Rather as you can’t argue about the value of synecdoche, or metonymy, if you think they’re small towns in upper New York State. Whereas, I must confess, it seems to be deeply doubtful that Ditchkins –as I have taken the liberty of dubbing Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins in a remarkably cheap and extraordinarily attractive book called, Reason, Faith, and Revolution– it seems to be highly doubtful whether they could be called atheists at all, since they don’t seem to have any idea of what it is they’re criticizing.
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Terry Eagleton: The reason I write so much is, actually, I don’t share this habit of reading other people’s books, which I’ve always found extraordinarily intrusive, to peer into people’s private space. If I want to read a book, I just have to write one, you see, so this is why Ajaz can’t keep up with me. I can’t keep up with myself, either. It’s delightful, always, to be back in Columbia, and I’m very grateful to Akeel Bilgrami in particular for inviting me here, rescuing me from Notre Dame for a couple of precious secular days, as it were. There we are.
Why are the most unlikely people, myself included, suddenly talking about God? I mean, why is it that just when the Almighty, like some aging celebrity, looks set for a well earned retirement from the public stage, no doubt glumly surveying the squalid course of the history he’s created and bitterly regretting having fashioned the slightest particle of matter, not least Dick Cheney – I mean, why is it that at this supposedly post-metaphysical, post-religious, post-historical point perhaps, He’s been whisked abruptly back on center stage, besieged by paparazzi, jostled by professors? Why have bookshops, at least where I come from, suddenly started sprouting sections called, “Atheism,” which they certainly didn’t have before? Why is it that Richard Dawkins and myself have been asked to contribute front-page articles on the so-called God debate? To what? No, not The Church Times, not The Guardian, but The Wall Street Journal, circulation 20 million I believe. What’s going on here?
I told The Wall Street Journal editor I’d be delighted to contribute, as long as my last sentence could be, “Jesus would never have been invited to write for The Wall Street Journal.” I mean, why in the world is the world suddenly thronged with atheists who are obsessed with religion as puritans are with sex? This is true even in England, where religion is generally a rather moderate sort of slightly shamefaced, discreet sort of thing where people are likely to believe that once religion starts to interfere with your everyday life, it’s time to give it up. A little like alcohol, perhaps, you know? One can’t imagine the queen’s chaplain asking you whether you’ve been washed in the blood of the lamb. He might ask you to pass the sherry, or something of that kind. That would be more his liquid, I think. You know, we are a moderate race. We like doing things gradually. If ever we decide to drive on the right hand side of the road, we shall do so gradually.
Though I think, perhaps, one must linger a little here over the word “atheism”. I mean, in order to reject religious faith, an atheist, presumably, must first grasp something of what it entails. That would seem a fairly simple, straightforward condition for being an atheist. Rather as you can’t argue about the value of synecdoche, or metonymy, if you think they’re small towns in upper New York State. Whereas, I must confess, it seems to be deeply doubtful that Ditchkins –as I have taken the liberty of dubbing Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins in a remarkably cheap and extraordinarily attractive book called, Reason, Faith, and Revolution– it seems to be highly doubtful whether they could be called atheists at all, since they don’t seem to have any idea of what it is they’re criticizing.
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