Reason and the God debate

Terry Eagleton is probably the most important and influential living literary critic in Britain. He and Fredric Jameson are the two most widely-discussed active Marxist critics in the Anglophone world. Although both are unafraid to relate Marxism to newer currents of thinking, and make contacts with European high theory, Eagleton is the more engaging and accessible to the lay reader. Unlike Fredric Jameson, who writes in a convoluted style, readers find Eagleton easy to read. I have seen his work cited by Sinhala critics. Surprisingly, his latest book, 'Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate', deals not with literature but religion. It is currently generating a great deal of heated discussion. Terry Eagleton is a Roman Catholic and a Marxist. Until late in his life, it is the Marxism that was clearly in evidence in his writings. As he grows older, he seems to be displaying a greater interest in religion. In this book, he challenges both the orthodox and institutionalised approaches to God and religion as well as the formulations of rationalist atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Terry Eagleton is the author of over forty books. Many of them are devoted to literary criticism and literary theory. He has also written plays and a memoir. However, it is as a scholar of literature that he is best known. His book, 'Literary Theory: An Introduction', which was published in 1983, and later revised, examines the ways in which study of literary texts have evolved during that past two centuries. It continues to be one of his most popular books.

Eagleton has always being interested in materialist literary criticism. At Cambridge, he came under the influence of Raymond Williams, although later in life he was somewhat critical of his teacher. I found his book 'Criticism and Ideology' quite helpful. In the late seventies, I was teaching course in the Department of Sinhala of the Vidyalankara University on Marxism and literature, and I found Eagleton's book an enabling one to think through some of the salient issues. Admittedly, it was a tentative and incomplete book - more a work in progress. However, in his discussion, he raised a number of issues that could be productively pursued in class. In recent years, Terry Eagleton has become more critical of European high theory that has gained wide popularity in many parts of the world. His books such as 'The Illusions of Postmodernism' and 'After Theory', bear testimony to this fact. In his writings, Eagleton has adhered to a useful concept of objectivity. As he remarked once, 'Objectivity does not mean judging from nowhere. On the contrary, you can only know how the situation is if you are in a position to know. Only by standing at a certain angle to reality can it be illuminated for you. The wretched of the earth, for example, are likely to appreciate more of the truth of human history than their masters - not because they are innately more perceptive, but because they can glean from their everyday experience that history for the vast majority of men and women has been largely a matter of despotic power and fruitless toil.'

Terry Eagleton's latest book, 'Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate', has generated a great deal of interest; he has been criticised equally harshly by the orthodox believers as well as atheists. To my mind, the most interesting parts of the book are when he takes on popular rational atheists such as Ronald Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins' book, 'The God Delusion' and Hitchen's book 'God is not Great' have become best sellers. Although I am not totally persuaded by Eagleton's arguments, he certainly has put up the best defense against Dawkins and Hitchens etc that I know.

In his book, Eagleton asserts that religion has wrought untold miseries in human affairs, and therefore he has a good deal of sympathy for rationalists. However, he goes on to say that 'most such critics buy their rejection of religion on the cheap.' He feels that they have erected a rhetorical straw-man and that they entertain a simplistic view of religion. He prefers a form of tragic humanism to the currently pervasive liberal humanism. Eagleton's book is well-worth reading if only to be irritated by some of his arguments.