Culture and the Death of God
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
How to live in a supposedly faithless world threatened by religious fundamentalism? Terry Eagleton, formidable thinker and renowned cultural critic, investigates in this thought-provoking book the contradictions, difficulties, and significance of the modern search for a replacement for God. Engaging with a phenomenally wide range of ideas, issues, and thinkers from the Enlightenment to today, Eagleton discusses the state of religion before and after 9/11, the ironies surrounding Western capitalism’s part in spawning not only secularism but also fundamentalism, and the unsatisfactory surrogates for the Almighty invented in the post-Enlightenment era.
The author reflects on the unique capacities of religion, the possibilities of culture and art as modern paths to salvation, the so-called war on terror’s impact on atheism, and a host of other topics of concern to those who envision a future in which just and compassionate communities thrive. Lucid, stylish, and entertaining in his usual manner, Eagleton presents a brilliant survey of modern thought that also serves as a timely, urgently needed intervention into our perilous political present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his usual engaging manner, cultural critic Eagleton (Reason, Faith, and Revolution) offers a tour-de-force survey of the changing relation of culture and religion. Moving from the Enlightenment where the ideological power of religion is undermined by various philosophical forces through idealism, romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism, he illustrates how various cultural forces literature, for example gradually replaced religion; by the time postmodernism eases onto the scene, he observes, "human history arrives for the first time at an authentic atheism," because people no longer feel a need to be redeemed. Why, then, the contemporary resurgence of religious fundamentalism across the world? Because, Eagleton points out, "religion provides a way of fulfilling certain emotional needs and provides a degree of spiritual depth to otherwise shallow lives." In the end, he argues that religion's true purpose is to challenge the too-cozy relationships of religious institutions and politics and that a new configuration of faith and culture might arise if religions practiced solidarity with the poor and powerless.
