On evil

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An impassioned argument for the existence of evil from one of the most respected and influential critics of our day

In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defense of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artifact, 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?

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Eagleton here distinguishes wickedness, i.e., doing bad things, from genuine evil. The latter, he holds, is a rare phenomenon that involves a will to nothingness; the individual embodying evil views existence as repulsive and desires pure annihilation. By contrast, wickedness is a not unusual phenomenon that may stem from bad historical conditions, and we ought not to judge the potential of humanity by what takes place under the repressive social systems that exist today. Eagleton does not discuss in detail the nature of social repression, as he conceives it, but instead devotes most of the book to evil as portrayed in works by, among others, William Golding, Thomas Mann, and Shakespeare. In particular, his sensitive analysis of Macbeth, which concentrates on the three witches, is well done. Eagleton, who displays a wide knowledge of philosophy and theology and draws on both Schopenhauer and Freud's death drive to draw out his account, combines a Marxist and a liberal Catholic sensibility in an unusual way. VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone interested in the intersection between literature, philosophy, and religion.-David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

An engaging if ultimately unsatisfactory argument in favor of the reality of evil by one of Britain's most distinguished Marxist literary critics. Analyzing some of Western literature's major pronouncements on evil from Thomas Aquinas to William Golding, Eagleton (Reason, Faith and Revolution) pieces together what he sees as the defining features of evil in a rather unsystematic way, before grounding his own vision of evil in Freud's notion of the death drive, describing evildoers as suffering from "an unbearable sense of non-being" which must "be taken out on the other." Despite its undeniably enjoyable verve and wit, the book's claims are undermined by a rather arbitrary use of source material as well as a belated and inadequate articulation of its major theoretical claim. Muddy talk about different levels of evil and an undeveloped but evidently important distinction between wickedness and evil suggest that the author's notions on the topic would be better served by a larger, more sustained work. Nonetheless, as an attempt to take seriously the reality of extreme wrongdoing without recourse to either religiously grounded certitudes or a total sociological determinism, it offers a promising alternative. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

This short but dense book examines the mystery of gratuitous evil. Eagleton (National Univ. of Ireland) begins with the example of the murder of a two-year-old in England by two ten-year-old boys. The remainder of his examination is literary, analyses of evil as it occurs in William Golding (especially Pincher Martin), Thomas Mann (focus on Doctor Faustus), Graham Greene (Brighton Rock), Shakespeare (the witches in Macbeth), and many other works. The analyses are full of pithy aphorisms about the nature of evil and the human condition, but readers are left wondering why Eagleton chose these particular writers and texts. He is especially indebted to Freud and his account of Thanatos, the death drive, as an explanation of the metaphysical evil of human beings, but Eagleton explicitly connects only a few texts. Philosophers also appear: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Marx, Augustine, Aquinas, and Midgley, among others. In the final section, Eagleton separates evil from ordinary wickedness, which he attributes primarily to social and political systems, which are capable of being changed and possibly improved. Despite many well-expressed insights on the human condition, this book would be a hard read for most undergraduates and general readers. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and above. S. C. Schwarze Cabrini College

Booklist Review

In the altogether excellent Reason, Faith, and Revolution (2009), Eagleton wondered how it was that the most unlikely people, including myself, were talking about God. Here he talks about God again, pretty much willy-nilly, given a topic evil so antonymically correlative to the deity. To his credit, he begins by considering personal, psychological evil and throughout draws far more on secular literature and philosophy than on scripture and theology. From Golding's Pincher Martin (1956) and Greene's Brighton Rock (1938), he draws a conception of evil as nullity, as radical lack of emotion and sympathy. Constant negation, characteristic of the narrator of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman (1967), and the radical freedom added to negation by Adrian Leverkühn in Mann's Doktor Faustus (1947) broaden the idea, and the witches of Macbeth and Othello's Iago add obscene enjoyment to it. Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky are adduced before Eagleton somewhat surprisingly pronounces that evil is rather rare; more common and troubling is plain wickedness, like destroying whole communities for financial gain. An absorbing, stimulating, awfully entertaining discussion.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist