"The Meaning Of Life" According To Terry Eagleton.

[Ciarán2]

Thought I'd recommend this book which I'm almost done with.

Here's a bad review of it: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2316905.ece

Here's a good review:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2030253,00.html

My tuppanceworth then. It seems to be aimed at a non-academic audience, which i found rather refreshing. But Eagleton does discuss many difficult thinkers in reasonable depth (given the brevity of the book), such as Schopenhauer, Nietszche, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard and he even refers to Douglas Adams and Monty Python. Actually, he brackets "postmodernists" together as a single grouping, but I can overlook that labelling, as he seems to consistently use it in the Lyotard sense "incredulity towards metanarratives". Or as Eagleton puts it:  scepticism about seeing the world in terms of the 'big picture'.

He's quite a witty writer, and certainly at times you feel like pulling him up over his jokes or excursions into rhetoric (he takes the mick out of Arthur Schopenhauer's name, contrasting the exotic, mysterious surname with the everydayness of his Christian name). Overall though I think this book will appeal to anyone interested in the debate about the relevance of the question of meaning. Eagleton has some interesting ideas on how and why the question springs up. He talks of it as a fundamental human question which has been asked throughout history in differing ways. He says the question becomes more pertinent in social contexts where human life seems to be held cheap (Heidegger publishing "Being and Time" after WW1, the prevalence of existentialism in the decades immediately after world war 2, etc). He also expresses the idea that the world now is divided into two camps - a "West" which has been philosophically disarmed (via postmodernism) and displays a paucity of meaning, and an "East" - that of militant Islamic fundamentalism which displays an excess of meaning. There are flaws in the argument, sure, but it's still an interesting notion.

You can read this book easily in an afternoon, so it's quite good for a long commute. It's not completely earth-shattering or anything, but definitely a worthwhile read.

[Sam]

Looks interesting but I bet it's not as good as the superlative "What's It All About" by Julian Baggini.

[fakerandomdude]

I've read this and agree that it is Eagleton writing for a non-academic audience. I think my view of it is somewhat skewed by the fact I have read, and got a lot out of, some of his previous books, so much so that this seems slight in comparison. My criticism of this book is a particular version of my criticism of Eagleton overall - he can meander and, for someone as supposedly anti-post-modernism as he is, is "slippery" with his meanings. That said, it is a good gateway to loads of fascinating stuff - the same author's brilliant 'Ideology of the Aesthetic' covers the same concerns much more effectively. Anyone buying the book looking for a cut and dried 'meaning to life' should probably back out before getting hopelessly lost in subsequent digressions! The section on Beckett is particularly good.      

BTW Sam, Baggini is mentioned in this book at certain not-random points so Eagleton obviously 'rates him' - indeed, I think he is the only 'contemporary' to make the cut.

[Toad in the Hole]

El Tel does have a habit of digressing, and his wit is sometimes a bit one-dimensional, mainly being *insert comically oxymoronic similie here* (in his memoir The Gatekeeper, particularly).  But then let's face it, he's in a position now where he can write what he wants - his books sell these days on name alone.

Part of his anti-postmodernism thing is, I think, that it contributed to a decline in purely Marxist criticism.  He had a bit of a thing against Jameson for leaving behind his Marxist roots and immersing himself in postmodernism; though in my opinion that was just a careerist choice, as much as Eagleton himself had jumped on his mentor Raymond Williams's bandwagon.  And isn't part of the point about postmodernism that it is notoriously hard to pin down?

The notion of his books as a gateway is key, I think.  Eagleton has made an effective career out of pithily digesting theoretical material; he's written what is pretty much the same book quite a few times on that count.  But in the end you can't rely on his readings of any of these theorists; it's just a way in.

[Artemis]

The title of the book is enough to put me off. No true searcher for meaning in life, with a bit of experience under their belt, would be seen anywhere near a book like this.

[fakerandomdude]

I certainly agree that Eagleton has basically written the same book time and again with slightly different weightings (poetry, anti-post modern, 'marxist' and so on) and emphasis. What I was trying to say is that this book about the 'Meaning of Life' obfuscates and slips and slides as much as one of his (supposedly hated) post modernists. I have never really seen him commentate on Luckas, for example, or even Marx for that matter...maybe I have been looking in the wrong places.

[The Duck Man]

Don't a lot of Academics do that, though? Perhaps not to such a great extent, but I've been researching an essay on Alexander Pope the past week and there's a critic called Pat Rogers who must have written the same book a dozen times!

[Ciarán2]

The title of the book is enough to put me off. No true searcher for meaning in life, with a bit of experience under their belt, would be seen anywhere near a book like this.

It shouldn't do any more than you'd be put off by the film of the same title by Monty Python. It's a bit of as jokey title, in fact right inside the cover the dedication goes "For Oliver, who found the whole idea deeply embarrassing".

And you know, Eagleton comes up with a nifty "meaning of life", likening it to a jazz band consiting each doing their own thing in their own way, enjoying themselves, giving expression to their individual fancy but also working as a group, in harmony, producing something beautiful and worthwhile. Well I'm maybe giving my own spin on it there, but I like it.

[Ciarán2]

I certainly agree that Eagleton has basically written the same book time and again with slightly different weightings (poetry, anti-post modern, 'marxist' and so on) and emphasis. What I was trying to say is that this book about the 'Meaning of Life' obfuscates and slips and slides as much as one of his (supposedly hated) post modernists. I have never really seen him commentate on Luckas, for example, or even Marx for that matter...maybe I have been looking in the wrong places.

I've never really thought that Eagleton hates post-modernism. He's a got a good grasp of it, and he's written about Lyotard in the past quite well. He's also one of the few good critics of deconstruction. And to be honest I haven't found this book to be obfuscatory at all - if anything it's the opposite. He goes into Wittgenstein's warning about mixing up language games and so on. I think this book is notable for it's "plain English". George Orwell would be proud.

Eagleton does write an excellent essay on Marx in a book called "Ghostly Demarcations", which is where he also takes the piss out of Derrida's penchant for word-play.

[threeism]

no longer applicable.

[Famous Mortimer]

Eagleton does write an excellent essay on Marx in a book called "Ghostly Demarcations", which is where he also takes the piss out of Derrida's penchant for word-play.

Bah humbug to Derrida.

I fancied giving that book a try, but £18? For a paperback? And I'll bet my library doesn't have it.

[Toad in the Hole]

It's certainly true to say that TE is not a fan of post-modernism particularly, I'll find a reference at some point when I have a few seconds spare.  Or I'll ask him when I pass him in the department at some point... (*clunk* namedrop)

Eagleton does Marxist readings of things all over the place, and even did one of those philosophy primers in the style of a Penguin 60 on Marx.  He's very involved with the notion of his working-class roots, as exemplified in The Gatekeeper, though the fact that he's obviously now very well-off to the extent where he commutes once a week or so to Manchester from Dublin may have dulled his Marxist ardour slightly.

[Ciarán2]

I think he's very good on Marxism actually, and he was a student of Raymond Williams too - he's also well worth a look. Even the Wikipedia page on Eagleton links to an article Eagleton writes on Marxist political activism today in the face of globalisation. I quite like Eagleton's sense of humour, for example:

...Why...should we bewail the fact that (life) does not present itself to us as bursting with significance? You would not lament the fact that you were not born wearing a small woolly hat. Babies being born sporting small woolly hats is just not the kind of thing one should expect to happen. There is no point in feeling down in the mouth about it. It is no cause for tragic Angst that you came into the world bareheaded. It is not a lack which you are glumly aware of as you go about your daily business.

[threeism]

Anyway, a nice read for one of those long commutes.

Four stars out of five for meaning, and for Schopenhauer, Nietszche, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard and Monty Python all thrown in. One point deducted for not mentioning Satre, Locke, Husserl, Hume, Descartes, Baudrillard, Zizek, Kant, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Bergson or The Goodies though.

Anyway, a nice read for one of those long commutes, especially if you're interested in meaning.

[Toad in the Hole]

I'd also like to take a mention out for Jay Winter who, I realise in researching this morning, has written the same book (almost) about the Great War and Memory about 10 times with different collaborators and slight shifts in emphasis.

Bearing in mind that Eagleton is a Literature Professor, rather than a philosopher, I think it's pretty reasonable that his focus is on what's currently fashionable in the literary world.  I know a lot of researchers, and of those names in threeism's list of omissions, there's only really Foucault who is used regularly (though I look at Bergson a bit myself he's not really fashionable).  And even then, Foucauldian criticism has pretty much become a part of a received and accepted vocabulary of literary criticism, much in the way that most of what was cutting-edge when Raymond Williams originally wrote it has been assimilated into a collective theoretical consciousness.

[Sam]

Just bought this for 8.49 on Play. Looking forward to reading it!