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The Ideology of the Aesthetic
"The Ideology of the Aesthetic" presents a history & critique of the concept of the aesthetic throughout modern Western thought. As such, this is a critical survey of modern Western philosophy, focusing in particular on the complex relations between aesthetics, ethics & politics. Eagleton provides a brilliant & challenging introduction to these concerns, as characterized in the work of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas & others. Wide in span, as well as morally & politically committed, this is his major work to date. It forms both an original enquiry & an exemplary introduction.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
36 people are currently reading
1798 people want to read
About the author
Terry Eagleton
159 books1,283 followersWidely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.
He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.
He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.
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May 18, 2020
Mea Maxima Culpa
I have often read Eagleton at the precise moment I needed him most, that is just when I thought I had figured out some important aspect of the way the world works. At that point he has seemed to pop up in order to show me how foolish I have been. And so with The Ideology of the Aesthetic he has done it once again. I am overwhelmed with both gratitude and embarrassment.
Eagleton makes a compelling argument that aesthetics arose as an idea and a discipline in response to the increasingly grating monarchical absolutism of the 18th century. It rapidly became an important intellectual weapon in the army of the emerging bourgeoisie, a sort of personal code for class identity. And eventually it found its way into the liberal economic philosophers of the 19th century, very specifically in its concept of individual ‘utility’, which was both entirely personal and morally un-challengeable.
As Eagleton summarises the situation, the aesthetic is “... at the heart of the middle class’s struggle for political hegemony.” Thus the aesthetic became an ideological category and used as such in the class warfare which continues today under other names - the permanent capitalist underclass for one, otherwise known as poor white Trump voters.* One need not be a Marxist literary critic to appreciate the potentially contradictory character of aesthetics therefore. I had been foolishly unaware.
Having expressed my mea culpa, I then must admit that Eagleton has also confirmed an important part of my thinking about aesthetics, namely that it is a social and therefore political activity. As such, an awareness of its hidden cultural power and processes is essential in social and political life. I had recognised the aesthetic as a particular form of the political not as a variant of liberal economic utility. And I had outlined the process and logic by which aesthetic politics can take place. I therefore feel somewhat vindicated in my thought that the aesthetic is appropriate to problems of the 21st century.**
Today absolutism has again become one of the dominant issues across the globe. It has appeared as both tendency and fact in the United States, Russia, India, China, Burma, and the Philippines to name just a few locations. But it has also appeared in a much more thorough and insidious form, that of the absolutism of corporate life. To note that corporations are the dominant force in world economics and its commercial legal structure is a truism that needs no explanation. But this is the tip of the iceberg of corporate influence.
The overwhelming majority of us are employed by corporate entities, mostly large, and most international. We are subject to and dependent upon, therefore, its mores and judgments for everything from our daily bread to our self-identity. Corporate life therefore is one of a degree of absolutism that exceeds anything dreamed of by a medieval monarch. The rationalisation that we are not enslaved by any corporation and are free to ‘un-participate’ whenever we like is of course fatuous. There is no where else to go in the modern world.
This is the situation in which, I believe, aesthetics can play an important role - in disrupting corporate absolutism. The corporate hierarchy and culture is vulnerable at the point of business measurement. Measurement is the central organ of corporate life. What gets measured gets done. Typically measurement is left to ‘experts’ - accountants, consultants, financial theorists - who impose highly questionable and ultimately indefensible measurement on and within corporate organisations.
Measurements are articulate aesthetics. The more articulate they are, the more powerful effect they have. When they are imposed, they are dangerously powerful because they do not reflect either the interests of the corporation or its participants. The spectacular failure of companies like Enron can be directly traced to the use of measurements (or metrics) which were not aesthetically ‘verified’. Eagleton I think would agree since he does admit that aesthetics "... provides an unusually powerful challenge and alternative to the dominant ideological forms, and in this sense an eminently contradictory phenomenon."
Therefore I believe that the time for a new political aesthetics is ripe, one that realises the dangers of a middle-class ideological co-optation of aesthetics, particularly in that most middle class group of all, corporate managers. But that aesthetics also is the central, radical key to the reform of the world’s dominant institution. Thank you, Terry, for your corrective guidance.
I do, however, feel obligated to correct Terry in return. Marx anticipated the social consequences of the factory very well. However, he didn’t have a clue about the development of the modern corporation. Its emergence was a surprise to both Marxists and to liberal capitalists. Neither camp has done much to explain or criticise the institution of the corporation except to say that it doesn’t conform to their ideals. And that is another reason I believe Aesthetics is important for dealing with corporate life - it provides a foundation for an alternative theory of the corporate institution that transcends both socialism and capitalism.
* See for example: http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-electi...
**I must also offer a very belated apology to my now deceased teacher, Russell Ackoff, who expressed his appreciation of the aesthetic with the term ‘idealization’. I only now recognise how right he was... and how wrong because he never read Eagleton. See: https://www.amazon.com/Idealized-Desi...
See also: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have often read Eagleton at the precise moment I needed him most, that is just when I thought I had figured out some important aspect of the way the world works. At that point he has seemed to pop up in order to show me how foolish I have been. And so with The Ideology of the Aesthetic he has done it once again. I am overwhelmed with both gratitude and embarrassment.
Eagleton makes a compelling argument that aesthetics arose as an idea and a discipline in response to the increasingly grating monarchical absolutism of the 18th century. It rapidly became an important intellectual weapon in the army of the emerging bourgeoisie, a sort of personal code for class identity. And eventually it found its way into the liberal economic philosophers of the 19th century, very specifically in its concept of individual ‘utility’, which was both entirely personal and morally un-challengeable.
As Eagleton summarises the situation, the aesthetic is “... at the heart of the middle class’s struggle for political hegemony.” Thus the aesthetic became an ideological category and used as such in the class warfare which continues today under other names - the permanent capitalist underclass for one, otherwise known as poor white Trump voters.* One need not be a Marxist literary critic to appreciate the potentially contradictory character of aesthetics therefore. I had been foolishly unaware.
Having expressed my mea culpa, I then must admit that Eagleton has also confirmed an important part of my thinking about aesthetics, namely that it is a social and therefore political activity. As such, an awareness of its hidden cultural power and processes is essential in social and political life. I had recognised the aesthetic as a particular form of the political not as a variant of liberal economic utility. And I had outlined the process and logic by which aesthetic politics can take place. I therefore feel somewhat vindicated in my thought that the aesthetic is appropriate to problems of the 21st century.**
Today absolutism has again become one of the dominant issues across the globe. It has appeared as both tendency and fact in the United States, Russia, India, China, Burma, and the Philippines to name just a few locations. But it has also appeared in a much more thorough and insidious form, that of the absolutism of corporate life. To note that corporations are the dominant force in world economics and its commercial legal structure is a truism that needs no explanation. But this is the tip of the iceberg of corporate influence.
The overwhelming majority of us are employed by corporate entities, mostly large, and most international. We are subject to and dependent upon, therefore, its mores and judgments for everything from our daily bread to our self-identity. Corporate life therefore is one of a degree of absolutism that exceeds anything dreamed of by a medieval monarch. The rationalisation that we are not enslaved by any corporation and are free to ‘un-participate’ whenever we like is of course fatuous. There is no where else to go in the modern world.
This is the situation in which, I believe, aesthetics can play an important role - in disrupting corporate absolutism. The corporate hierarchy and culture is vulnerable at the point of business measurement. Measurement is the central organ of corporate life. What gets measured gets done. Typically measurement is left to ‘experts’ - accountants, consultants, financial theorists - who impose highly questionable and ultimately indefensible measurement on and within corporate organisations.
Measurements are articulate aesthetics. The more articulate they are, the more powerful effect they have. When they are imposed, they are dangerously powerful because they do not reflect either the interests of the corporation or its participants. The spectacular failure of companies like Enron can be directly traced to the use of measurements (or metrics) which were not aesthetically ‘verified’. Eagleton I think would agree since he does admit that aesthetics "... provides an unusually powerful challenge and alternative to the dominant ideological forms, and in this sense an eminently contradictory phenomenon."
Therefore I believe that the time for a new political aesthetics is ripe, one that realises the dangers of a middle-class ideological co-optation of aesthetics, particularly in that most middle class group of all, corporate managers. But that aesthetics also is the central, radical key to the reform of the world’s dominant institution. Thank you, Terry, for your corrective guidance.
I do, however, feel obligated to correct Terry in return. Marx anticipated the social consequences of the factory very well. However, he didn’t have a clue about the development of the modern corporation. Its emergence was a surprise to both Marxists and to liberal capitalists. Neither camp has done much to explain or criticise the institution of the corporation except to say that it doesn’t conform to their ideals. And that is another reason I believe Aesthetics is important for dealing with corporate life - it provides a foundation for an alternative theory of the corporate institution that transcends both socialism and capitalism.
* See for example: http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-electi...
**I must also offer a very belated apology to my now deceased teacher, Russell Ackoff, who expressed his appreciation of the aesthetic with the term ‘idealization’. I only now recognise how right he was... and how wrong because he never read Eagleton. See: https://www.amazon.com/Idealized-Desi...
See also: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
February 17, 2022
In many ways this book is like a beefier version of the Literary Theory: An Introduction book: it is a chronological survey of a series of important thinkers that balances a fair-minded exposition with a rapid turn to incisive critique. In the 1983 book, Eagleton's critiques are fairly similar: every method of literary criticism is rejected for its inability to think about 'history' or 'patriarchy' in a sufficiently sophisticated way. In Ideology of the Aesthetic, there is a more diffuse exploration of the ways each thinker's conception of the aesthetic carries forward the ideological function of the aesthetic, or in other words the role that aesthetic experience plays in reconciling one to the damaged world, or in yet other words the more generally 'aesthetic' quality that 'ideology' in general has, as the method by which we make sense of the world and integrate ourselves into it. Eagleton doesn't seem to have a killer concluding thesis: I don't strongly feel that he has a problem with the aesthetic as such, despite both the title and the reputation of this book, since he talks both in the introduction and at the end of the two-faced function of theories of the aesthetic as both legitimation and critique, depending on who uses them (there is a moment towards the end when he is discussing utopian functions of the aesthetic and he refers to "Fredric Jameson's startling claim to discern a proleptic image of utopia in any human collectivity whatsoever, which presumably encompass racist rallies" (404). Despite this reference, Jameson still gave Eagleton a nice quote to stick on the back of the book). This is in contrast to 1983 when his thesis was "we should be Marxist-feminist rhetoricians and also literary theory is dead" or whatever.
So the book functions nicely as a less partisan exposition of and introduction to a surprisingly wide range of thinkers from the perspective of the 'aesthetic' as the highest organising concept; it's almost a metaphilosophy of the aesthetic. He says of Hegel, for example: "Ideology, in the shape of the identity of subject and object, is installed at the level of scientific knowledge; and Hegel can thus afford to assign art a lowly place in his system, since he has already covertly aestheticised the whole of the reality which contains it" (123). This subject-object identity as a definition of ideology is also a kind of definition of the 'transcendental aesthetic' which has a more technical function in the earlier chapter on Kant. The aesthetic is one way in which the relation between subject and object even begins, and then it likewise then takes on an ideological function, grounding and 'critiquing' (in a transcendental way) the bourgeois subject's place in the world and their ability to have experiences. This metaphilosophical approach yields all kinds of interesting fruit when applied to Heidegger and Adorno – the historical field really widens after about the middle of the book and the narrative starts to come apart a little bit, because the aesthetic as a concept loses a lot of its consistency during the twentieth century. The book itself becomes a kind of constellation, to use the word that Eagleton explores in detail in the material on the Frankfurt School.
So the book functions nicely as a less partisan exposition of and introduction to a surprisingly wide range of thinkers from the perspective of the 'aesthetic' as the highest organising concept; it's almost a metaphilosophy of the aesthetic. He says of Hegel, for example: "Ideology, in the shape of the identity of subject and object, is installed at the level of scientific knowledge; and Hegel can thus afford to assign art a lowly place in his system, since he has already covertly aestheticised the whole of the reality which contains it" (123). This subject-object identity as a definition of ideology is also a kind of definition of the 'transcendental aesthetic' which has a more technical function in the earlier chapter on Kant. The aesthetic is one way in which the relation between subject and object even begins, and then it likewise then takes on an ideological function, grounding and 'critiquing' (in a transcendental way) the bourgeois subject's place in the world and their ability to have experiences. This metaphilosophical approach yields all kinds of interesting fruit when applied to Heidegger and Adorno – the historical field really widens after about the middle of the book and the narrative starts to come apart a little bit, because the aesthetic as a concept loses a lot of its consistency during the twentieth century. The book itself becomes a kind of constellation, to use the word that Eagleton explores in detail in the material on the Frankfurt School.
September 26, 2009
Responding to other review- Smugness he may be guilty of, but he's hardly the high priest of post-modern cant. Actually by this time Eagleton was looking less and less post-modern and more and more like what a what a younger Raymond Williams with a more thoroughgoing theoretical bent might look like. I'd hardly take Eagleton as the final word on the Western aesthetic tradition and its connections to morality and politics, BUT this serves as a fair introduction to the issues and Eagleton's got some interesting things to say about them.[return][return]Some portions may seems a tad dated--the book certainly reflects its historical context (the late-80s, early 90s peak of academic/political post-modernism), but that's not too much of a bother.
April 3, 2011
This is a great book. Eagleton is one of my favorite literary critics/philosophers. Here he examines the history of aesthetics and their relation to political philosophy. For me, his argument regarding Kant's idea of the sublime, though off, is nonetheless incredibly compelling.
March 16, 2019
Comencé este libro creyendo que iba a leer sobre un tema, he acabado leyendo sobre mil más. Hasta la fecha, la lectura más exigente, y agotadora por momentos, del año.
September 16, 2022
امر زیبا ابتدا ناظر به کل حوزه ادراک و درک انسان بود یعنی در مقابل تفکر مفهومی قرار میگرفت. به معنای تفاوت فکر مادی و غیر مادی
و آقای ایگلتون در این راستا گذری بر تاریخ فلسفهی زیبایی انداخته است بنابراین علاقمندان به فلسفه مخصوصا مباحث حوزهی زیبایی از این کتاب لذت خواهند برد.
https://taaghche.com/book/76306/
و آقای ایگلتون در این راستا گذری بر تاریخ فلسفهی زیبایی انداخته است بنابراین علاقمندان به فلسفه مخصوصا مباحث حوزهی زیبایی از این کتاب لذت خواهند برد.
https://taaghche.com/book/76306/
January 1, 2024
Qué bien escribe Eagleton! Probablemente de mis teóricos favoritos junto con Jameson.
November 26, 2012
Éste es el primer libro que abandono desde hace muchísimo. Realmente, es demasiado posmoderno, demasiado marxista e iconoclasta para mi gusto. Lanza ideas que son interesantes, pero el libro es una vorágine posmodernista que se empeña en reducir a texto absolutamente todo comportamiento humano, y a intereses de clase cualquier manifestación cultural. Definitivamente, no es lo que buscaba, y me sorprendería que alguien lo encuentre edificante.
March 29, 2008
A good political counter to Rorty's ideas and yet it is more a matter of emphasis on activist, less "laid back."
April 8, 2008
Genial, estoy atrapado con este libro
November 28, 2008
I totally disagree with Eagleton's appraisal of the avant-garde, but he makes me wish I didn't.
Read
August 17, 2020This book is sucking all the joy out of my semester and I have no idea why my classmates all seem to love it. :(
Read
July 13, 2016This was a good survey and Eagleton is an entertaining writer but it either needed to be reorganized or put an extra chapter at the beginning clarifying both aesthetics and ideology.
October 30, 2016
Cool but unnecessarily repetitive. Professor likes Eagleton
November 10, 2020
بخشی از کتاب :
زیباییشناسی به عنوان گفتمانی مربوط به بدن تولد یافت. این اصطلاح در صورتبندی اولیهٔ خود به وسیلهٔ فیلسوف آلمانی الکساندر باومگارتن، در درجهٔ نخست به هنر اشاره نداشت بلکه، همانطور که لغت یونانیِ aisthesis نشان میدهد، ناظر به کل حوزهٔ ادراک و حسیافتِ (sensation) انسانی بود، در تقابل با قلمرو رفیعترِ تفکر مفهومی. تمایزی که اصطلاح aesthetic در آغاز در میانهٔ سدهٔ هجدهم به اجرا میگذارَد تفاوت میان «هنر» و «زندگی» نیست، بلکه تفاوت امر مادی و امر غیرمادی است: تفاوت چیزها و اندیشهها، حسیافتها و ایدهها، آنچه که به حیات جانوری ما مربوط میشود در مقابل آنچه حیات سایهوار خود را در پستوهای ذهن دنبال میکند. چنان است که گویی فلسفه بهناگهان نسبت به این واقعیت هوشیار میشود که قلمروِ متراکم و پرهیاهویی بیرون از جزیرهٔ ذهنی خودش وجود دارد که آن را با تهدیدِ چیزی بهتمامی خارج از دامنهٔ نفوذش مواجه میکند. و این قلمرو چیزی کمتر از زندگی حسپذیر ما در تمامیت آن نیست یعنی کل قلمرو علائق و بیزاریهای ما، نحوهٔ برخورد جهان با سطوح حسپذیرِ بدن ما، و همهٔ آنچه در نگاه و دل و جرئت ما ریشه دارد و چیزهایی که از جایگیریِ کاملاً معمولی و زیستشناختیِ ما در جهان نشئت میگیرند.
امر زیباییشناختی مربوط به این زمختترین و ملموسترین سویهٔ امر انسانی است، چیزی که فلسفهٔ مابعد دکارت، در نوعی لغزش عجیب توجه و تمرکز، به نحوی موفق به نادیده گرفتن آن شده است. به این ترتیب، میتوان [ظهور زیباییشناسی] را جزو نخستین تحرکاتِ ماتریالیسمی ابتدایی به شمار آورد تحرکاتِ شورشِ مدتها خاموش ماندهٔ بدن در برابر ستم و سلطهٔ امر نظری.
اما غفلت فلسفهٔ کلاسیک از این قلمرو بدون هزینهٔ سیاسی نبود. زیرا چگونه نظامی سیاسی میتواند بدون مورد توجه قرار دادنِ ملموسترین حوزهٔ امور «زیسته»، و هرآنچه که به زیستِ تنانی و حسیِ جامعه تعلق دارد، شکوفا شود؟ چگونه ممکن است «تجربه» خارج از دامنهٔ مفاهیمِ هدایتگرِ جامعه قرار گیرد؟ آیا ممکن است این حوزه بهتمامی در برابر عقلْ خاموش و نفوذناپذیر مانده باشد، و همانقدر برای مقولات و مفاهیمِ آن دسترسناپذیر باشد که عطر آویشن یا طعم سیبزمینی؟ آیا باید از حیات بدن به عنوان دیگریِ محض و نااندیشیدنیِ اندیشه دست کشید، یا ممکن است بتوان راه و رسم رازآلودِ آن را به نحوی از انحاء به وسیلهٔ فرایند تعقل ردیابی کرد در قالب چیزی که در حقیقت دانشی سراپا تازه خواهد بود، یعنی دانش حس پذیری؟ اگر این ترکیب چیزی جز نوعی تناقض در عبارت نباشد، بدون شک پیامدهای سیاسیِ وخیمی بر آن مترتب خواهد بود. هیچچیز ناکارآمدتر از عقلانیتی حکمفرما نیست که قادر به شناخت چیزی خارج از مقولات و مفاهیم خود نباشد، یعنی جستوجو در همان چیزی که خمیرمایهٔ احساسات و ادراکات را شکل میدهد برایش ممنوع باشد. چگونه پادشاه مطلق عقل قرار است مشروعیت خود را حفظ کند، در حالی که آنچه کانت «ازدحام» حواس مینامید برای همیشه خارج از قلمرو فهم آن قرار داشته باشد؟ آیا قدرت نیازمند قابلیتی برای کالبد بخشیدن به احساساتِ آنچه بر آن حکم میراند نیست؟ آیا لازم نیست نوعی علم یا منطقی انضمامی در اختیار داشته باشد که با آن بتواند ساختارهای حیات زنده و ذیشعور را از درون نقشهبرداری کند؟
زیباییشناسی به عنوان گفتمانی مربوط به بدن تولد یافت. این اصطلاح در صورتبندی اولیهٔ خود به وسیلهٔ فیلسوف آلمانی الکساندر باومگارتن، در درجهٔ نخست به هنر اشاره نداشت بلکه، همانطور که لغت یونانیِ aisthesis نشان میدهد، ناظر به کل حوزهٔ ادراک و حسیافتِ (sensation) انسانی بود، در تقابل با قلمرو رفیعترِ تفکر مفهومی. تمایزی که اصطلاح aesthetic در آغاز در میانهٔ سدهٔ هجدهم به اجرا میگذارَد تفاوت میان «هنر» و «زندگی» نیست، بلکه تفاوت امر مادی و امر غیرمادی است: تفاوت چیزها و اندیشهها، حسیافتها و ایدهها، آنچه که به حیات جانوری ما مربوط میشود در مقابل آنچه حیات سایهوار خود را در پستوهای ذهن دنبال میکند. چنان است که گویی فلسفه بهناگهان نسبت به این واقعیت هوشیار میشود که قلمروِ متراکم و پرهیاهویی بیرون از جزیرهٔ ذهنی خودش وجود دارد که آن را با تهدیدِ چیزی بهتمامی خارج از دامنهٔ نفوذش مواجه میکند. و این قلمرو چیزی کمتر از زندگی حسپذیر ما در تمامیت آن نیست یعنی کل قلمرو علائق و بیزاریهای ما، نحوهٔ برخورد جهان با سطوح حسپذیرِ بدن ما، و همهٔ آنچه در نگاه و دل و جرئت ما ریشه دارد و چیزهایی که از جایگیریِ کاملاً معمولی و زیستشناختیِ ما در جهان نشئت میگیرند.
امر زیباییشناختی مربوط به این زمختترین و ملموسترین سویهٔ امر انسانی است، چیزی که فلسفهٔ مابعد دکارت، در نوعی لغزش عجیب توجه و تمرکز، به نحوی موفق به نادیده گرفتن آن شده است. به این ترتیب، میتوان [ظهور زیباییشناسی] را جزو نخستین تحرکاتِ ماتریالیسمی ابتدایی به شمار آورد تحرکاتِ شورشِ مدتها خاموش ماندهٔ بدن در برابر ستم و سلطهٔ امر نظری.
اما غفلت فلسفهٔ کلاسیک از این قلمرو بدون هزینهٔ سیاسی نبود. زیرا چگونه نظامی سیاسی میتواند بدون مورد توجه قرار دادنِ ملموسترین حوزهٔ امور «زیسته»، و هرآنچه که به زیستِ تنانی و حسیِ جامعه تعلق دارد، شکوفا شود؟ چگونه ممکن است «تجربه» خارج از دامنهٔ مفاهیمِ هدایتگرِ جامعه قرار گیرد؟ آیا ممکن است این حوزه بهتمامی در برابر عقلْ خاموش و نفوذناپذیر مانده باشد، و همانقدر برای مقولات و مفاهیمِ آن دسترسناپذیر باشد که عطر آویشن یا طعم سیبزمینی؟ آیا باید از حیات بدن به عنوان دیگریِ محض و نااندیشیدنیِ اندیشه دست کشید، یا ممکن است بتوان راه و رسم رازآلودِ آن را به نحوی از انحاء به وسیلهٔ فرایند تعقل ردیابی کرد در قالب چیزی که در حقیقت دانشی سراپا تازه خواهد بود، یعنی دانش حس پذیری؟ اگر این ترکیب چیزی جز نوعی تناقض در عبارت نباشد، بدون شک پیامدهای سیاسیِ وخیمی بر آن مترتب خواهد بود. هیچچیز ناکارآمدتر از عقلانیتی حکمفرما نیست که قادر به شناخت چیزی خارج از مقولات و مفاهیم خود نباشد، یعنی جستوجو در همان چیزی که خمیرمایهٔ احساسات و ادراکات را شکل میدهد برایش ممنوع باشد. چگونه پادشاه مطلق عقل قرار است مشروعیت خود را حفظ کند، در حالی که آنچه کانت «ازدحام» حواس مینامید برای همیشه خارج از قلمرو فهم آن قرار داشته باشد؟ آیا قدرت نیازمند قابلیتی برای کالبد بخشیدن به احساساتِ آنچه بر آن حکم میراند نیست؟ آیا لازم نیست نوعی علم یا منطقی انضمامی در اختیار داشته باشد که با آن بتواند ساختارهای حیات زنده و ذیشعور را از درون نقشهبرداری کند؟
January 22, 2022
Get dunked on by Rorty for being an ideologue:
“Socrates and Plato suggested that if we tried hard enough we should find beliefs which everybody found intuitively plausible, and that among these would be moral beliefs whose implications, when clearly realized, would make us virtuous as well as knowledgeable. To thinkers like Allan Bloom (on the Straussian side) and Terry Eagleton (on the Marxist side), there just must be such beliefs – unwobbling pivots that determine the answer to the question: Which moral or political alternative is objectively valid? For Deweyan pragmatists like me, history and anthropology are enough to show that there are no unwobbling pivots, and that seeking objectivity is just a matter of getting as much intersubjective agreement as you can manage.”
“Socrates and Plato suggested that if we tried hard enough we should find beliefs which everybody found intuitively plausible, and that among these would be moral beliefs whose implications, when clearly realized, would make us virtuous as well as knowledgeable. To thinkers like Allan Bloom (on the Straussian side) and Terry Eagleton (on the Marxist side), there just must be such beliefs – unwobbling pivots that determine the answer to the question: Which moral or political alternative is objectively valid? For Deweyan pragmatists like me, history and anthropology are enough to show that there are no unwobbling pivots, and that seeking objectivity is just a matter of getting as much intersubjective agreement as you can manage.”
January 24, 2020
I thought Eagleton was a little too ambitious overall, but the concluding pages made me think differently.
Read
May 14, 2020Lo he leído bastante por encima.
August 16, 2016
eagleton is at his best in presenting the ideas of others, usually done with an appropriate degree of acerbic wit. that said, his own affirmative theses are less strong.
September 7, 2013
OK, Terry Eagleton is pretty much a BAMF. This is by no means an easy read, but once you get used to Eagleton's jargon (and hegemonic-agenda) it begins to fall together. Can't wait to finish this!
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