[Marxism] Whimsical Terry Eagleton interview

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Magazine, April 22, 2007
Questions for Terry Eagleton
The Believer
Interview By DEBORAH SOLOMON

Q: As a professor of cultural theory at the 
University of Manchester in England, you reach 
some surprisingly sentimental conclusions in your 
new book, ?The Meaning of Life.? Tell us, What 
does life mean? Perhaps the two strongest 
candidates for the answer to the question are 
happiness and love. But one of the terrible 
things about the word ?happiness? is that it is 
so utterly feeble. It evokes the idea of people 
cavorting around with manic grins on their faces.

Is there a word you prefer to ?happiness?? 
Aristotle, of course, uses a term which is better 
translated as ?well-being.? The term I like is ?fulfillment.?

And where do you advise us to look for 
fulfillment? There?s a famous phrase from Karl 
Marx, in which he says that he wants a society in 
which the full development of each is the 
condition of the full development of all. What 
would it be like to find our fulfillment through 
each other rather than against each other?

In the book, you define love in egalitarian terms 
as well. But that doesn?t ring very true. What if 
someone falls in love with, for instance, a voice 
heard on the phone? You can talk about having 
affection or love for all kinds of things. You 
can love your handbag or bedroom slippers. That 
isn?t the full model of love, where each realizes 
himself or herself through the other doing the same.

Does love for a pet dog constitute true love, by 
your definition? No. Because it?s a biologically 
different species, it doesn?t realize itself, 
doesn?t flower into its own being, through that.

Do you find that having children adds meaning to 
life? I find that for a left-winger like me, the 
problem is that either your children out-left you or they become fascists.

Unlike most left-wingers, you have been a 
champion of religion. I did attack Richard 
Dawkins?s book on God because I think he is 
theologically illiterate. I value my Catholic 
background very much. It taught me not to be 
afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.

Where do you think all these neo-atheists like 
Dawkins are coming from? I suppose it is a 
reaction to various ugly types of fundamentalism. 
I?m entirely with Dawkins in condemning redneck 
fascists from Texas to the Taliban. But the 
trouble with Dawkins is that he thinks that?s what religion is.

You are generally described as England?s 
best-known literary critic. Where does that leave 
Clive James, whose essay collection, ?Cultural 
Amnesia,? was just published amid great fanfare 
in New York? I don?t really think he is a 
literary critic, although he is very clever.

Do you disapprove of the way he treats high 
culture and pop culture with equal seriousness? 
Not at all. My chair is in cultural studies. But 
that?s not the same as running off on chat shows.

What?s interesting is that neither you nor he 
seems to write much about actual books. I think 
what?s happened is that the literary critic has 
turned increasingly into a cultural critic 
because there are so many crises in our culture.

Have you read anything good lately? I don?t 
actually read other peoples? books. If I want to 
read a book, I write one myself. I have written more than 40 books.

How scandalous. Someone should stop you. I have 
tried to stop writing. In fact, I am looking for 
a ?contrascriptive? ? a tablet you can take that 
stops you from writing. There?s this organization 
called Writers Anonymous. They try to get you 
down from a full-length volume to a poem.

Very funny. Do you plan to go on book tour in the 
U.S.? No. As I get older, I find my visits to the 
States get shorter because I can?t take the 
general culture very much. I know I am back in 
the States because at the hotel breakfasts they are all talking about money.

Prince Charles once called you ?that dreadful 
Terry Eagleton.? What about you is so offensive 
to him? I think just existing is probably enough.


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