The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve always admired Terry Eagleton’s concise and clear writing style. So I was very curious as to what he would say when he wrote this book (in the midst of battling cancer). In some ways, I am awestruck by how quickly he is able to get to the heart of such complex philosophies. In other ways I feel let down by Eagleton’s approach.
Eagleton takes a reductionist stance on the question “What is the meaning of life”, at once picking apart the question through choice thinkers. Eagleton’s weakness in this approach is that in his reluctance to commit deeply to examining one approach, he only skims the surface of the question.
While it may be true that “life is what we individually make of it” as he is so quick to end on an analogy of jazz and invention… whereas a philosopher and thinker one should approach a reflective, meta- level answer, weaved between the different structural positions of such thinkers. Instead he is mired in the specific remarks of specific thinkers, preventing his ability to cohere a unique context from which to read this question. By taking all voices equally he obsurates the question and forgets why we even ask it in the first place. He lets his respect for all these brilliant thinkers get in the way presenting any true critiques. Eagleton excuses this lack of commitment to a stance by blaming it as a reflection of the postmodern era. He takes the easy way out, inviting the reader to create their own meaning even while he earlier dismisses this point of view through Aristotle.
So in a sense, this book is aptly named as only an introduction. It is still clearly written but also in a very real way cowardly as he hides behind the different juxtaposed contexts of past thinkers.
