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Heretiker: Polemische Essays über moderne Denker, Säkularismus, Wahrheit und moralische Verantwortung im edwardianischen England
Heretics [Epic Audio Collection] is an live audio recording of performers reading the book in it's original text. This edition is part of the Epic Audio Collection of talking books.
96 pages, Paperback
Published June 25, 2025
About the author
G.K. Chesterton
4,323 books6,080 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
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August 27, 2025
CHESTERTON TAKES ON A VARIETY OF OTHER WRITERS
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer, who ultimately converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1905 book, “Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society that the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word ‘orthodox.’ In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him… If he stood alone in a howling wilderness he was more than a man: he was a church. He was the center of the universe … All the tortures torn out of forgotten hells could not make him admit that he was heretical… The word ‘heresy’ not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word ‘orthodoxy’ no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. Because obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical.” (Pg. 1-2)
He observes, “Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction, Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion.” (Pg. 5)
He explains, “For these reasons, and for many more, I for one have come to believe in going back to fundamentals. Such is the general idea of this book. I wish to deal with my most distinguished contemporaries, not personally or in a merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of doctrine which they teach… I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic---that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.” (Pg. 6)
He notes, “The case of the general talk of ‘progress’ is, indeed, an extreme one. As enunciated today, ‘progress’ is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress… Progress, properly understood, has… a most dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous… Nobody has any business to use the word ‘progress’ unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals… It is, moreover, true that the people who had settled least what is progress are the most ‘progressive’ people in it…” (Pg. 14-15)
He says of Bernard Shaw, “The whole force and triumph of Mr. Bernard Shaw lies in the fact that he is a thoroughly consistent man… his power consists in holding his own fortress night and day. He puts the Shaw test rapidly and rigorously to everything that happens in heaven or earth. His standard never varies. The thing which weak-minded revolutionists and weak-minded Conservatives really hate (and fear) in him, is exactly this, that his scales… are held even, and that his law, such as it is, is justly enforced. You may attack his principles, as I do; but I do not know of any instance in which you can attack their application. If he dislikes lawlessness, he dislikes the lawlessness of Socialists as much as that of Individualists… If he laughs at the authority of priests, he laughs louder at the pomposity of men of science.” (Pg. 26-27)
He continues, “But the sensation connected with Mr. Shaw in recent years has been his sudden development of the religion of the Superman. He who had to all appearances mocked at the faiths in the forgotten past discovered a new god in the unimaginable future… Mr. Shaw, on the practical side perhaps the most humane man alive, is in this sense inhumane. He has even been infected to some extent with the primary intellectual weakness of his new master, Nietzsche, the strange notion that the greater and stronger a man is the more he would despise other things.” (Pg. 29-30)
He notes, “The usual verdict of educated people on the Salvation Army is expressed in some such words as these: ‘I have no doubt they do a great deal of good, but they do it in a vulgar and profane style.’ … To me, unfortunately, the precise reverse of this appears to be the truth. I do not know whether [their] … aims are excellent, but I am quite sure their methods are admirable. Their methods are the methods of all intense and hearty religions; they are popular like all religion, military like all religion, public and sensational like all religion. They are not reverent any more than Roman Catholics are reverent, for reverence in the sad and delicate meaning of the term reverence is a thing only possible to infidels.” (Pg. 46)
He says of alcohol, “The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other sound rules---a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.” (Pg. 52)
He asserts, “The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart. If that is gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched. If that remain, it matters very little if a few Early Victorian armchairs remain along with it… But I will have nothing to do with simplicity which lacks the fear, the astonishment, and the joy alike. I have nothing to do with the devilish vision of a child who is too simple to like toys.” (Pg. 71)
He argues, “There is only one thing in the modern world that has been face to face with Paganism… and that is Christianity… Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French Revolution is of Christian origin… The anarchists are of Christian origin. Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.” (Pg. 81)
He states, “Nietzsche… has a description somewhere… of the disgust and disdain which consume him at the sight of the common people with their common faces, their common voices, and their common minds…. Nietzsche’s aristocracy has about it all the sacredness that belongs to the weak… But when Nietzsche has the incredible lack of humor and lack of imagination to ask us to believe that his aristocracy is an aristocracy of strong muscles or an aristocracy of strong wills, it is necessary to point out the truth. It is an aristocracy of weak nerves.” (Pg. 95-96)
He says of atheist (and ex-priest) Joseph McCabe, “Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else… Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German… Mr. McCabe is under the influence of a primary fallacy which I have found very common in men of the clerical type. Numbers of clergymen have… reproached me for making jokes about religion… the people (as I tactfully pointed out to them) who really take the name of the Lord in vain are the clergymen themselves. The thing which is fundamentally and really frivolous is not a careless joke…. [but] a careless solemnity.” (Pg. 116)
He asserts, “Everything in our age has, when carefully examined, this fundamental undemocratic quality. In religion and morals we should admit, in the abstract, that the sins of the educated classes were as great as, or perhaps greater than, the sins of the poor and ignorant. But in practice the great difference between the medieval ethics and ours is that ours concentrate attention on the sins which are the sins of the ignorant, and practically deny that the sins which are of the educated are sins at all.” (Pg. 144)
Fans of Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’ and ‘The Everlasting Man’ will enjoy this early (and pre-Catholic) work.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer, who ultimately converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1905 book, “Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society that the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word ‘orthodox.’ In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him… If he stood alone in a howling wilderness he was more than a man: he was a church. He was the center of the universe … All the tortures torn out of forgotten hells could not make him admit that he was heretical… The word ‘heresy’ not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word ‘orthodoxy’ no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. Because obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical.” (Pg. 1-2)
He observes, “Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction, Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion.” (Pg. 5)
He explains, “For these reasons, and for many more, I for one have come to believe in going back to fundamentals. Such is the general idea of this book. I wish to deal with my most distinguished contemporaries, not personally or in a merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of doctrine which they teach… I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic---that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.” (Pg. 6)
He notes, “The case of the general talk of ‘progress’ is, indeed, an extreme one. As enunciated today, ‘progress’ is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress… Progress, properly understood, has… a most dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous… Nobody has any business to use the word ‘progress’ unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals… It is, moreover, true that the people who had settled least what is progress are the most ‘progressive’ people in it…” (Pg. 14-15)
He says of Bernard Shaw, “The whole force and triumph of Mr. Bernard Shaw lies in the fact that he is a thoroughly consistent man… his power consists in holding his own fortress night and day. He puts the Shaw test rapidly and rigorously to everything that happens in heaven or earth. His standard never varies. The thing which weak-minded revolutionists and weak-minded Conservatives really hate (and fear) in him, is exactly this, that his scales… are held even, and that his law, such as it is, is justly enforced. You may attack his principles, as I do; but I do not know of any instance in which you can attack their application. If he dislikes lawlessness, he dislikes the lawlessness of Socialists as much as that of Individualists… If he laughs at the authority of priests, he laughs louder at the pomposity of men of science.” (Pg. 26-27)
He continues, “But the sensation connected with Mr. Shaw in recent years has been his sudden development of the religion of the Superman. He who had to all appearances mocked at the faiths in the forgotten past discovered a new god in the unimaginable future… Mr. Shaw, on the practical side perhaps the most humane man alive, is in this sense inhumane. He has even been infected to some extent with the primary intellectual weakness of his new master, Nietzsche, the strange notion that the greater and stronger a man is the more he would despise other things.” (Pg. 29-30)
He notes, “The usual verdict of educated people on the Salvation Army is expressed in some such words as these: ‘I have no doubt they do a great deal of good, but they do it in a vulgar and profane style.’ … To me, unfortunately, the precise reverse of this appears to be the truth. I do not know whether [their] … aims are excellent, but I am quite sure their methods are admirable. Their methods are the methods of all intense and hearty religions; they are popular like all religion, military like all religion, public and sensational like all religion. They are not reverent any more than Roman Catholics are reverent, for reverence in the sad and delicate meaning of the term reverence is a thing only possible to infidels.” (Pg. 46)
He says of alcohol, “The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other sound rules---a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.” (Pg. 52)
He asserts, “The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart. If that is gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched. If that remain, it matters very little if a few Early Victorian armchairs remain along with it… But I will have nothing to do with simplicity which lacks the fear, the astonishment, and the joy alike. I have nothing to do with the devilish vision of a child who is too simple to like toys.” (Pg. 71)
He argues, “There is only one thing in the modern world that has been face to face with Paganism… and that is Christianity… Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French Revolution is of Christian origin… The anarchists are of Christian origin. Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.” (Pg. 81)
He states, “Nietzsche… has a description somewhere… of the disgust and disdain which consume him at the sight of the common people with their common faces, their common voices, and their common minds…. Nietzsche’s aristocracy has about it all the sacredness that belongs to the weak… But when Nietzsche has the incredible lack of humor and lack of imagination to ask us to believe that his aristocracy is an aristocracy of strong muscles or an aristocracy of strong wills, it is necessary to point out the truth. It is an aristocracy of weak nerves.” (Pg. 95-96)
He says of atheist (and ex-priest) Joseph McCabe, “Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else… Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German… Mr. McCabe is under the influence of a primary fallacy which I have found very common in men of the clerical type. Numbers of clergymen have… reproached me for making jokes about religion… the people (as I tactfully pointed out to them) who really take the name of the Lord in vain are the clergymen themselves. The thing which is fundamentally and really frivolous is not a careless joke…. [but] a careless solemnity.” (Pg. 116)
He asserts, “Everything in our age has, when carefully examined, this fundamental undemocratic quality. In religion and morals we should admit, in the abstract, that the sins of the educated classes were as great as, or perhaps greater than, the sins of the poor and ignorant. But in practice the great difference between the medieval ethics and ours is that ours concentrate attention on the sins which are the sins of the ignorant, and practically deny that the sins which are of the educated are sins at all.” (Pg. 144)
Fans of Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’ and ‘The Everlasting Man’ will enjoy this early (and pre-Catholic) work.
May 26, 2026
Don‘t ask about it. Half the time i didn‘t get the references, because I am a poor reader. It had a lot good parts but it lost me in between
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews