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Radical Sacrifice
A trenchant analysis of sacrifice as the foundation of the modern, as well as the ancient, social order
The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood.
Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion, while drawing together a host of philosophers, theologians, and texts—from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida to the Aeneid and The Wings of the Dove . Brilliant meditations on death and eros , Shakespeare and St. Paul, irony and hybridity explore the meaning of sacrifice in modernity, casting off misperceptions of barbarity to reconnect the radical idea to politics and revolution.
The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood.
Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion, while drawing together a host of philosophers, theologians, and texts—from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida to the Aeneid and The Wings of the Dove . Brilliant meditations on death and eros , Shakespeare and St. Paul, irony and hybridity explore the meaning of sacrifice in modernity, casting off misperceptions of barbarity to reconnect the radical idea to politics and revolution.
216 pages, Hardcover
Published April 30, 2018
37 people are currently reading
679 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
July 17, 2020
يخط تيري إيغلتن في هذا الكتاب عدداً من التأملات المفاهيمية ك :التضحية، المأساة، الموت، الشهيد، الحرمان، الحب وأخرى، في الوجدان الفردي-الجماعي، في إطار المجتمع القائم. عبر تصورات من داخل حجج دينية- فلسفية- ثقافية وأدبية. بما تحمله من إشكالات إنسية وفكرية مشحونة بالعاطفة. وهي محاولة ل تفسير هذه المفاهيم وتهذيب معانيها من منظور أو تجربة حسية-ذاتية بين السقوط واليقظة. سعياً لإصلاح الواقع بإقلاق البنى الاجتماعية، وتغير نظم القيم بطرق أو أساليب جوهرية وجذرية.
الكتاب يثير في النفس الكثير من المشاعر المختلطة والمتضاربة في معانيها.
الكتاب يثير في النفس الكثير من المشاعر المختلطة والمتضاربة في معانيها.
October 10, 2018
The long moral catastrophe known as the twentieth century gave sacrifice a bad name. In our reigning postmodern universe of therapeutic consolation, navel-gazing individualism, and smugly self-satisfied bourgeois hedonism, the concept of sacrifice connotes destructive ideological zealotry or futile and masochistic self-abnegation. Sacrifice offends liberal sensibilities most fundamentally because it implies that there are values beyond the self, towards which voluntary self-dispossession may be a necessity or even a positive good. Such a notion disrupts the prevailing logic by which autonomous, self-interested choice is the highest value, and individual comfort and self-possession are the measure of all things.
Terry Eagleton, a British literary theorist and Marxist, takes a deep dive into the intersecting realms of literature, philosophy, theology, economics, and psychoanalysis to unearth and rehabilitate the political and social value of the sacrificial ethos. With astonishing erudition, he engages with the Bible, Freud, Lacan, Girard, Badiou, Marx, Derrida, and the whole gamut of modern English literature from Shakespeare to William Golding to reconstruct the full meaning of sacrifice in its original, etymological sense: as a making sacred of the sacrificial object; a simultaneously blessed and cursed state of radical alienation from the symbolic order, which both illuminates its bankruptcy in the face of the equalizing power of death and signals the emergence of a new order, based on a newly-awakened subjectivity.
To sacrifice oneself is to take on the role of the scapegoat: that which is both holy and profane, kingly and beggarly; both a vessel for the sins and neuroses of the prevailing order, and, as such, a living icon of divinity which represents the primordial, all-negating mystery from which society emerges, against which it asserts its existence, and into which it inevitably collapses.
Paradoxically, the dispossessed occupy at once the lowest and highest position in the social hierarchy, precisely on account of their exclusion from that hierarchy. As Jesus said of himself, the stone the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone: that which a society refuses to acknowledge ultimately overthrows it in a kind of Return of the Repressed. The failings of the present, Eagleton says, are what give us our image of the future. In the Marxian terms he favors, the scapegoat of late capitalism is the proletariat, which is not so much a class as a non-class: the collected refuse and debris which the panning out of capitalist logic has left by the wayside. Through a sacrificial identification with this non-class—the embrasure of proletarian class consciousness—a post-capitalist order may emerge. The most authentic form of sacrifice in the modern world, Eagleton concludes, is revolution.
Terry Eagleton, a British literary theorist and Marxist, takes a deep dive into the intersecting realms of literature, philosophy, theology, economics, and psychoanalysis to unearth and rehabilitate the political and social value of the sacrificial ethos. With astonishing erudition, he engages with the Bible, Freud, Lacan, Girard, Badiou, Marx, Derrida, and the whole gamut of modern English literature from Shakespeare to William Golding to reconstruct the full meaning of sacrifice in its original, etymological sense: as a making sacred of the sacrificial object; a simultaneously blessed and cursed state of radical alienation from the symbolic order, which both illuminates its bankruptcy in the face of the equalizing power of death and signals the emergence of a new order, based on a newly-awakened subjectivity.
To sacrifice oneself is to take on the role of the scapegoat: that which is both holy and profane, kingly and beggarly; both a vessel for the sins and neuroses of the prevailing order, and, as such, a living icon of divinity which represents the primordial, all-negating mystery from which society emerges, against which it asserts its existence, and into which it inevitably collapses.
Paradoxically, the dispossessed occupy at once the lowest and highest position in the social hierarchy, precisely on account of their exclusion from that hierarchy. As Jesus said of himself, the stone the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone: that which a society refuses to acknowledge ultimately overthrows it in a kind of Return of the Repressed. The failings of the present, Eagleton says, are what give us our image of the future. In the Marxian terms he favors, the scapegoat of late capitalism is the proletariat, which is not so much a class as a non-class: the collected refuse and debris which the panning out of capitalist logic has left by the wayside. Through a sacrificial identification with this non-class—the embrasure of proletarian class consciousness—a post-capitalist order may emerge. The most authentic form of sacrifice in the modern world, Eagleton concludes, is revolution.
March 10, 2025
Just a really exceptional look at sacrifice and how sacrifice--radical sacrifice--can help explain and explore a whole series of ways we need to be living an ethical life. Eagleton's sources that he draws on to lay out arguments around sacrifice, and examples he uses to discuss them, are expansive but he manages to make most of them approachable in breaking down their arguments and I really felt like I understood many of his points, and that they were in fact highly clarifying in a larger sense. The part about forgiveness in particular struck me as deeply useful as a place for jumping off to more thinking and discussion, though so much else also was really useful and clarifying for me. (I will also say that his explanation of original sin is also more approachable and compelling than any I've heard or read before!)
I'm walking away from this wanting both to reread this (with my own, non-library copy so I can write in it properly,) and wanting to read like everything Eagleton has written ever, so that's a big endorsement in and of itself. Both accessible and thought provoking! Ideal!
2025 reread: just a great book. So many lines I want to chew on and also get as a tattoo.
I'm walking away from this wanting both to reread this (with my own, non-library copy so I can write in it properly,) and wanting to read like everything Eagleton has written ever, so that's a big endorsement in and of itself. Both accessible and thought provoking! Ideal!
2025 reread: just a great book. So many lines I want to chew on and also get as a tattoo.
June 9, 2019
Really "enjoyed" this as the GR star-rating system suggests, IF one can "enjoy" meditating on matters final, eschatological even. But seriously, this slim-ish book was an excellent companion to my current mood: having just finished Sophie's Choice I was primed to find this particular book congenial. TE's impossibly wide-ranging reading always astounds, and in this volume he focuses his wise and often witty intelligence on a number of literary and philosophical sources, all of whom he treats with characteristic fair-mindedness. Lacan, Derrida, St. Paul, and Oedipus in particular get numerous looks in as Eagleton weaves a compelling narrative which links the ancient origins of tragedy to the political aporiae latent in much recent in continental thought. Definitely worthy of a re-read, so am immediately ordering a paper copy of this eBook!
October 9, 2024
In the dismembering of humanity, we are witness to an epiphany of the Absolute.
All the hallmarks of popular criticism: lazy use of Girard, bastardized Lacanian psychoanalysis, predictable quoting of Hamlet, and just the right proportions of Hegel and Heidegger. We’re presented with sacrifice as a soteriological phenom, produced through semiological processes and shaped profoundly by sympathetic pieties (see Eagleton... I can also talk pretty and pretend medieval theology is modern theory). I’m annoyed by the explicit comparisons in the final few pages but satisfied to see Eagleton finally give into the Marxist underpinnings he pretends not to have the entire text.
4 stars - lots of think about…. for others though, not me. stay safe out there.
All the hallmarks of popular criticism: lazy use of Girard, bastardized Lacanian psychoanalysis, predictable quoting of Hamlet, and just the right proportions of Hegel and Heidegger. We’re presented with sacrifice as a soteriological phenom, produced through semiological processes and shaped profoundly by sympathetic pieties (see Eagleton... I can also talk pretty and pretend medieval theology is modern theory). I’m annoyed by the explicit comparisons in the final few pages but satisfied to see Eagleton finally give into the Marxist underpinnings he pretends not to have the entire text.
4 stars - lots of think about…. for others though, not me. stay safe out there.
February 3, 2021
Huh!? What an underwhelming and almost nonsensical book! One quote or name follows the other, only to be followed by the next usual suspect of euro-centric thought. The description of the book seems to be indicating that this is supposed to be an analysis of some sort but what it is is a chain of not necessarily coherent quotes about sacrife and christianity etc.
I see the idea to write this book but wtf, Terry!? There is no analysis, no critique in any of all this. It is just a glorified list of some ideas and histories.
And the idea of sacrife feels extremely arbitrary. I feel a number of concepts and ideas could easily have replaced it, almost without any need to change text.
Two-star review is only because this is probably the last book I’ll finish in 2020 and I usually like Eagleton. Happy new year to those reading this. 🥂
I see the idea to write this book but wtf, Terry!? There is no analysis, no critique in any of all this. It is just a glorified list of some ideas and histories.
And the idea of sacrife feels extremely arbitrary. I feel a number of concepts and ideas could easily have replaced it, almost without any need to change text.
Two-star review is only because this is probably the last book I’ll finish in 2020 and I usually like Eagleton. Happy new year to those reading this. 🥂
March 1, 2020
Good tidbits showing the revolutionary aspect of sacrifice... but otherwise the book is completely eclectic, a long string of name-dropping, jumping from some author's point of view to the other's without actually trying to coherently tie the things together. Not to mention that the author's point of view is almost indistinguishable, and the overall argument is completely lost.
I'm a radical who has read a lot of heavy stuff, and I engage in political praxis. And I do not understand this book, the question then remains: who the fuck is this book written for if not for someone like me?
I'm a radical who has read a lot of heavy stuff, and I engage in political praxis. And I do not understand this book, the question then remains: who the fuck is this book written for if not for someone like me?
March 16, 2020
Sacrifice examined from every lense. A compact collection of philosophical examinations about sacrifice throughout history, examining scapegoatism, religion, and political movements. Honestly, this could be a great book for any Christian to read to convert them to into a communist.
September 4, 2021
ثلاثة نجوم للموضوع الفريد
والرابعة للتنوع والاقتباس والتحليل الذي يفتح الذهن على مفاهيم جديدة ويلقي بظلاله على المنظور الفلسفي والأدبي والاجتماعي والأخلاقي والديني -سوى الإسلام- التضحية بكافة مستوياتها الروحية والجسدية والعاطفية وشيء من الاقتصاد والسياسة
والرابعة للتنوع والاقتباس والتحليل الذي يفتح الذهن على مفاهيم جديدة ويلقي بظلاله على المنظور الفلسفي والأدبي والاجتماعي والأخلاقي والديني -سوى الإسلام- التضحية بكافة مستوياتها الروحية والجسدية والعاطفية وشيء من الاقتصاد والسياسة
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September 20, 2018链接：https://www.the-american-interest.com...
《美國利益》上連結中對 Terry Eagleton 新書 Radical Sacrifice 的書評，是近來讀到最富後自由（神學）精神的 essay了。作者 Molly Brigid McGrath 精確地掌握到文化無神論者Terry Eagleton 揉合馬克思主義＋基督教神學的後現代左派路線，將遭遇到的內在困境：「自我」。
在後自由主義對自由主義的批判上，Molly Brigid McGrath 列舉了兩條不同後自由路線的新書： Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed (2018) 以及 Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option (2017)。
她也正確地點出「自由主義」的內在悖論，在於它需要「政府」保障這樣的自由；而至少在軍隊和公僕這件事上，無法用「自由主義」的邏輯操作，而是必須仰賴社群主義的公共神學進行支撐：
//Even this liberal order, which tries to privatize the search for meaning, is neither neutral nor self-supporting; it requires people willing to make sacrifices for it without turning to it as the wellspring of meaning. That is a fine needle to thread, for we ask people—soldiers, for example—to make ultimate sacrifices for the sake of a procedural order. It requires a self-effacing, rather unsatisfying faith, one pushing us to focus on something smaller-seeming than it should: the responsibility that, in daily life, we take for ourselves and our civic companions.//
Terry Eagleton 對於基督在十架上的犧牲採納了 John Caputo 等人自1970年代就提出的弱神學（weak theology）進路：「若上帝能復活，基督就是假死而非犧牲」。傳統神學會在這問題被纏住；但後自由神學用「實動本體論」回應了弱神學，無須落入後現代的本體論虛無主義——「實動本體論」的內涵此處先按下不表。但 Terry Eagleton 繼續使用「弱神學」作為其世俗化公共神學論基的破綻，則被 Molly Brigid McGrath 逐步揭露：
//[I]n Radical Sacrifice, Eagleton adopts a different view. Here, he wants too much “self-dispossession,” urging a “selfless” ethics, based on a postmodern non-self mixed with a revolutionary Marxist materialistic reduction of the person. It is homo sapiens stripped of all meaning that shows us the ground of solidarity: “Our common susceptibility to political murder constitutes a potent egalitarian bond.” But that sense of self—as potential victim in solidarity with other victims who probably don’t exist as free agents in the first place—is hardly enough to make someone want to live through life’s inevitable moments of terrible suffering.//
Molly Brigid McGrath 反覆指出，馬克思主義「將個人認同化約為階級認同（class consiousness）」的根本特色，仍持續滲入Terry Eagleton 新書結論中的政治議程。在很多議程上，Eagleton在2018年的論述並沒有超過1970年代的北美的「弱神學」和南美的「解放神學」；他與 Ronald Dworkin 的平等主義有近似的目標（資源重分配），而他的政治彌賽亞願景又與 Slavoj Žižek 相仿（資本主義的暴虐將釘死「窮人］－當代的基督，唯有以這樣的鮮血和犧牲才能迎來新天新地）：
//Instead of hoping for an afterlife, or for lives of personal and interpersonal significance, we are to hope for a political afterlife: a world after capitalism. And this will be achieved through capitalism’s metaphorical crucifixion of the proletariat, the image of which should move the rest of us to repentance and conversion. About the “impending upheaval which Marx calls communism and the Christian Gospel calls the kingdom of God,” Eagleton concludes the book with the exciting, deep-sounding, but obscure sentence, “revolution is a modern version of what the ancient world knew as sacrifice.”//
但是如果「己」的本質不是「有」而是「無」，那麼「捨己」如何能被視為一種有意義的行為？（人能「捨」自己所「無」的東西嗎？）
就像前面引述他的話，似乎是叫「有」的人去捨，就像是基督（神）與人站在一道：“Our common susceptibility to political murder constitutes a potent egalitarian bond.” 但是他從未正面肯定人「有」的是什麼。
曾有公共神學家很明智地指出：基督徒實踐基督的愛，在私領域為愛，在公領域為「公義」。Eagleton 卻顯然地將兩者混淆使用，彷彿人可以對一個去掉具體靈魂和面容，被大眾臉化的「社會階層」有愛，並「捨己」：
//The abstract humanitarian caritas he hopes will transform the world is not aimed at the good of the specific people we encounter, but is anonymous—“an impersonal (which is to say, political or institutional) love.”//
更糟的是，如果我沒有「己」的本質是「無」，那麼我們何來「己」能夠捨呢？
//Worse, throughout the book Eagleton emphasizes the “nothingness” and “lack” that, for him in this book at least, constitute the core of humanity:
...‘I am nothing, but as it were a Nothing aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack.’... [T]o acknowledge the self as nothing is to transcend the self-serving illusions of the ego in order to be open to the reality of other selves.
You are nothing, but capable of being aware of yourself and of serving either yourself or others, and “the Other” is presumably also nothing, but somehow also a reality worthy of your attention, love, and suffering. We will create our meaning out of nothing, it seems, when political institutions, loving humanity anonymously and impersonally, end capitalist dehumanization. But mustn’t persons be something significant already for there to be something wrong with de-humanization and right with love?//
這是為什麼，我們仍需要回到基督教的人論，把人視為上帝按照自己的形象、指頭所親造，並且賦予靈魂、獨一無二的活創造。這樣生發的政治、這樣的社群、這樣的共融與犧牲，才真實地轉化世界、蘊含意義。
《美國利益》上連結中對 Terry Eagleton 新書 Radical Sacrifice 的書評，是近來讀到最富後自由（神學）精神的 essay了。作者 Molly Brigid McGrath 精確地掌握到文化無神論者Terry Eagleton 揉合馬克思主義＋基督教神學的後現代左派路線，將遭遇到的內在困境：「自我」。
在後自由主義對自由主義的批判上，Molly Brigid McGrath 列舉了兩條不同後自由路線的新書： Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed (2018) 以及 Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option (2017)。
她也正確地點出「自由主義」的內在悖論，在於它需要「政府」保障這樣的自由；而至少在軍隊和公僕這件事上，無法用「自由主義」的邏輯操作，而是必須仰賴社群主義的公共神學進行支撐：
//Even this liberal order, which tries to privatize the search for meaning, is neither neutral nor self-supporting; it requires people willing to make sacrifices for it without turning to it as the wellspring of meaning. That is a fine needle to thread, for we ask people—soldiers, for example—to make ultimate sacrifices for the sake of a procedural order. It requires a self-effacing, rather unsatisfying faith, one pushing us to focus on something smaller-seeming than it should: the responsibility that, in daily life, we take for ourselves and our civic companions.//
Terry Eagleton 對於基督在十架上的犧牲採納了 John Caputo 等人自1970年代就提出的弱神學（weak theology）進路：「若上帝能復活，基督就是假死而非犧牲」。傳統神學會在這問題被纏住；但後自由神學用「實動本體論」回應了弱神學，無須落入後現代的本體論虛無主義——「實動本體論」的內涵此處先按下不表。但 Terry Eagleton 繼續使用「弱神學」作為其世俗化公共神學論基的破綻，則被 Molly Brigid McGrath 逐步揭露：
//[I]n Radical Sacrifice, Eagleton adopts a different view. Here, he wants too much “self-dispossession,” urging a “selfless” ethics, based on a postmodern non-self mixed with a revolutionary Marxist materialistic reduction of the person. It is homo sapiens stripped of all meaning that shows us the ground of solidarity: “Our common susceptibility to political murder constitutes a potent egalitarian bond.” But that sense of self—as potential victim in solidarity with other victims who probably don’t exist as free agents in the first place—is hardly enough to make someone want to live through life’s inevitable moments of terrible suffering.//
Molly Brigid McGrath 反覆指出，馬克思主義「將個人認同化約為階級認同（class consiousness）」的根本特色，仍持續滲入Terry Eagleton 新書結論中的政治議程。在很多議程上，Eagleton在2018年的論述並沒有超過1970年代的北美的「弱神學」和南美的「解放神學」；他與 Ronald Dworkin 的平等主義有近似的目標（資源重分配），而他的政治彌賽亞願景又與 Slavoj Žižek 相仿（資本主義的暴虐將釘死「窮人］－當代的基督，唯有以這樣的鮮血和犧牲才能迎來新天新地）：
//Instead of hoping for an afterlife, or for lives of personal and interpersonal significance, we are to hope for a political afterlife: a world after capitalism. And this will be achieved through capitalism’s metaphorical crucifixion of the proletariat, the image of which should move the rest of us to repentance and conversion. About the “impending upheaval which Marx calls communism and the Christian Gospel calls the kingdom of God,” Eagleton concludes the book with the exciting, deep-sounding, but obscure sentence, “revolution is a modern version of what the ancient world knew as sacrifice.”//
但是如果「己」的本質不是「有」而是「無」，那麼「捨己」如何能被視為一種有意義的行為？（人能「捨」自己所「無」的東西嗎？）
就像前面引述他的話，似乎是叫「有」的人去捨，就像是基督（神）與人站在一道：“Our common susceptibility to political murder constitutes a potent egalitarian bond.” 但是他從未正面肯定人「有」的是什麼。
曾有公共神學家很明智地指出：基督徒實踐基督的愛，在私領域為愛，在公領域為「公義」。Eagleton 卻顯然地將兩者混淆使用，彷彿人可以對一個去掉具體靈魂和面容，被大眾臉化的「社會階層」有愛，並「捨己」：
//The abstract humanitarian caritas he hopes will transform the world is not aimed at the good of the specific people we encounter, but is anonymous—“an impersonal (which is to say, political or institutional) love.”//
更糟的是，如果我沒有「己」的本質是「無」，那麼我們何來「己」能夠捨呢？
//Worse, throughout the book Eagleton emphasizes the “nothingness” and “lack” that, for him in this book at least, constitute the core of humanity:
...‘I am nothing, but as it were a Nothing aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack.’... [T]o acknowledge the self as nothing is to transcend the self-serving illusions of the ego in order to be open to the reality of other selves.
You are nothing, but capable of being aware of yourself and of serving either yourself or others, and “the Other” is presumably also nothing, but somehow also a reality worthy of your attention, love, and suffering. We will create our meaning out of nothing, it seems, when political institutions, loving humanity anonymously and impersonally, end capitalist dehumanization. But mustn’t persons be something significant already for there to be something wrong with de-humanization and right with love?//
這是為什麼，我們仍需要回到基督教的人論，把人視為上帝按照自己的形象、指頭所親造，並且賦予靈魂、獨一無二的活創造。這樣生發的政治、這樣的社群、這樣的共融與犧牲，才真實地轉化世界、蘊含意義。
March 27, 2021
I’ve been meaning to read Eagleton for some time, as he is a Catholic Marxist, but had been a little put off by his spat with Gaya Spivak and theory more broadly, although I certainly think Marxist critiques of academic theory are in order, though Eagleton is as much a theorist as anyone else, merely a ‘Marxist’ theorist. But Eagleton sometimes seems so insufferable. And to be honest, this book was fairly pompous. Let’s just say Eagleton can at times seem like a Trotskyist parody from central casting.
Despite all this, there were moments in this text that were very helpful. I think any area I’m not particularly familiar with already went smoothly right over my head. But for those that I had some prior acquaintance with, I think Eagleton does piece together some illuminating citations and connections. Much of this book does come across as a collage of treasured writing he’s collected over the vast amount of time he’s had the chance to read books. I think a lot of my writing ends up like that, though I don’t read as much as an academic, I’m quite sure. Spivak allegedly said “I don’t know anything, but I can quote,” which is something I was reminded of while reading this text by someone who is known for shit-talking Spivak. As a note, Spivak has said she is not a member of a political party, though active in the Frontier Journal started by Samar Sen. That being said, she said her politics is closer to the CPI-ML, which she claims would be her party if she were in a party, then the old CPI party in India. I believe she is referring to the same CPI-ML that is very critical of China’s re-education camps for Uyghurs.
Alright, back from this tangent: a lot of this Eagleton text was fairly dense, and I was surprised at the extent to which Eagleton engaged with postmodern theologians like Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy, and the work of Derrida, especially in his portions on ‘gift’. This was a corner of theology I was quite interested in back in 2014. I hosted a terrible radio show on my college’s radio station one semester that was partially themed around Jean-Luc Marion’s notion of “saturated phenomenon”. I only recently found out Marion was a student of Althusser and Deleuze at ENS in Paris. Anyway, Eagleton’s critique of Marion’s notion of love as “an encounter between two entirely unilateral acts of self-giving” is interesting, because I also gravitate towards a notion of love closer to mutuality than some pure Derridian gift given in such a way that makes repayment impossible, although I can understand where that Derridian fantasy comes from. Eagleton explains the logic like this:
“Even so, Derrida is right to discern what he calls an ‘absolute surplus value’ in the Christian idea of caritas, since there may be no great virtue in loving those who love you in return. Reciprocity in this sense of the term may certainly be suspect. As Matthew’s Gospel points out, there is no distinction in saluting your brethren only. Luke counsels against inviting to your feasts only those who might invite you to their dinner table in return. ‘There is an economy’, Derrida remarks of the New Testament, ‘but it is an economy that integrates the renunciation of a calculable remuneration’. One is expected to turn the other cheek, return good for evil, bless those who revile you, give away one’s cloak as well as one’s coat, walk two miles rather than one, forgive seventy times seven. These spendthrift acts are eschatological forms of excess – absurdist, avant-gardist, over-the-top gestures foreshadowing a future in which exchange-value will have been surpassed for what Paul Ricoeur terms ‘an economy of superabundance’.”
I have not really read Jean-Luc Nancy, only heard his work being discussed in various lectures and panels, but it was nice to get some of his thoughts in bite-sized samples suitable for Lenten contemplation. Eagleton writes about this negation of negation move that Nancy makes with respect to the Christian tradition:
“What is at stake on Calvary is an Aufhebung of sacrifice rather than a simple negation of it. The practice is both consummated and annulled. Jean-Luc Nancy speaks of Christianity as involving ‘the sacrifice of sacrifice’. The cross stands in an ancient tradition of sacrifice while also spelling its demise. If it consigns ritual slaughter to the benighted past, it is itself a matter of bloodshed and barbarism.”
Back during my 2014 radio show days, I was also fairly into Catherine Keller, who is a process theologian, and a lot of her work relays the postmodernist romanticization of chaos, which I think Eagleton critiques in a way that I agree with to an extent. These are debates that still unfold between communists an anarchists today:
“René Girard speaks of the monster or scapegoat as ‘a result of decomposition followed by a recombination’ The monster dissolves the given order, but in doing so clears the ground for it to be reconstructed. It is sacred because it lurks on the periphery of the social order, but also because it contains the capacity to transform it. Indeed, there is a sense in which the act of excluding this rough beast is itself sacred, since it is what founds the community in the first place. It signifies the primordial sacrifice that brings the world into being. At the same time, what is banished by this original act also has a prodigiously fertile power. The ambiguity of the term ‘sacred’ marks an attempt to grapple with this contradiction.
Julia Kristeva’s comments on Mary Douglas’s work in Powers of Horror are typical of a failure to do so. In predictable post-structuralist style, Kristeva sees dirt simply in terms of exclusion, not as a force for reconstruction. It is subversive but not transformative… The idea of order as such is implicitly denigrated, while the forces of anarchy and disruption are uncritically affirmed. Yet one does not subvert a set-up merely by a sentimental embrace of whatever it happens to reject. That social order can foster and protect human life, as well as stifle and suppress it, is not a truth that post-structuralism is in general eager to acknowledge.”
One of the most interesting things Eagleton elaborates on was how Adorno and Horkheimer view ancient sacrifice as a precursor to the exchange of modern economy, which I think is a very interesting angle on atonement and will certainly be a part of my Easter contemplation this year:
“The most strikingly gratuitous act is that of forgiveness, which ruptures the reciprocities of justice or the eternal cycles of vengeance, introducing a certain constructive non-identity into their fearful symmetry. The power of mimesis is accordingly broken: what I do is not what you do. Hegel describes the act as ‘the cancellation of fate’. Dialectic of Enlightenment views ancient sacrifice as foreshadowing the modern principle of exchange, which in the moral sphere takes the form of a fruitless circuit of sin, guilt and expiation. It is also the tit-for-tat reciprocity of justice, which exacts a condign penalty for each offence, as well as the ‘wild justice’ of revenge. For Christian faith, it is God’s refusal of this sterile principle that overthrows the ancien régime and inaugurates a new order, one in which equivalence gives way to excess. Forgiveness is the enemy of exchange value.
What breaks this circuit on Calvary is the fact that crime and forgiveness are one. In homeopathic mode, poison and cure are aspects of the same reality, as they are in the case of the scapegoat. The execution of Jesus involves the unjust spilling of human blood; but since it is also the act of pardoning it…”
There are also some interesting critiques of Rene Girard’s theories which I have not time to go into now, but likely the most fruitful thing that came out of this book was Eagleton’s portions on Agamben’s Homo Sacer which I happened to be reading alongside this book. It helped me understand a lot more of that text than I otherwise would have. I will finish with one such summary that Eagleton provides that I will be thinking about this Holy Week:
“For Giorgio Agamben, sovereign and homo sacer are curiously symmetrical figures. All men and women are potential homines sacri with respect to the ruler, while homo sacer is a figure with respect to whom all others can exert power. The kinship between sovereign and scapegoat is a familiar motif of social and religious thought in classical antiquity. When the king becomes a tyrant unrestrained by law, he is as anti-social as a wild beast.
There are several ways in which this alliance can be conceived. For one thing, neither the king nor the beggar can be adequately represented – the former rising above representation in his near-divinity, the latter falling below it in his negligibility. In the shadowy, lawless regions beyond the borders of society, gods and beasts mingle and interbreed, both in their different ways absolved from political authority. For the Christian doctrine of Incarnation, God himself is an animal. The sovereign, like the gods, is above the reach of the law, while the dispossessed fall below it. ”
Despite all this, there were moments in this text that were very helpful. I think any area I’m not particularly familiar with already went smoothly right over my head. But for those that I had some prior acquaintance with, I think Eagleton does piece together some illuminating citations and connections. Much of this book does come across as a collage of treasured writing he’s collected over the vast amount of time he’s had the chance to read books. I think a lot of my writing ends up like that, though I don’t read as much as an academic, I’m quite sure. Spivak allegedly said “I don’t know anything, but I can quote,” which is something I was reminded of while reading this text by someone who is known for shit-talking Spivak. As a note, Spivak has said she is not a member of a political party, though active in the Frontier Journal started by Samar Sen. That being said, she said her politics is closer to the CPI-ML, which she claims would be her party if she were in a party, then the old CPI party in India. I believe she is referring to the same CPI-ML that is very critical of China’s re-education camps for Uyghurs.
Alright, back from this tangent: a lot of this Eagleton text was fairly dense, and I was surprised at the extent to which Eagleton engaged with postmodern theologians like Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Luc Nancy, and the work of Derrida, especially in his portions on ‘gift’. This was a corner of theology I was quite interested in back in 2014. I hosted a terrible radio show on my college’s radio station one semester that was partially themed around Jean-Luc Marion’s notion of “saturated phenomenon”. I only recently found out Marion was a student of Althusser and Deleuze at ENS in Paris. Anyway, Eagleton’s critique of Marion’s notion of love as “an encounter between two entirely unilateral acts of self-giving” is interesting, because I also gravitate towards a notion of love closer to mutuality than some pure Derridian gift given in such a way that makes repayment impossible, although I can understand where that Derridian fantasy comes from. Eagleton explains the logic like this:
“Even so, Derrida is right to discern what he calls an ‘absolute surplus value’ in the Christian idea of caritas, since there may be no great virtue in loving those who love you in return. Reciprocity in this sense of the term may certainly be suspect. As Matthew’s Gospel points out, there is no distinction in saluting your brethren only. Luke counsels against inviting to your feasts only those who might invite you to their dinner table in return. ‘There is an economy’, Derrida remarks of the New Testament, ‘but it is an economy that integrates the renunciation of a calculable remuneration’. One is expected to turn the other cheek, return good for evil, bless those who revile you, give away one’s cloak as well as one’s coat, walk two miles rather than one, forgive seventy times seven. These spendthrift acts are eschatological forms of excess – absurdist, avant-gardist, over-the-top gestures foreshadowing a future in which exchange-value will have been surpassed for what Paul Ricoeur terms ‘an economy of superabundance’.”
I have not really read Jean-Luc Nancy, only heard his work being discussed in various lectures and panels, but it was nice to get some of his thoughts in bite-sized samples suitable for Lenten contemplation. Eagleton writes about this negation of negation move that Nancy makes with respect to the Christian tradition:
“What is at stake on Calvary is an Aufhebung of sacrifice rather than a simple negation of it. The practice is both consummated and annulled. Jean-Luc Nancy speaks of Christianity as involving ‘the sacrifice of sacrifice’. The cross stands in an ancient tradition of sacrifice while also spelling its demise. If it consigns ritual slaughter to the benighted past, it is itself a matter of bloodshed and barbarism.”
Back during my 2014 radio show days, I was also fairly into Catherine Keller, who is a process theologian, and a lot of her work relays the postmodernist romanticization of chaos, which I think Eagleton critiques in a way that I agree with to an extent. These are debates that still unfold between communists an anarchists today:
“René Girard speaks of the monster or scapegoat as ‘a result of decomposition followed by a recombination’ The monster dissolves the given order, but in doing so clears the ground for it to be reconstructed. It is sacred because it lurks on the periphery of the social order, but also because it contains the capacity to transform it. Indeed, there is a sense in which the act of excluding this rough beast is itself sacred, since it is what founds the community in the first place. It signifies the primordial sacrifice that brings the world into being. At the same time, what is banished by this original act also has a prodigiously fertile power. The ambiguity of the term ‘sacred’ marks an attempt to grapple with this contradiction.
Julia Kristeva’s comments on Mary Douglas’s work in Powers of Horror are typical of a failure to do so. In predictable post-structuralist style, Kristeva sees dirt simply in terms of exclusion, not as a force for reconstruction. It is subversive but not transformative… The idea of order as such is implicitly denigrated, while the forces of anarchy and disruption are uncritically affirmed. Yet one does not subvert a set-up merely by a sentimental embrace of whatever it happens to reject. That social order can foster and protect human life, as well as stifle and suppress it, is not a truth that post-structuralism is in general eager to acknowledge.”
One of the most interesting things Eagleton elaborates on was how Adorno and Horkheimer view ancient sacrifice as a precursor to the exchange of modern economy, which I think is a very interesting angle on atonement and will certainly be a part of my Easter contemplation this year:
“The most strikingly gratuitous act is that of forgiveness, which ruptures the reciprocities of justice or the eternal cycles of vengeance, introducing a certain constructive non-identity into their fearful symmetry. The power of mimesis is accordingly broken: what I do is not what you do. Hegel describes the act as ‘the cancellation of fate’. Dialectic of Enlightenment views ancient sacrifice as foreshadowing the modern principle of exchange, which in the moral sphere takes the form of a fruitless circuit of sin, guilt and expiation. It is also the tit-for-tat reciprocity of justice, which exacts a condign penalty for each offence, as well as the ‘wild justice’ of revenge. For Christian faith, it is God’s refusal of this sterile principle that overthrows the ancien régime and inaugurates a new order, one in which equivalence gives way to excess. Forgiveness is the enemy of exchange value.
What breaks this circuit on Calvary is the fact that crime and forgiveness are one. In homeopathic mode, poison and cure are aspects of the same reality, as they are in the case of the scapegoat. The execution of Jesus involves the unjust spilling of human blood; but since it is also the act of pardoning it…”
There are also some interesting critiques of Rene Girard’s theories which I have not time to go into now, but likely the most fruitful thing that came out of this book was Eagleton’s portions on Agamben’s Homo Sacer which I happened to be reading alongside this book. It helped me understand a lot more of that text than I otherwise would have. I will finish with one such summary that Eagleton provides that I will be thinking about this Holy Week:
“For Giorgio Agamben, sovereign and homo sacer are curiously symmetrical figures. All men and women are potential homines sacri with respect to the ruler, while homo sacer is a figure with respect to whom all others can exert power. The kinship between sovereign and scapegoat is a familiar motif of social and religious thought in classical antiquity. When the king becomes a tyrant unrestrained by law, he is as anti-social as a wild beast.
There are several ways in which this alliance can be conceived. For one thing, neither the king nor the beggar can be adequately represented – the former rising above representation in his near-divinity, the latter falling below it in his negligibility. In the shadowy, lawless regions beyond the borders of society, gods and beasts mingle and interbreed, both in their different ways absolved from political authority. For the Christian doctrine of Incarnation, God himself is an animal. The sovereign, like the gods, is above the reach of the law, while the dispossessed fall below it. ”
June 28, 2019
everything by Eagleton is good and nothing by Eagleton is bad. even the bad work by Eagleton is good.
i admit the influence of psychoanalysis is heavier in this particular work than some of the other books ive read by him, but he makes good use of it and makes it interesting. i appreciate the way he will invert, revert, rent, and suture back together a concept in order for us to view it from so many different angles. it encourages one to think more rigorously and challenge notions that i rarely interrogate because they are comfortable to me.
here's a part that stuck out to me, and which helped bring some light to Paul's proclamation in Romans that Christ liberates us from the evil of the law itself:
"There must, to be sure, be law; but as long as this is a necessity, there is always the possibility of making a fetish or idol out of it, as those under its sway come to desire the Law itself, falling morbidly in love with its seductive sadism and obeying it purely on account of its formal authority rather than craving the justice it demands. It is the difference between agape and eros - between those who practice the charity commanded by the Mosaic Law and those who become erotically entangled in its death-dealing toils, knowing nothing of it but its cruel, superegoic underside. To be enslaved by the Law is to revel in the self-lacerating delight it forces us to reap from our submission to its power. The obscene supplement or excess of the Law can be seen in the way it solicits its own transgression, but it is also to be found in its alluring invitation to love it for its own sake (for the Law, after all, is the Law) in the very act of issuing its peremptory commands.."
i admit the influence of psychoanalysis is heavier in this particular work than some of the other books ive read by him, but he makes good use of it and makes it interesting. i appreciate the way he will invert, revert, rent, and suture back together a concept in order for us to view it from so many different angles. it encourages one to think more rigorously and challenge notions that i rarely interrogate because they are comfortable to me.
here's a part that stuck out to me, and which helped bring some light to Paul's proclamation in Romans that Christ liberates us from the evil of the law itself:
"There must, to be sure, be law; but as long as this is a necessity, there is always the possibility of making a fetish or idol out of it, as those under its sway come to desire the Law itself, falling morbidly in love with its seductive sadism and obeying it purely on account of its formal authority rather than craving the justice it demands. It is the difference between agape and eros - between those who practice the charity commanded by the Mosaic Law and those who become erotically entangled in its death-dealing toils, knowing nothing of it but its cruel, superegoic underside. To be enslaved by the Law is to revel in the self-lacerating delight it forces us to reap from our submission to its power. The obscene supplement or excess of the Law can be seen in the way it solicits its own transgression, but it is also to be found in its alluring invitation to love it for its own sake (for the Law, after all, is the Law) in the very act of issuing its peremptory commands.."
August 8, 2025
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things
—1 Corinthians 13:11
On Dysmaturity
Is Terry Eagleton an adult? It's not a question of whether he's reached the age of majority. I'm wondering whether he's ever suffered the kind of despair that changes your life. Plenty grandfathers are still children at heart. It is not necessarily a bad thing. We would the whole world have it better. "This generation must break its neck in order that the next may have smooth going." (Virginia Wolf, Letter to Gerald Brenan, 1922) But we also remember crying nights. You type in "how to disappear completely" and get the Radiohead song. The problem isn't that life has become worthless, in fact it retains its "infinite" value. The problem is you have to work yourself up — against yourself — to set your life aside. Kierkegaard is a contemporary of ours because he still writes like he knows modern life, or rather what it means to be in-to despair:
Despair is veritably a self-consuming, but an impotent self-consuming that cannot do what it wants to do. What it wants to do is to consume itself, something it cannot do, and this impotence is a new form of self-consuming, in which despair is once again unable to do what it wants to do, to consume itself; [. . .] The inability of despair to consume is so remote from being any kind of comfort to the person in despair that it is the very opposite. This comfort is precisely the torment, is precisely what keeps the gnawing alive and keeps life in the gnawing, for it is precisely over this that he despairs: that he cannot consume himself, cannot get rid of himself, cannot reduce himself to nothing. (43)This experience of despair, though it changes a person, doesn't necessarily result in "maturity." Rather, it has more common with "dysmaturity": the syndrome of neonates born-too-late (after their due-date), characterized by long fingernails, growth restriction, and what we call, euphemistically, "meconium staining."
—Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
The reason I ask is because Eagleton writes about the experience of despair as if he were reciting answers to the Sunday School catechism.
"The suicide discards a life that has become worthless, whereas the martyr yields up what he or she regards as precious [. . .] For the martyr, life is so sweet that even death must be pressed into its service [. . .] This is why it is hard to say whether she goes to her death willingly or not. If it is a free decision, it is also one forced upon her by unpalatable circumstance, like someone who leaps from a high building to escape a raging fire” (74)It seems that for the sake of Eagleton's project the notions of suicide and martyrdom have been completely reversed. Martyrdom means forfeiting a "life so sweet," discovering — despite oneself — that it's impossible to keep living; "continually throwing down one's adversary as if only to enable it to draw fresh strength from the earth — until finally a situation is created which renders all retreat impossible and the conditions themselves cry out: 'Hic Rhodus, hic salta,'" that is, suicide; and suicide means "hating one's life (and father and mother)" such that one discards it as the "worthless" vestments cloaking the spiritual body, that is, martyrdom. The case of "leaping from a high building to escape a raging fire" is particularly notable because neither Eagleton (not editor) appear to have noticed that the metaphor illustrating the "radical sacrifice" of martyrdom is, evidently, a manifest case of suicide.
That said, I wouldn't credit the author with child-like innocence. The Kierkegaard text causing the trouble here with its insinuation that, relatively speaking, the martyrs have it easy, isn't exactly an obscure reference. In fact, I know Eagleton has read The Sickness Unto Death (1849) because he cites it in the text we're reading, "Kierkegaard speaks of the all-powerful subject as ‘a king without a country’, ruling over nothing *" (134). Albeit this little reference isn't very impactful, truly I tell you the way this text edits the sad parts counts as a fib, or perhaps a fib-by-omission.
The author is not expiated for fibs (read: sins), or at least not the way he thinks. Radical Sacrifice (2018) traces the sacrifice of the scapegoat down the academic slide from Leviticus and the Gospels all the way past Agamben, Derrida, and (the conspicuous absence of) Roberto Calasso. The product is the assertion that someone else's death has made amends for his fibs, or rather that, for every bit of suffering the martyrs endured, he ends up marginally better off:
"The ancient scapegoat is an ‘objective’ version of self-sacrifice [. . .] The scapegoat or pharmakos also involves a curious ambiguity, which is that the more besmirched it becomes, staggering under the burden of transgressions heaped on its head, the more admirably selfless it shows itself to be. Its redemptive power grows as its identification with human sin deepens, which is one reason why this sacrificial beast, like all sacred things, is both blessed and cursed [. . .] This creature cleanses by being contaminated. It is not sinful in itself, but as St Paul says of Christ, it is ‘made sin’ for the sake of others. [. . .] So the scapegoat is a device for transmuting guilt into innocence, or sin into saintliness" (114).Among those who use the term "scapegoat," few recall the goat's real situation. It's not the scapegoat himself, but his brother who is to be sacrificed. "Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the LORD / [...] He shall then slaughter the people’s goat of sin offering / [. . . ] And he shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness" (Leviticus 16:7-21). Again, Eagleton's emphasis falls on the wrong (goat) foot. Radical Sacrifice (2018) seems inspired by the power of the Levitical ritual. It's talking-up the sacrifice, but already perceives (as did the ancients) that the death of something that didn't really want to die (a suicide) is insufficient. The sacrifice is compelled to repeat itself with a doubling gesture — hence the scapegoat — a piety and a purification. Intuitively, we read these movements in an agnostic light. There's no piety to be gained in the ritual sacrifice of another. The act condemns itself. And sins do not leave the body when they are sent off into the wilderness with the scapegoat, rather they conceal themselves deeper. Only the scapegoat itself is redeemed. And woe to both sacrifice and scapegoat who endure, under the weight of total despair, what is essentially unbearable. "The priest of the sacrifice approached the fence in his ceremonial dress and spoke to the goats as follows: ‘Why do you detest being taken to your death? I will fatten you up for three months [. . .] Then white grass mats will be rolled out for you and your limbs will be laid on carved trays. What more do you want?’ Then he thought what the goats would have preferred and he said: ‘They prefer to be fed on husks and bran and to remain in their sty.'" (Roberto Calasso, The Ruin of Kasch, 1986) And yet we find the movements of "radical sacrifice" described in this text with the levity of the Sunday School lesson. The act feels weightless because it has always already been accomplished. It's as if we were reading from a fairy tale and not from the papers of one still living. To write like this one must be a child or the kind of doctrinaire who, after a gestation of many years, and well past his due date, has perhaps been able to go very far in the academy — although Nota Bene the long nails and meconium stink of these scholars are perhaps signs of dysmaturity.
June 8, 2020
If I wanted to read someone mangle Christianity into a leftist monstrosity of contemporary continental philosophy, all the while namedropping every other sentence, I would've stuck with Žižek.
May 24, 2024
What I like about Eagleton is the ability to explore a topic by diving into the presence of this topic in literature, politics, theaology, philosophy, economy and psychoanalysis. This way of laying out the opinion and ideas of others, exploring their merits and challenges adds a lot to the authenticity of the author as well as makes it an interesting and challenging read.
While the main topic of this book is sacrifice, Terry Eagleton smartly explored gifts exchange, forgiveness, scapegoating as essential topics that include sacrifice in order for them to exist.
The use of literature in exploring topics such as sacrifice and forgiveness is brilliant in my opinion. Literature provokes the imagination, aspire for the ideal while sometimes strike the reader with reality at its worst. The result was a non-fiction book that is emotionally as provoking as a best seller melancholy novel. It is hard to explain how Eagleton managed to use sacrifice and its exploration to provide a view into a more ethically driven world. But this is how it read to me.
My favorite parts were the exploration of forgiveness and gifts exchange. Gifts exchange section provides some great insights into the matter. It wittingly challenges the common capitalistic view on gifts but doesn't stop there. It goes beyond to explore an alternative view that is while hard to imagine and was difficult to read, the use of literature allowed for the use of the reader's imagination to draw the picture that is very uncommon in our capitalistic world.
Meanwhile, the whole section about forgiveness was emotionally extremely provoking. Forgiveness as Eagleton worked to explain is unnatural and supreme yet he makes compelling arguments that forigiveness is a "token to the future". As he puts it "forgiveness permits us a glimse of what would be needed to alter our condition". As I understood it, forgiveness is the change we need to have a chance in a better world.
All of that said, The use of God, religion -Christianity mainly- in most of the arguments dropped one star from the book. Maybe it was because when talking about "radical" sacrifice, what is a better example than Jesus cruxification. However, it made some parts of the book hard to grasp if you lack knowledge about cristianity and other parts a bit off putting.
While the main topic of this book is sacrifice, Terry Eagleton smartly explored gifts exchange, forgiveness, scapegoating as essential topics that include sacrifice in order for them to exist.
The use of literature in exploring topics such as sacrifice and forgiveness is brilliant in my opinion. Literature provokes the imagination, aspire for the ideal while sometimes strike the reader with reality at its worst. The result was a non-fiction book that is emotionally as provoking as a best seller melancholy novel. It is hard to explain how Eagleton managed to use sacrifice and its exploration to provide a view into a more ethically driven world. But this is how it read to me.
My favorite parts were the exploration of forgiveness and gifts exchange. Gifts exchange section provides some great insights into the matter. It wittingly challenges the common capitalistic view on gifts but doesn't stop there. It goes beyond to explore an alternative view that is while hard to imagine and was difficult to read, the use of literature allowed for the use of the reader's imagination to draw the picture that is very uncommon in our capitalistic world.
Meanwhile, the whole section about forgiveness was emotionally extremely provoking. Forgiveness as Eagleton worked to explain is unnatural and supreme yet he makes compelling arguments that forigiveness is a "token to the future". As he puts it "forgiveness permits us a glimse of what would be needed to alter our condition". As I understood it, forgiveness is the change we need to have a chance in a better world.
All of that said, The use of God, religion -Christianity mainly- in most of the arguments dropped one star from the book. Maybe it was because when talking about "radical" sacrifice, what is a better example than Jesus cruxification. However, it made some parts of the book hard to grasp if you lack knowledge about cristianity and other parts a bit off putting.
April 3, 2025
An absolutely wonderful account. It is clear that Eagleton in his development semi-recently (perhaps 15 years ago?) undertook a rather deep study of psychoanalysis particularly Freudian and Lacanian. It had certainly influence the development of his thought for the better, I’d argue substantially. There is a psychoanalytic sensitivity in this book which is not necessarily present in many of his other works (perhaps other than his book On Evil, in my view a necessary prerequisite to this one; then followed by Hope Without Optimism.) it is also supremely well researched in a way most of his other works are not, seemingly ever page has a reference to some other book or figure; it is a skillful work of scholarship. I also appreciate how he pushes back on the Germans (Nietzsche and Heidegger) and their view of death in light of their respective biases. His reading of Derrida and the Aeneid are fascinating and valuable, it all shows Eagleton to be an old-fashioned sort of Roman Catholic which is him at his best. He maintains all of the old fashioned style of the best Romans: frequent and charged readings of the New Testament with a particular interest in tragedy and evil as in the Passion, frequent developed references to Aquinas (who, in his old fashioned way, is the pinnacle of philosophical and theological wisdom and authority). His love of Latin and Greek against the French and German is a key element to his success. This is indicated in his disciplining of René Girard’s influential and paradigmatic theory of sacrifice which is reminiscent of a Roman Catholic priest correcting a young seminarians doctrine. I think his points against Girard are well expressed and correct. Ultimately Eagleton seeks to push for a Roman Catholic interpretation of the Cross (and its corollaries in martyrdom) as the summit of all death love and sacrifice. His vision is of a death which tires itself of death, a death which defines and provides meaning to a life. A Badiouian Event in which the act of sacrifice repels and destroys all presence of death in a paradoxical and antinomic self-death. Augustine’s ridding of the self to pave the way for God is here unconsciously developed in all its psychoanalytic and philosophical brilliance; and ultimately shows itself to be a still politically radical force. A wonderful book.
Want to read
October 17, 2025“Radical sacrifice is not a morbid glorification of death, but the courage to lay down one’s life for the sake of life itself.”
radical Sacrifice is one of Eagleton’s most profound and mature works a text that blends theology, philosophy, political theory, and literature with his characteristic wit and moral urgency. It feels both timely and timeless, confronting the spiritual emptiness of modern life with a fierce intelligence and moral depth.Eagleton’s prose is dense but luminous every page packed with references, from the Gospels to Marx, Freud, and modern poetry. Readers familiar with his earlier books (Reason, Faith, and Revolution; Culture and the Death of God) will recognize his ongoing project: to rescue Christian ethics from religious dogma and to reinterpret them in a radical, humanist, and socialist light.
The book’s strength lies in its moral clarity — its call to rethink love, solidarity, and self-giving in an age obsessed with profit and self-promotion. Eagleton is not sentimental; his vision of sacrifice is politically charged, insisting that to “lay down one’s life for one’s friends” is also to resist systems that crush human dignity.However, the book can be challenging for casual readers. Its philosophical arguments sometimes spiral into abstraction, and its heavy theological language may feel distant for those unfamiliar with Christian thought. Yet, even in its complexity, Eagleton’s central message shines through: a meaningful life requires the courage to give oneself away.
Verdict
radical Sacrifice is one of Eagleton’s most profound and mature works a text that blends theology, philosophy, political theory, and literature with his characteristic wit and moral urgency. It feels both timely and timeless, confronting the spiritual emptiness of modern life with a fierce intelligence and moral depth.Eagleton’s prose is dense but luminous every page packed with references, from the Gospels to Marx, Freud, and modern poetry. Readers familiar with his earlier books (Reason, Faith, and Revolution; Culture and the Death of God) will recognize his ongoing project: to rescue Christian ethics from religious dogma and to reinterpret them in a radical, humanist, and socialist light.
The book’s strength lies in its moral clarity — its call to rethink love, solidarity, and self-giving in an age obsessed with profit and self-promotion. Eagleton is not sentimental; his vision of sacrifice is politically charged, insisting that to “lay down one’s life for one’s friends” is also to resist systems that crush human dignity.However, the book can be challenging for casual readers. Its philosophical arguments sometimes spiral into abstraction, and its heavy theological language may feel distant for those unfamiliar with Christian thought. Yet, even in its complexity, Eagleton’s central message shines through: a meaningful life requires the courage to give oneself away.
Verdict
March 13, 2023
Okuduğuma memnun olduğum bir kitaptı. İlk kez Terry Eagleton okudum ve devamının gelmesini bekliyorum açıkçası. Radikal Kurban ilginç bir kitap, kurban deyince akla ilk gelen karşılıktan başlayarak bunun tarihten günümüze kaç farklı kavram ve yaşayışta vücut bulduğuna da değiniyor. Şahadet, affetmek, günah keçisi hatta armağan rolünde karşımıza çıkıyor kurban. Son zamanlarda zıt mefhumların birbirlerini yaşattıklarına dair çok fazla içerik okudum, bu kitap da bu gerçeğe değiniyor. Bazı eleştirilerde yazarın yorumunun ne zaman başladığı, eserlerin ne zaman yorumlandığı belli olmuyor denilmiş, buna katılmıyorum. Terry Eagleton'ın yorumları ve tespitleri son derece etkiliydi. Fakat arka arkaya eserleri, filozofları, söylemleri, duruşları değerlendirirken hepsine asgarî düzeyde de olsa hakim olmak gerektiğini düşünmedim değil. Beni açıkçası en fazla çeviri zorladı. Kitap zaten kolay bir kitap değil, bu ortada ve bunu bilerek başladım. Fakat çevirmenin kelime seçimi okumamı daha da zorlaştırdı.
Şunu belirtmem lazım: affetmekle ilgili olan kısım favorimdi ve Terry Eagleton'ın şahane analizleri sayesinde şu an Güvercinin Kanatları'nı okumak istiyorum. :) onlar nasıl karakter incelemeleriydi öyle!
Şunu belirtmem lazım: affetmekle ilgili olan kısım favorimdi ve Terry Eagleton'ın şahane analizleri sayesinde şu an Güvercinin Kanatları'nı okumak istiyorum. :) onlar nasıl karakter incelemeleriydi öyle!
April 12, 2021
An impressive catalogue of how sacrifice, martyrdom, scapegoats, etc. are portrayed in a variety of literature from Gilgamesh to the Bible to Shakespeare to Nietzsche to Girard to Harry Potter. Eagleton remains, to me, one of the more interesting writers to read. I actually felt uncomfortable reading much of the book as I am often suspicious of books that I agree with so readily. I'm sure I'll be referring back to this one.
Interesting side note: I came across this book at my local communist/anarchist book store. Despite the largely orthodox Christian position Eagleton holds throughout the book, it does fit on those shelves for while it begins laying out the important features of the crucifixion (positively, I might add), it ends with a call for revolution.
Interesting side note: I came across this book at my local communist/anarchist book store. Despite the largely orthodox Christian position Eagleton holds throughout the book, it does fit on those shelves for while it begins laying out the important features of the crucifixion (positively, I might add), it ends with a call for revolution.
February 5, 2024
This was refreshing.
I think it's increasingly difficult to figure out where and how personal faith should intersect with politics, particularly as Christian nationalism continues to adopt any perverted contortion it needs to justify unchecked power.
I don't think the content of this book is particularly revolutionary, and yet it feels revolutionary for someone to suggest that religiously motivated self-sacrifice can have a political impact—a yielding of power to allow for grace.
I'm so accustomed to Christians adopting the "Did God really say?" serpentine approach to the character of Christ that it feels cathartic for someone to celebrate humility rather than suggest that Christians are meant to control every sector of public life.
I think it's increasingly difficult to figure out where and how personal faith should intersect with politics, particularly as Christian nationalism continues to adopt any perverted contortion it needs to justify unchecked power.
I don't think the content of this book is particularly revolutionary, and yet it feels revolutionary for someone to suggest that religiously motivated self-sacrifice can have a political impact—a yielding of power to allow for grace.
I'm so accustomed to Christians adopting the "Did God really say?" serpentine approach to the character of Christ that it feels cathartic for someone to celebrate humility rather than suggest that Christians are meant to control every sector of public life.
January 22, 2019
I always find Eagleton interesting and instructive but always just a shade too sure of himself. There’s a bit too much argumentation with other authorities, which eagleton always wins of course while displaying a formidable array of quotations taken from Woody Allen to God. Anyway, this is an interesting essay or polemic on what we give up and how and why we sacrifice. It takes a radical view of Calvary and the end links the sacrifice on the cross to the revolution to come. But much of the book is about finding balance and equilibrium in the gift exchange or in polity. He says some appropriately sharp things, as he has before, about post modernists who disavow all difference.
September 14, 2025
*caveat: I have not read much literary theory so my issue may be a me issue*
found this pretty hard to follow, did not understand the argument that Eagleton was trying to make
I did find some sections interesting, the idea that people with more money may be more inclined to live forever á Bryan Johnson
again, this may just be me not getting literary theory but I don't think the literature mentioned, for the most part adds substantively to the book - I think the strongest elements were in trying to define terms such as sacrifice. perhaps this would be better if it approached it's premise in that way
found this pretty hard to follow, did not understand the argument that Eagleton was trying to make
I did find some sections interesting, the idea that people with more money may be more inclined to live forever á Bryan Johnson
again, this may just be me not getting literary theory but I don't think the literature mentioned, for the most part adds substantively to the book - I think the strongest elements were in trying to define terms such as sacrifice. perhaps this would be better if it approached it's premise in that way
December 19, 2018
Eagleton offers a complex narrative of sacrifice that blends religious and literary references into an effective reimagining of sacrifice as the ground of political revolution. I found it particularly notable for its description of the crucifixion narrative and its nuanced critique of postmodernism's libertarian tendencies.
June 26, 2021
It was okay - the talk about death was the most useful. Eclectic, but at times it feels like regurgitating a bunch of different authors than as something creatively unique. 3.5 stars, but I round down.
July 22, 2021
With humor, breadth of knowledge, and true insight, Eagleton brilliantly explores the topic of sacrifice and it's meaning for contemporary life, with rich discussions of death, giving, and mutual love.
July 9, 2024
Irish Marxism since Larkin has had a Catholic edge which this continues. Really enjoyed the use of Kristava and Batellie. Odd the way all these discussions of the abject always seem to return to an almost Daoist non-dialectic.
May 10, 2025
Eagleton provides a trenchant and sophisticated ethical, philosophical and theological look at sacrifice. This is one of those books that needs to be read at least a couple times. With that said, I don't have much else to add except to say that I will be rereading this book!
July 10, 2021
Don’t expect a well thought through and researched expose on the phenomenon of sacrafice; this is a sorry heap of pretentious babble cloaked in a mantle of excessive quotations.
March 14, 2023
An interesting read, maybe, but nothing more than a collection of quotes.
May 25, 2025
Wish I knew all the references mentioned in the book to appreciate it more fully.
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