On Evil & The Event of Literature

Last Books Read:  

On Evil - Terry Eagleton
The Event of Literature - Terry Eagleton

I:
In On Evil Eagleton examines the nature of evil  in an attempt to give it a precise definition.  He explores the area where literature, philosophy, religion, and political history meet.  This work attempts to undo the circular reasoning that leads to the popular notion that people do evil things because they are evil.  What then does the person have to do with their own actions?  Evil is either of full description of which nothing more can be said, or it is unexplainable.  Eagleton tries to navigate between these extremes.  He attempts to define it in terms of the drive to annihilate.  The desire for pure, infinite freedom requires that nothing exists, that is the lack of anything which can get in the way of the conscious drive.  Here, in his typical fashion, Eagleton links this drive with the middle class desire for freedom and the unquenchable thirst of capitalism.  The technological progression of human history has evolved to the point where more is always desirable and attainable.  This blind drive can have negative and destructive consequences left unchecked.  In its overly ambitious process evil destroys meaning. For the nihilist, annhilation is the only way to get out of the limitations of creation - to transcend, to escape.  Following Kierkegaard, Eagleton notes the "dreadful emptiness and contentlessness of evil." It is purity, and in its totality is empty and begins to come full circle with chaos.  He presents evil as all form with no substance, although this does not apply to evil alone.  It shares these qualities with music and mathematics among other things.  It is this contentlessness that I find in my least favorite things - sports and idle chat - things which present a useless form of existence.  What differentiates formal structures from evil is indeed their usefulness, which mathematics and music possess.  They provide the foundation for content which provides meaning.  It is meaning, Eagleton argues, that solidifies into something.  In the absence of meaning, evil has "no practical purpose.  Evil is supremely pointless...[it] rejects the logic of causality" (84).  Here he compares it to a game, it is purposeful action without an ultimate purpose.  This characterization as well requires careful consideration.  Life itself for the existentialists and the extra-existential absurdists could fit into this definition.  It is absurd because of the disparity between the serious weight given to actions and the ultimate arbitrariness of those actions.  Similarly, as Eagleton argues in The Event of Literature (see below), literature contains an internal logic that makes sense within the internal structure, but is baseless in an external frame of reference.  Once again, these examples rely on the construction of meaning.  Despite the unlikely possibility of a lasting necessity, life and literature make an attempt to sustain meaning.  And meaning is something. Even in the worst case in which it is all that remains, its existence defies nihilism and evil in its project. The lack of "inner depth" is what keeps the nihilist from finding true annihilation, they must remain to counter creation, but they can find no place within it.  "Evil, like religious fundamentalism is . . . a nostalgia for an older, simpler civilization, in which there were certitudes like damnation and salvation, and you knew where you stood" (119).  It is the attempt to synthesize pure order without all the messiness of life, and the ambiguities and fuzzy logic of the world which make things complicated. Eagleton concludes by applying this to modern day ideological conflict and the disillusionment of  "[t]hose who expect too much of human nature, socialists, libertarians and the like" (148).  Conservatives by contrast have much lower expectations and prioritize the sin and not redemption, while liberals over-prioritize the redemption.  Here Eagleton has thrown the generally accepted contrast between socialists and libertarians into question.  In his view, socialism "proved least possible where it is most urgent.  And this is certainly one of the major tragedies of that epoch" (150). In the current era, where terrorism becomes the defining form of blind, mindless evil,  Eagleton points out that the recognition of evil as purposeless in opposition to the reality of "wickedness" (those harmful actions that are performed for a determined goal) is an important factor in ultimately overcoming evil.

II:
In his most recent work, The Event of Literature, Eagleton argues for a complex view of literary theory . In contrast to the emptiness of evil, literature is an immensely deep creation of meaning- of worlds in themselves. This is a dense work, of which much could be said.  However, in an effort to be brief, Eagleton defines literature as a "work" that exhibits these properties: It exists in a moral perspective, that is examines  morality,.  It is non-pragmatic - it contains features that elevate it beyond any pragmatic function it might have (such as poetic language). It is mobile and dislocated -not linked precisely to its point of origin. It invites interpretation, provides connotations, and exists with a double nature - it works on multiple levels.  It contains its own internal logic which does not necessarily correspond to external reality, but is coherent.  It is a language game, it contains only what its language allows.  It involves attempts at questions and answers.  Finally, it can be viewed as an event more than a work.  It is an attempt at "strategy," a problem-solving device,  "[t]he literary work is a a solution to to the question which is itself . . . it establishes a relation to reality by establishing a relation to itself (223). Furthermore, "[t]he literary work can be seen as objectifying unconscious fantasies, converting this shapeless, sublimely terrifying stuff into tangible images" (220). Eagleton ties together the aesthetic, political, philosophical/moral and psychological threads to sum up that "[t]he work of art is an example of human praxis, and therefore how to live well" (224).  Literature is our attempt to record the infinite amount of possible experiences and attempt to make sense of existence and its myriad of perceived meanings.