- Our Stores
- University Avenue
- About
- The Move
- The Co-op Turns 50!
- Sale Books
- View all sale books
- Or browse by section:
- American History
- African History
- African-American History
- Anthologies
- Anthropology
- Art and Art History
- Cartography
- Chicago
- Cognitive Science
- Drama
- East Asian History
- Economics
- European History
- Foreign Language Reference and Instruction
- Graphica
- Humor
- Judaica
- Literary Criticism
- Literature
- Mathematics
- Native American Studies
- Poetry
- Psychology
- Science
- Sociology
- South Asian History
- Theology
- Travel
- Miscellaneous
- Coursebook Ordering
- U of C Coursebook Listings
- 57th Street Books
- The Newberry Library Bookstore
- Hours and Contact Information
- Maps and Directions
- University Avenue
- Co-op Membership
- Coursebooks
- Events
- The Front Table Blog
- New Titles
- Your Account
On Evil (Hardcover)
$25.00
Special Order - Subject to Availability
Description
For many enlightened, liberal-minded thinkers today, and for most on the political left, evil is an outmoded concept. It smacks too much of absolute judgments and metaphysical certainties to suit the modern age. In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defense of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artifact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world.
In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason. In the process, he poses a set of intriguing questions. Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all?
About the Author
Terry Eagleton is currently Bailrigg Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, England, and Professor of Cultural Theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He lives in Dublin.
Praise for On Evil…
“Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution attacks the new atheism as a kind of secular counter-fundamentalism… Better than any previous book of its kind.”—James Wood, The New Yorker
-James Wood
"An absorbing, stimulating, awfully entertaining discussion.”--Ray Olson, Booklist
-Ray Olson
“Jaunty and surprisingly entertaining. . .[Eagleton''s] argument is subtle, intricate, provocative and limpidly expressed. . . . A valuable contribution to a debate as old as Adam and Eve and as contemporary as 9/11 and Abu Ghraib.” — John Banville, Irish Times
-John Banville
"On Evil belongs to the genre of religious psychology, where Eagleton brilliantly relates the ultimate concerns of the theologian with the penultimate concerns of the psychoanalyst. Without the former, the result would be a study of human discontent; without the latter, a retreat into papier-mâché piety. Here, Aquinas meets Freud--enriching our reflections on the nature and manifestations of evil."--Christopher Benson, Christianity Today
-Christopher Benson
