Radical Sacrifice, Terry Eagleton
Radical Sacrifice, Terry Eagleton
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Radical Sacrifice

Author: Terry Eagleton

Narrator: Roger Clark

Unabridged: 6 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/20/2018


Synopsis

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.

About Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and the author of more than fifty books in the fields of literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology, and religion. He lives in Northern Ireland.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Scriptor Ignotus on October 09, 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......more

Goodreads review by Ai on 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 b......more

Goodreads review by W.D. on June 09, 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.......more

Goodreads review by Lori on March 01, 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 o......more

Goodreads review by JC on 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, merel......more