Heretics (1905)

Book itself: unfortunately, I got to the introduction only after reading it through; knowing that this book came before Orthodoxy, and that it was written by 1905, would have been useful throughout the reading.

Nevertheless, Chesterton plows forward in this book in his unique style, often turning conventional wisdom on its head as he looks at things from a quite different perspective.

The book is loosely about the "heresies" of many of the popular figures of Chesterton's day-- G. B. Shaw, Kipling, and even many of the political figures of the day. Chesterton, as a Catholic, ventures forth with a creative defense of the Christian viewpoint/system in light of the growing influence of modernism.

Both Chesterton and C.S. Lewis have provided useful apologetic material for our present day, and Chesterton's material has one benefit-- he writes these things before either WWI or WWII, while Enlightenment triumphalism and modernism were reaching their full effect and not dented by the relativism that would seep in after the horrible years.

Many of his comments are quite good and worth hearing out; the reader will likely find many quotables in this text, since Chesterton, if nothing else, is eminently quotable.

Sometimes he goes a bit far; he is quite wed to English superiority, and the past century has proven some of his predictions wrong. Much of his material presupposes an understanding of turn of the century England and its empire, and thus many of his references lose a modern audience. Nevertheless, he clearly saw the challenges and the fallacies of Enlightenment triumphalism and the modernist movement afoot. As the last Romantic, Chesterton might just help us find a way forward through the philosophical wreckage of our own day.

Kindle edition: I had few difficulties with this ebook. A few spelling mistakes that might be on account of the OCR. Make sure that you go back to the beginning and read the introduction, since Chesterton's references are quite time-specific. ( )

The prickly old polemicist at his trade. Chesterton's writing is hugely interesting. Even when he is clearly wrong, I need to really think how to refute him. Sometimes it is in his postulates or axioms, never in his rhetoric. (Note that when I say "he is clearly wrong", I am only repeating Chesterton's words: after all, he says that a heretic is one that disagrees with him.) ( )

Author of the "Father Brown" crime stories, Chesterton was not the most practical of men. While on a lecture tour he is said to have sent his wife a telegram saying "Am in Stow-on-the-Wold, where should I be? Love, Gilbert." Yet as a controversialist he was precise and deadly, which is why these hundred-year-old attacks on the ideas of Shaw, Wells, Ibsen and Kipling retain their interest. So much so that in an essay of 2005 Patrick Wright accused him of promoting an 'unsavoury xenophobia'. Who, looking at the state of England today, can doubt that Chesterton, had he not been dead seventy years, would have skewered the "Guardian" essayist neatly and decisively? ( )

Classic Chestertonian fare. ( )

RH Blyth wrote that only Suzuki Daisetsu could talk of Zen without making him puke. Likewise for Chesterton on Christianity. This book is a gem. I particularly like the essay against cosmopolitanism in his chapter in Kipling, for it is the best criticism of the globe-trotting that most wealthy people (and that includes the middle class in the USA and other "developed nations)take for granted and start my book "The 5th Season - Poetry for the Re-creation of the World" with a quote from it. That might even be seen as the first statement of modern christian deep ecology. Note that I am what might be called a soft-shelled aetheist. Chesterton writes so well the only problem with reading him is that, if you are a critic and/or essayist you might never want to write again. ( )