An Interview with Terry Eagleton

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

When a dialectic method can be applied to particulars and universals
equally, the dialectics in question is non-Hegelian, and consequently
non-Marxist. Hegel is no Bakhtin, he is no dialogist. His dialectic
movement is evolutionary, from particular to universal. In the final
analysis, particulars are there to serve a universalizing concept.


Heikki

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012, alice wellintown wrote:

>  I first heard that head-standing bit in high school sociology class.  The
> > teacher being a Thomist considered Marx's over emphasis on the material as
> > plain wrong. Terry Eagleton plays Thomist a little in his new book--for the
> > sake of explication--his Catholic upbringing he sez.  Thomas was convinced
> > that ideas are Real and Eagleton wants to show that Literature is kind of
> > Real too. He's mad at the postmodernists. I'm assuming--haven't got far in
> > the book and may never.
> >
> > By the way, can't the dialectic method be applied to both universals and
> > particulars?
>
> Sure.
>
> The method works like this: One asks questions and another provides
> answers. The crux of the biscuit, as Zappa sez in Apostrophe, is that
> one must work with the given answer. The dialectic method is, simply,
> question and answer. So, if I am asking questions and you are
> providing answers, we have, a dialogue or dialectic.
>
> But the method may be applied, as it is in Marx, who, we may say, took
> it from Hegel, applies it to a materialist Reality, rather than an
> Essential one. The Greeks had it all done a long time ago. The
> essential reality is, of course, Aristotle's.
>