novikovakatya

This is a re-read for me, though it has been over thirty years since I first encountered it. G. K. Chesterton makes the point that the most important thing about a person is his philosophy, whether it is spurious or sustaining. "We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them." What Chesterton refers to as heretics are those who espouse spurious ideals. These people include George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Omar Khayyam (?! - for boozing while unhappy), George Moore, Lowes Dickinson, Celtophiles, James McNeill Whistler, and various other fin-de-siècle figures who do not much signify in our time. (Maybe Chesterton was right?) In that case, why read the book? Perhaps, the answer is that Heretics is worth reading because Chesterton is in his own person a great thinker. He is an optimist who attempts to ferret out ways of thought that lead people to various dead ends. Reading GKC carefully is in itself a positive act that makes the reader feel good -- especially if he is inclined toward Catholicism, which Chesterton ultimately was. Although I myself consider myself to be an ex-Catholic, I respect Chesterton and love the act of reading him to come across those amazing paradoxes that make me think about what is true and what is merely phantasmagorical.

2023-01-28 15:32