Author: Ophelia Benson

Anthony Grayling nails Terry Eagleton (who has written a new book pretending to say something about evil).

[H]e sets off on one of those complexifying journeys, like the route of a pinball bouncing backwards and forwards among a thicket of pingers, from William Golding to St Augustine, Macbeth to Pseudo-Dionysus, original sin to the Holocaust, Shakespeare to Freud, Satan to Thomas Mann, Arendt to Aristotle, and so copiously on – a verbal pinball ride among the entries in the telephone book of Western culture, to tell us what evil is. But do not expect, by the end, a conclusion, still less a definition, nor even a summary. Eagleton has been too long among the theorists to risk a straightforward statement. You have to grasp at fragments as you bounce among the pingers, not always quite sure whether he is agreeing or disagreeing with this or that author, even whether he is still paraphrasing an author or speaking with his own voice. That’s a technique, of course.

That’s the guy all right – copious name-dropping, energetic showing off by means of style and a bogus kind of erudition, and no actual argument at all. That last bit about not being able to tell if he is paraphrasing or speaking with his own voice applies exactly to Stanley Fish, too. The snail-trail of ‘Theory.’

As we are dealing with Eagleton here, note that this is of course not a mish-mash of inconsistencies, as it appears to be; this is subtlety and nuance. It is, you might say, nuance-sense.

It may not be clear if you haven’t read the whole review: that first claim is pure irony.

Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic – that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them.

Now that’s a great line. Funny that Eagleton, for all his showing off, can’t write anything as good.

More Pitcher. He’s an embarrassment to the Anglican church and to the Telegraph (whether the Anglican church and the Telegraph know it or not) so let’s by all means rub it in.

He was so pleased with his stupid abusive self-admiring reply to Sholto Byrnes that he re-posted it on the Telegraph blog. Well all right then, that makes it worth ridiculing.

(I’m doing what I’m criticizing him for doing, of course, and I do it all the time. But 1) I’m not an Anglican vicar 2) I write more restrainedly when I write on other people’s sites and 3) I do it better than he does. Plus did I mention I’m not a vicar?)

He starts by alluding to “a more measured atmosphere than currently prevails on my own foam-flecked thread.” But the foam is his, yet he seems to be pretending that it’s other people’s. So: he’s sly, and devious, and a blame-shifter.

Then he calls people who criticize his extraordinarily abusive post about Evan Harris “attack puppies” then he wonders “how many of them actually read the piece before dutifully answering the Twitter-call.” As if no one would have criticized his extraordinarily abusive post had it not been tweeted. That’s wrong, I criticized it without having seen any tweets about it. But even more absurd is the implication that if people had read the piece they wouldn’t have criticized it, or not as harshly as they did. Nonsense. It was an extraordinarily abusive post – he said Evan Harris campaigns to euthanize terminally ill people. That’s both vicious and false.

Then there are four paragraphs of blustering “I never, and besides they did too,” fetching up at

As for the Lib-Dems’ attack-bunnies, if they consider that’s evil and vicious, then I’d hate them to be around if I was rude about someone

without having mentioned the abusive and dishonest claim that Harris campaigns to euthanize terminally ill people. What a disgusting man – abusive, cowardly, and unrepentant. That claim was evil and vicious, and his refusal to cop to it now is…enough to make you lose your lunch.

Then there’s a rant about how Christian he is, whatever people say.

Many of these people expressing outrage about my criticism of Harris would be the same people who criticise Christians for not being more robust and outspoken; I wish they’d make their minds up.

That’s a good illustration of how stupid he is. He doesn’t know what “these people” would say, so it’s imbecilic to wish they would make their minds up when he has no way of knowing that their minds aren’t made up. Of course it’s also rude, but that goes without saying by now.

Then there’s the sly nasty stuff about loving him but struggling to like him oh the hell with it he doesn’t like him. Cute. What is he, 12?

Then he flogs his book, then he closes, revoltingly, with “With every blessing.”

There is one ray of light though; David Colquhoun comments (May 9, 10:48 p.m.).

It is no wonder that Christianity is in decline. Attitudes like those of George Pitcher must be helping it in its way to oblivion rather effectively. I can’t recall reading any political diatribe that was quite so intolerant and hate-filled as his.

I am reminded of homeopaths, those lovely cuddly holistic people who, once the realise that there trade has been revealed as fraud, turn quite remarkably unpleasant.

There is some amusement to be derived from the fact that these groups of people, who are both adamantly opposed to science and to enlightenment values, spread there hate-filled messages via the internet, a product, ahem, of science and the enlightenment.

There’s for you, sir!

I think I’m going to start being more thorough about observing the antics of George Pitcher. I find him really remarkable, and all the more so because he’s an Anglican vicar. He’s such a bizarre ambassador for his institution.

Yesterday he extruded a little heap of sneers at Nick Clegg and atheism and Nick Clegg’s atheism.

One aspect of this new Con-Dem Government that hasn’t got an airing yet is that David Cameron is a devout Christian and his new deputy-dawg Nick Clegg is an atheist…I’ve had a right ear-bashing from Nicky’s press office in the past for describing his atheism as “numbskull”. I’m sorry, I’m sure he’s up there with AC Grayling and Dr Simon Heffer.

Really. This is a grown man, with a job that is considered respectable in some circles. His job in fact basically consists of being wise and telling everyone else how to be wise – and this is how he goes about it. Do admit.

And then there’s this whole idea that we can make morality a science by basing it on universal desire for well-being.

One problem with that is that we don’t all have the same view of what constitutes well-being, to say the least. We don’t agree on what constitutes well-being in general and we certainly don’t agree on what constitutes it for self as opposed to other.

And suppose someone did come up with a survey that found – convincingly – that aggregate well-being was higher when women were more or less forced, by the lack of opportunity to do anything else, to be wives and mothers and nothing else, and lower when they had wider opportunities and correspondingly more freedom. Suppose there is such a survey, that shows aggregate well-being higher and women’s well-being lower. Suppose a world where women are distinctly a minority, as they are in India and China because of selective abortion. Would that outcome – a less happy minority but a happier total – be moral?

No; not in my view at least. But the idea that we can make morality a science by basing it on universal desire for well-being seems to mean that it would be.