Interviewer: Your book Literary Theory (1983) has sold almost a million copies. Do you enjoy writing for lay audiences?
Terry Eagleton: I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty.
Sometimes things may indeed be too complex for public understanding, but it is fair to expect that a professional thinker would do everything in his power to assure his research can be understood by as many people as reasonably possible. A professional philosopher does two things: 1. teach, 2. research/write. I really think that the first of these two job responsibilities is far too quickly dismissed as easy or mundane.
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There are also people smarter than you (I'm not one to say if they're smarter than you, but they are professional academics) who greatly deride Heidegger and especially Derrida.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway my point wasn't addressed at these people per se; if they did everything within reason to reach out to others, than they've done all they can.
ReplyDeleteDo you not agree that within a person's capacity he should try publicize his research?
ReplyDeleteThe criticism is obviously directed at Gnosticism, one of the most primordial manifestations of Pride.
ReplyDeleteHuman beings enjoy being impressed, and enjoy illusion; opacity is seen as a virtue in the academy up to a point. However, the desire for secret knowledge is itself required to be kept secret, so when an academic is identified as unnecessarily opaque, we smell blood in the water, and immediately deride the target as a hack.
Really, isn't this the problem of distinguishing between the prophets and the charlatan? Both speak in riddles: one has a connection with truth so profound we cannot immediately grasp it. The latter is a mimetic parasite on the former.