Heretics (Annotated)

by G. K. Chesterton

Overview

• This edition includes the following editor's introduction: G. K. Chesterton, the man beyond the writer

First published in 1905, “Heretics” is a collection of 20 essays and articles by English writer and philosopher G. K. Chesterton.

Focusing on "heretics" — those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views — Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds. Luminaries such as Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and James McNeill Whistler come under the author's scrutiny, where they meet with equal measures of his characteristic wisdom and good humour.

In addition to incisive assessments of well-known individuals, these essays contain observations on the wider world. While the loci of the chapters of “Heretics” are personalities, the topics he debates are as universal to the "vague moderns" of the 21st century as they were to those of the 20th. The topics he touches upon range from cosmology to anthropology to soteriology and he argues against French nihilism, German humanism, English utilitarianism, the syncretism of "the vague modern", Social Darwinism, eugenics and the arrogance and misanthropy of the European intelligentsia.

“Heretics” roused the ire of some critics for censuring contemporary philosophies without providing alternatives; the author responded a few years later with a companion volume, “Orthodoxy.” Both works are regarded as central to his corpus of moral theology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9791221387285
Publisher:	ePembaBooks
Publication date:	12/10/2022
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	755,369
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936) better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox." Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories-first carefully turning them inside out."
Chesterton is well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both Progressivism and Conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius." Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.