테리 이글턴의 종교적 전회: 전회의 역사적 조건, 종교의 문학적·실천적 가치 재조명

Abstract

Terry Eagleton, a poststructuralist and Marxist literary critic, has turned to religion in recent years. In spite of some popular misunderstanding and some scholarly distortion, his turn is here claimed to be religious not just ethical, since it is obvious that he borrows essential insights from Christianity which is easily traced in his upbringing. For him, Christianity functions as an antidote to the disease of contemporary society where liberty and equality have gone wrong and only their downside is predominant. Of course, his Christianity is far from fundamentalism which he severely criticizes throughout his recent books, but it is a religion whose emphasis falls on its symbolic features and practice. Above all, Eagleton views Christianity as a symbolic system which connects the transcendent or abstract with the immanent or concrete. In this sense, it may be possible to call his concept of religion a literary one. At the same time, he also emphasizes on doing, practice of love, instead of belief itself. Eagleton’s God is not a creator of the universe but love itself, rather an acting love. Likewise, he sees human beings as ontologically limited and thereby interdependent so that practicing love can be an ontological necessity. Even Jesus is not a god or an incarnated god, but a symbol of a tortured body who practiced love to death. Eagleton explains how the literary and acting type of religion can present therapeutic insights against the illness of contemporary world: narcissism, flourishing fundamentalism, capitalistic consumerism, and diminishing morality and ethics. In this way, Eagleton rediscovers the literary and practical values of the traditional religion.