Beyond The Cultural Politics: Towards A Criticism Of Religious Ethics

Terry Eagleton (1943-), as a well-known contemporary British literary critic of Western Marxism, rich in publications and wide in scopes of research, has made great achievements in the field of literary theory and criticism, cultural studies as well as aesthetics. Eagleton's early theory of literary production was formed on the basis of critical inheritance of the theoretical thoughts of Williams, Althusser, Macherey and Benjamin. His study of the relationship between art as ideology and art as production has made great contribution to the Western Marxist literary critical theory. In the spirit of Marxist historical materialism and dialectics, Terry Eagleton actively made constructive dialogue with various kinds of western thoughts and absorbed their distillates and finally developed his own style of critiques. The series of critiques he made on literature, culture and cross-discipline reflects his solicitude towards the world. However, the critical circle both home and abroad defined the nature of his criticism as "ideological criticism" or "cultural-political criticism" without sufficient examination of his later achievements. In fact, Eagleton's contribution lies exactly in his theoretical critiques and attentions towards different aspects of literature, culture, politics, philosophy, etc. The variety of his critical contents and subjects cannotprevent us from finding the real essence behind his critical theories--a kind of love.The love facilitates one's self-realization by virtue of facilitating others' self-realization and finally promotes the whole society to an ideal state. As an influential contemporary intellectual, Eagleton's point of view on morality and religion represents a positive orientation. It can be said that Eagleton's religious-moral criticism opens up new horizons for the literary critiques.This dissertation first explores Terry Eagleton's ideological critical theories and probes into various fields involved in his criticism. Then it analyzes the traits of his criticism and reveals the true orientation of his critical voice. It finally tries to describe how his critical theories transcend the cultural politics for the purpose of establishing the characteristics of religious-moral criticism of his later period. The dissertation has four chapters. Chapter One discusses Eagleton's theoretical foundation, the theory of "literary ideological production"; Chapter Two presents the wide range of his cultural criticism, from capitalist culture and post modernism to British-Irish culture; Chapter Three analyzes the cause of formation of his macro theoretical vision and summarizes his critical features; Chapter Four indicates the characteristics of religious-moral criticism of his later period and affirms the positive role of his utopianism in the human society. The Conclusion dialectically evaluates Eagleton's critical viewpoints and further points out their referential value for the Chinese critical circle.