While left opinion today, at least in media circles, has been captured by an imported American obsession with cultural politics, representation and identity, Eagleton reminds us of why the materialist philosophical tradition is distinct, what it is and what it has to offer, exploring the materialism of Marx but also of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.Īnother great 2017 book that felt like a map in these worrying times was The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future by Adrian Pabst and John Milibank. While a global army of career academics are busy networking, conferencing and salami-slicing the same minute specialist research ten ways for peer reviewed journal articles that nobody reads, in a system nobody thinks is working, Eagleton’s writing continues to defiantly sweep across the centuries and includes a few gags along the way. Reading Eagleton is always an important reminder of the kind of academic and the kind of leftist we’re in danger of losing.
