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Author Terry Eagleton in Conversation with Arnold Eisen
A conversation between Terry Eagleton, author of Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (Yale University Press), and Arnold Eisen, Chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary
The Harvard Club, New York City
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Terry Eagleton's witty and polemical Reason, Faith, and Revolution has caused a stir among scientists, theologians, people of faith, and people of no faith, as well as among general readers eager to understand the current "God debate." Eagleton takes aim at what he calls the "truly shocking ignorance" of religion displayed by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in their best-selling atheist manifestos. His own account of the "tragic humanism" at the center of the Western religious tradition includes provocative reflections on death, suffering, and love; on revelation and reasonable belief; on the relationship between science and rationality; and on the peculiarly modern tension between the claims of civilization and culture.
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Terry Eagleton is Bailrigg Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, England, and Professor of Cultural Theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway. For the next five years, he will be a Distinguished Visitor for three weeks each semester in the English Department at the University of Notre Dame. A fellow of the British Academy, he is the author of more than forty books, ranging widely over literary theory, cultural studies, religion, politics, and history. He will deliver a Gifford Lecture on the "God Debate" at the University of Edinburgh in March 2010.
Arnold Eisen is the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Before coming to JTS, he was the Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion at Stanford University. He also served as senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University and assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. His many publications include a personal essay, Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America; a historical work, Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community; and (with Steven Cohen) The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America.