Heretics

by G. K. Chesterton

Overview

Contents
1. Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Othodoxy
2. On the Negative Spirit
3. On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small
4. Mr. Bernard Shaw
5. Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants
6. Christmas and the Esthetes
7. Omar and the Sacred Vine
8. The Mildness of the Yellow Press
9. The Moods of Mr. George Moore
10. On Sandals and Simplicity
11. Science and the Savages
12. Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson
13. Celts and Celtophiles
14. On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family
15. On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set
16. On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity
17. On the Wit of Whistler
18. The Fallacy of the Young Nation
19. Slum Novelists and the Slums
20. Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012826701
Publisher:	VolumesOfValue
Publication date:	07/05/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	224 KB

About the Author

"GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON (1874 – 1936) Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the Daily News, the Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.'s Weekly; he also wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Chesterton's style and thinking were all his own, however, and his conclusions were often opposed to those of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. In his book Heretics, Chesterton has this to say of Wilde: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw."[19] More briefly, and with a closer approximation of Wilde's own style, he writes in Orthodoxy concerning the necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."

Chesterton and Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they both maintained good-will toward and respect for each other. However, in his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In Heretics he writes of Shaw:

After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man." --Wikipedia