Heretics (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) by G.K. Chesterton

Heretics (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) Reviews

• 
  John M

  Chesterton, let's face it, is thematically ataxic. He can't keep to one idea; in the words of an acquaintance of mine, he sidesteps issues by making sense. Reading Orthodoxy was an experience analogous to hearing an inebriated genius swerve through celestial ideas. The book's only lack is that its subject demands a structure it doesn't provide.
  
  Heretics is a different story. Here Chesterton is truest to his form. He's free to roam the world of his improvised ideas as he surveys what he considers both the heretics and heretical ideas of his time, and he does so marvelously, unsurpassed in wit and well-crafted expression. Nearly every page has at least one quotable line, and nearly every page, because his writing is so joyfully digressive, can be read by itself.
  
  He was known to send first drafts to publishers and have them accepted without complaint, which should be a point that breaks the pride of any literary dilettante. There's something about this freewheeling, one-shot style that permeates his writing with a sense of spontaneity that would otherwise get muffled out through revision, and this results in a conversational feeling that I can't really find anywhere else. It's as if I can feel his spirit firmly in his words, and what strikes me most is how incomparably jovial and egalitarian he is through them. I can imagine him sharing a conversation with a king and a commoner without missing a relational beat. Chesterton is a joy to read not simply because he is a wordsmith and thinker par excellence, but because he's so impartially down to earth. Human. Imagine that.
• 
  Valeriu Gherghel

  Neîndoios, G. K. Chesterton are vervă, umor, subtilitate, spirit polemic, tot ce vreți. Din păcate, eseurile lui arată că inteligența (oricît de multă!) nu te oprește să ajungi la concluzii dubioase, dacă pornești de la premise dubioase. Premisa fundamentală a autorului e că omul trebuie să aibă convingeri, Idealuri, Idei (fixe). Altfel, e o meduză nestructurată: „Copacii nu au dogme, iar napii au orizonturi largi” (p.223). Omul fără convingeri ferme se cuvine privit cu milă și căinat. Chesterton deplînge, așadar, lipsa de „credințe” (beliefs) a unor indivizi remarcabili precum:
  
  - Walter Pater,
  - George Bernard Show (cu care era foarte bun prieten, fiindcă aveau amîndoi mult umor, chiar dacă unul era eretic și celălalt dogmatic),
  - H. G. Wells,
  - George Moore (prozatorul și dramaturgul), și, nu în ultimul rînd,
  - Omar Khayyam (sic!). Bietul poet persan e căinat pentru „filosofia” lui hedonistă: „Vinul lui Omar Khayyam este un lucru rău, dar nu pentru că este vin. Este rău, şi chiar foarte rău, deoarece este vin medicinal. Este vinul unui om care bea pentru că este nefericit” (p.81). Bea, sugerează G. K. Chesterton, pentru că ignoră adevărata Fericire.
  
  Așadar, trebuie să ajungem neapărat la certitudini și să respingem preceptul scepticilor că singura noastră certitudine e că nu putem avea nici o certitudine. Cînd spui că nimic nu e sigur, trebuie să accepți măcar „adevărul” că nu e sigur nici că nimic nu e sigur. Povestea e veche și filosofii sceptici au întors problema pe toate fețele (cf. Sextus Empiricus).
  
  Dacă nu e bine să fii „eretic” (adică un individ care disprețuiește adevărurile evidente, „necesare”), unde poți căuta și găsi certitudinile? Simplu: în scrierile Sfinților Părinți și, rezumate ad usum Delphini, în Dogmatică. Iată cîteva certitudini de acest soi:
  
  - Omul poartă semnele și urmările păcatului originar,
  - Viața are un singur scop nobil: mîntuirea,
  - Se cuvine să venerăm Binele, Adevărul, Frumosul (nu ne putem îndoi de existența lor),
  - Dumnezeu există negreșit și este o entitate omniscientă, omnipotentă și omnibenevolentă.
  
  Dacă GKC și-ar fi ales certitudinile din altă parte (din știință, să zicem), totul ar fi fost OK. „Ereticii” ar fi constituit, firește, una dintre primele cărți îndreptate în contra relativismului modern. Dar pentru că adevărurile lui Chesterton vin din religie (și numai din religie), cartea lui se înscrie în lungul șir al scrierilor apologetice. Certitudinile autorului nu vin la capătul unor raționamente riguroase, ci își au sursa în „intuiție” și „revelație”. Dogma Sfintei Treimi nu poate avea un temei empiric, nu este o achiziție inductivă. Crezi sau nu crezi. Punct.
  
  Închei printr-un pasaj din eseul final:
  
  „Omul poate fi definit ca un animal care produce dogme. Cînd adună doctrină peste doctrină şi concluzie peste concluzie pentru a construi cu ele o formidabilă schemă filosofică şi religioasă, el devine, în singurul sens legitim de care este capabilă expresia, din ce în ce mai uman... Cînd, în închipuirea sa, se crede Dumnezeu, nesupus vreunui crez, dar contemplîndu-le pe toate, atunci, prin chiar acestea, el se cufundă lent în acea confuzie a animalului rătăcitor şi în inconştienţa ierbii...” (p.223).
  
  Deși sînt un eretic soft (fiindcă nu am convingeri prea multe și sînt gata să renunț la ele dacă am dovezi contrare), sper că n-am ajuns încă nici Dumnezeu, nici iarbă inconștientă. Asta ar fi negreșit o ispită a satanei în care, desigur, nu cred :)
• 
  booklady

  Heresy means a belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine and so a heretic would be a person holding such a belief or opinion. It’s a word we don’t use or hear much anymore, probably because we are afraid of certainty in religion. We prefer ‘tolerance’. This trend was gaining ground in Chesteron’s day. (Wouldn’t you love to hear what he would have to say about our world today?!)
  
  Heretics, I was surprised to read in this excellent
  lecture article by
  Dale Ahlquist, Chestertonian expert, is one of his most neglected books even though one of his more important. That is indeed a shame because it is superb! Each chapter is a mini-essay about one person, group, or trend which he is critiquing. Although I was only familiar with two individuals mentioned—
  George Bernard Shaw and
  Rudyard Kipling—most of Chesterton’s main points were obvious enough and the quotes, as always, were magnificent!
  
  Want to come back and read this slowly and carefully, making note of my favorite quotes.
  
  Going on to something else now but planning to read
  Orthodoxy which is sort of like the sequel to Heretics as the former was written in response to the outcry which resulted from the publication of the latter.
  
  EXCEPTIONAL!
  
  <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
  
  Jan 23, 2018: The thing I like best about G.K. Chesterton is the way he makes me stop short—and I do mean completely stop in my tracks—and say, “Wait, what did he just say?! Did he say what I think he said?”
  
  Yes, he did! Once again, he made or helped me (not sure which) do a complete paradigm shift in my thinking. Lately I have struggled with how to advise my St. Vincent dePaul conference as to problem clients who deceive, scam, refuse to help themselves, etc. Given our limited resources this is cause for frustration to our members. The following quote may be some consolation for them. I know it gave me a new perspective on the situation:
  
  “It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.”
  
  I also LOVED his chapter on the newspapers. There is NOTHING new under the sun. He saw the American media for what it was back then. (sigh)
  
  Still reading…
• 
  Brian Eshleman

  I must have deposited every third or fourth sentence from this book into my OneNote file for future use and reflection. His sayings go down easily, but they have a collective impact. He can skewer the fallacious assumption of one's worldview without making the reader feel personally pricked.
  
  Chesterton is that writer I would never think to list among my favorites, and of whom I have read only a small fraction of his work. Yet, every time I get into any nonfiction he wrote, I think I need to quarantine myself from everything else until I devour his every thought.
• 
  Jonathan Terrington

  
  4.5 Stars
  
  The Oxford English Dictionary
  
  Heretic: noun
  a person believing in or practising religious heresy.
  a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.
  
  Heretics is by G.K. Chesterton's own admission, a work that merely serves to point out the 'heresies' contained within the popular veins of thought surrounding him in society. It seems odd that such a word as 'heretic' could be applied to what is popular, when it is known that heresy normally tends to be the opinion against popular opinion (in this case Chesterton). However, the manner in which Chesterton addresses these thinkers reveals that they hold deep flaws within their own belief systems and as such hold heretical views against themselves.
  
  Where other authors would be inclined to scoff or mock the fallacies of other famous 'artists', thinkers and general scholars, Chesterton however does not lower himself to any such inelegant pursuit but rather aims to show these fallacies and expose them. He himself admits that he lacks precise answers to these questions. However his other work, Orthodoxy, itself serves to explain his answer to such questions as found in the Orthodox Christian faith.
  
  Considering that Chesterton's book is well over a century old it is incredible how applicable it is to today's society. And this is because Chesterton as a writer discusses the general paradoxes of human living - like how seriousness and humour are assumed to be at opposites, when one can be funny and yet still very much serious in discussing a topic; or how one can dismiss ritual as 'silly' and yet stick to daily social rituals habitually. He also addresses the fallacies of life. And speaking of fallacies I was thinking of one today that I wish to discuss. The fallacy of the burden of proof.
  
  Now this fallacy is the fallacy in which one can say 'the burden of proof falls upon you to prove God exists.' And of course it is then a fallacy to say 'well you must prove he doesn't'. I say this is a fallacy in that what this response ends up sounding like is 'prove he does not'. It is not a rational response because one must be capable of ultimate knowledge - of knowing everything in order to know that God does not exist. Which does mean that one is equally likely to be correct whether taking a position that God exists or does not due to the possibilities of grasping hold of the information as to his existence or non-existence. What I believe about this is that it comes down to whoever is making the claim as to the existence to provide proof for their reasoning. Here is where I spy the problem: I tell you that my reasoning as to why God exists is a)answers to prayer and miracles, b)the signs around me in nature and life, c)the philosophy to do with the world and d)general faith. You listen to me explaining my reasoning and then you tell me that you don't think that my evidence is necessarily rational or scientific. Of course to me for someone not to accept those reasons is fine, so long as they accept those reasons on a subjective level also. For I do not believe it is the job of science or mere rationality to necessarily answer questions about morality, spirituality, psychology, philosophy or ethics - they may provide part of the pathways to the answers but I do not see them as providing the answer. For how can the rational be used to prove what is spiritual or emotional? It is these kinds of questions which Chesterton deals with in his essays.
  
  Whether you like to read about spirituality and faith I recommend Chesterton wholeheartedly. The man has a way of penning phrases exceptionally eloquently, never writing clumsily or in a rushed manner. In fact, Chesterton's writing is for everyone as he also writes about literature, issues of the family and all manner of ideas that touch society at the core. He wrote over a century ago, but he still reaches through the pages of today and touches the hearts and minds of tomorrow.
  
  This review is also on Booklikes:
  http://headspinningfromvagueness.book...
• 
  Owlseyes

  
  
  (The Atlantic, A Most Unlikely Saint, April 2015 issue)
  
  
  
  (Newsweek, September 22, 1997; A step-by-step guide to Sainthood, page 19)
  
  So clear and sharp a writing.
  
  
  
  (Laughter champ)
  
  Well, he surely could make sharp distinctions. Either you were a real, true Catholic*, or you would be under his hammer. And he did find many, he took on. Especially his contemporary fellow, named H. G. Wells, a socialist, or, as we say in our days, a globalist (of sorts). And yet, he liked Walt Whitman.
  
  Those sharp distinctions may be dangerous, however, in my view. He was no saint, after all. And Catholicism is just one type of Faith.
  
  Great writer, nonetheless.
  
  *Or Christian, non-pagan.
• 
  Barnabas Piper

  Chesterton’s clarity of thought and incisiveness of expression never cease to impress and help me. I don’t always agree, and occasionally don’t follow, but I’m always better for it.
• 
  David Sarkies

  Philosophy in the Edwardian Age
  7 March 2016
  
  This is one of those books that has so much in it that it is literally impossible to cover in a single review. Okay, I probably could do it but the review would be incredibly long and I would probably end up repeating everything Chesterton said in the book, but then again a lot of my reviews end up being a short rehash of what the author said anyway. I guess the reason that I do this is because even if everybody who reads this review puts the book onto the TBR list, if your list is anything like mine then even with all good intentions, you probably won't end up reading the book anyway. This is the beauty of websites like Goodreads – we can read a book and share what we got from the book and even if the reader of the review never gets to read the book at least they can be influenced to some extent.
  
  Chesterton is an interesting author because most of us think of him as simply being an author of detective fiction but never realise that he actually wrote philosophic texts as well. Granted, Chesterton was a Christian and his writings tend to be that of an orthodox Christian, but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. To be honest the main reason that I wanted to read Chesterton was not so much because he wrote detective fiction but rather because he wrote Christian philosophy and influenced the likes of
  C.S. Lewis. When I discovered that
  Slavoj Zizek also heavily referenced him I became even more intrigued.
  
  As you can probably guess, this book is about heresy, however it is not necessarily about any old heresy but rather about what he considered heresy, from the point of view of an orthodox Christian, at the turn of the 20th Century. Mind you, some of the writers that he speaks about we have probably never heard of simply because they disappeared into the mists of history. However there are other writers, such as
  Rudyard Kipling,
  George Bernard Shaw, and
  H.G. Wells whose writings have come down to us today and are still very popular (and considering that Hollywood seem to want to rehash the Wells stories every decade or so is evidence of that). Oh, and I should probably add that while he is exploring the ideas of these authors from a Christian perspective, he isn't writing in the same vein of some modern writers, who claim that anybody who reads the Harry Potter books are on a slippery slope to hell. Sure, he may be critical of the ideas, but he never actually attacks the person, and even goes as far as to suggest he even likes some of these author's works, despite disagreeing with their premise.
  
  However, the problem with exploring the ideas that have come out of this book is that these writers are so different in there philosophies that one has to look at them each individually. There are some overarching themes that come out of each of them, such as Shaw's search for the Superman and Wells' search for his utopian society. In a way they are different, but in a way they are the same in that they see the possibility of humanity evolving through their own willpower – with Shaw this is evolution on and individual basis whereas with Wells' this is evolution on a social basis. Mind you, when this was being written it was a popular belief that humanity had finally evolved beyond the need for war and was on the cusp of a golden age of peace and prosperity. With the exception of the Crimean War the last major European War was the Napoleonic Wars a hundred years previously. The catch is that this was from an English perspective because they didn't consider the Franco-Prussian War as a proper war simply because they weren't involved, and nor did they consider their colonial wars proper wars either because they were fought against people they considered savages.
  
  The criticism of Kipling is interesting because we are seeing one huge change that is coming about in the western world: the tyranny of distance is being defeated. With the advent of the steam train, and then the motor car (and then the aeroplane) travel that used to take days, or even months, was now taking a lot less time. However the problem that he sees (that we in the 21st Century don't see as much) is that there is no longer an attachment to a locality. The town in which we live ceases to be our universe and starts to be a place. I remember growing up in Adelaide - when I didn't have all that much money, Adelaide was my universe, a universe that had boundaries. However once I get a job and could afford holidays Adelaide ceased to be a universe and started to become a place. At first the universe was limited to the Australian continent, but upon my first trip overseas the universe expanded once again. Mind you, despite wandering around Europe and England (and despite the fact that I have this strange attachment to London) the one place where I feel comfortable, and feel at home, is here in Australia.
  
  It is interesting reading Chesterton's book because in a way it seems that very little has changed in the hundred odd years since he wrote it, though in some ways things seem to have changed a lot. In Chesterton's era we are on the cusp of a transformation that has been created by the industrialised age. New philosophies are coming about and the old philosophies of the past are being discarded. From Chesterton's view point he sees that we have a choice in what philosophy we embrace – spiritualism or secularism. From my vantage point of 2016 I can clearly see which philosophy we ended up embracing (though it is interesting that he claimed that when he wrote this book talking about God, or the non-existance of God, was not something that was done in polite company).
  
  However we always seem to be in a period of flux, a period where we can chose which way we will head. These days it is a question of whether we vote for prosperity or for the Earth. Do we vote for Trump or do we vote for the other person. Mind you, in my mind a vote for Trump is a complete unknown, but at least with the US system of primaries they get to choose the nominee the party puts forward for president. Here in Australia we have a choice of two people – Shorten and Turnball, neither of whom inspire me with any confidence.
  
  Anyway, enough of politics because all that seems to be flooding my Facebook feed these days (depending on which group you subscribe to – I doubt the
  Wodonga Crochet Club talks about voting for Trump, or anybody else, nor does
  Cat Addicts Anony-mouse). The final thing I wish to bring up though is an interesting thing that Chesterton mentions near the end of the book: the idea of law. Apparently in the middle ages when a law as created the law applied to everybody – the duke included (though for some reason I don't think that is entirely true). However these days laws tend to be very specific, in that they target the poor as opposed to the rich. His example is the blasphemy law, which is in effect the law against using foul language. The aristocracy don't use foul language, the common people do, so the aristocracy is unlikely to be caught by this law. This is very clear in our day because the aristocrats can get away with things that us ordinary plebs can't. For instance if I am working for an investment bank and buy shares (or sell shares) before a big deal is released to the market then I am guilty of insider trading. However is the managing director of the investment bank retires, and sells all of his shares before a major crash then he is a canny business man. The same thing is the case with pensions – if I am on a pension and am also earning income from a side job, then I am double dipping and guilty of a crime. However if a former politician takes a job after retiring on a government pension then, well, that is okay.
• 
  Amy

  Obviously, this is G.K. Chesterton so I am going to love it. However, probably my "least" favorite of the books I've read by him. It feels somewhat random and thrown together. I can see how it paved the way for
  Orthodoxy, though, one of his greatest works.
  Contains many profound thoughts! I love the way he writes. I particularly appreciate his advocacy for "bad" novels.
• 
  Stefania

  Es estupendo. Lo he leído varías veces y aún así me sigue sorprendiendo. Chesterton trasmite mucha alegría y amor por la vida.
• 
  Rebecca

  favorite two quotes are "Turnips are singularly broad-minded" and "Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas"
• 
  Justinian the Great

  Look it’s really good, but it would be probably much better if the person reading knew beforehand the authors whom he calls “heretics, I didn’t know, I could still understand what he was saying. Maybe the author himself could have explained better what were the thoughts and writings of these folks.
• 
  David Washington

  Well.
  
  Heretics was my first experience with G.K. Chesterton. And it was a grueling one. Reading this book was an experience in attrition. I trudged through it, picking it up and down, up and down. Though I finished it with an inner fanfare and “Hurrah!!”, I simply could not get into the subject matter.
  
  Heretics takes a look at prominent figures in Chesterton's days from his perspective and their views and philosophies on things. I think the title is a misnomer because he doesn't speak of these figures as heretics in the sense one would expect.
  
  So what was the problem with the book? It wasn't that the book was dated because of the era it was from. That was not it at all as he had talked about some notable figures like Rudyard Kipling and George Benard Shaw. No. It was the way that Chesterton turns a phrase and belabors a point no matter how correct it may be. Much of what he said wasn't heady as much as it was a bunch of extraneous mumbo-jumbo. The book didn't really start to get good until the end. I'm not just saying that either. When he began to wrap it up, he wrote differently than he had in the rest of the book with a more directness which is what I would have preferred throughout the whole book.
  
  One thing you have to say about Chesterton: the man had wit. You can't get far into the book without noticing the guy was witty as could be. He actually talked about it in the book and how others criticized him for it on serious topics.
  
  All was not lost, however. There were some excellent nuggets along the roads that made me keep going in the book. Like the following quotes:
  
  

  Every man is idealistic; only it is so often happens that he has the wrong ideal.

  
  

  If there is one thing more than another which anyone will admit who has the smallest knowledge of the world, it is that men are always speaking gravely and earnestly and with the utmost possible care about the things that are not important, but always talking frivolously about the things that are.

  
  

  The men who have really been the bold artists, the realistic artists, the uncompromising artists, are the men who have turned out, after all, to be writing “with a purpose”.

  
  
  The last one, which is the last quote I highlighted, was spot on. Most writers, fiction as well, should write with a purpose. It can be something as inconsequential as pure entertainment. But I don't know of too many that do not who are good or go on to do things that have a serious impact. Thumbs way up Mr. Chesterton.
  
  All in all, it wasn't totally horrible, but it did not engender a desire to rush out and pick up another one of his books immediately. Nah. I'll wait a bit for that.
• 
  Zack Hudson

  This book deserves five stars for its humor alone. Chesterton is a master of paradox and, like any truly intelligent person, never speaks without a hint of humor. He just skyrocketed to the top of my ‘favorite Catholics’ list, for which he has even less competition than the aforementioned ‘favorite Methodists’ list.
  I was a bit put off in the first few chapters because I’m not all that familiar with the heretics Chesterton talks about, but the more I read, the more it became clear that Chesterton is far more concerned with logical fallacy which finds expression in all generations more so than the particular men he counters. Chapters usually begin with a response to the particular heretic, and is then expanded to address patterns of heresy more broadly. Chef’s kiss. Five stars.
  Edit: If I could get a pint with any writer, it’d be Chesterton.
• 
  Tim

  I'm just finishing this book for the third or fourth time. Chesterton blows my little mind. He has such wonderful insight into what it is to be human. I think of him as a humanist that was a Christian. One of my favorite lines in this book is that "what is valuable and lovable in our eyes is man--the old beer-drinking, creed-making, fighting, failing, sensual, respectable man." For Chesterton, man is incurably an idealist, a romantic, a thinking, feeling, paradoxical being. However, what is most human about humanity, what makes man man is that he's a dogmatist. Man is the only created being that is necessarily drawn to generate a philosophy of life.
  
  In this book Chesterton attacks those who either deny that such a philosophy exists or can exist and/or offer a philosophy that is inadequate. One of the difficulties of this book (and the reason I give it four stars) is how intimately tied it is to late 19th- and early 20th-century people and ideas. Thus, if one is really interested in understanding Chesterton's criticisms in this book, one will likely end up doing some remedial work on men like George Bernard Shaw, H.G Wells, George Moore, and others, and on such movements as Aestheticism, Neopaganism, and a host of other unsavory isms. However, with a little Google research or simply an open window to Wikipedia, most of these things can be adequately pieced together, and, thus, Chesterton's judgments will be understood more fully. All of this work will pay off handsomely, as many of these ideas are still flying around today (especially on university campuses!).
  
  One final word about Chesterton's style: it's like totally rad. It is just downright pleasing to read his words. It is not just that he has a powerful command of humor and paradox, it is that he knows how to turn a phrase. He knows how to make words dance and sing. He is worth reading simply for his style. This book is full of deep insight which is communicated in glorious prose.
• 
  Sandra

  This was the first book I read from Chesterton and I have to admit that, even though it was a bit difficult to follow, I found it genius. It is very difficult to classify this book, but I believe it is a great source of criticism to some modern addictions such as progress, beauty, democracy and anti-religion. I liked it very much by the fact that he manages to criticize in a very respectful and objective way. He destroys the ideals of several important novelists and philosophers by using characteristics of human nature and metaphors which make it clearer to everybody.
  
  Chesterton has the great ability of taking you by the hand and explaining everything so clearly that you may think if anybody disagrees, he is not an intelligent person. I recommend it for religious people, for you to have weapons and rational arguments to defend religion. And I recommend it for anti-religious, for you to understand life.
• 
  Charles Cole

  To explain my review. The concepts in the book aren't all that bad, I'm really just not a fan of the constant use of paradox and empty maxims. It was a fairly grueling read in that it was unnecessarily full of these fillers. However, there were some genuine gems in here, and the book got relatively better heading towards the later chapters. Here are some quotes that I quite enjoyed:
  
  "It is a sufficient proof that we are not an essentially democratic state that we are always wondering what we shall do with the poor."
  
  "We have laws against blasphemy ... but we have no laws against heresy – that is the intellectual poisoning of the whole people, in which only prosperous and prominent man would be likely to be successful. The evil of aristocracy is not that it necessarily leads to the infliction of bad things or the suffering of sad ones; the evil of aristocracy is that it places everything in the hands of a class of people who can always inflict what they never suffer."
• 
  Danny Joseph

  Whatever you think of Chesterton, you have to admit that it's hard to find a modern writer with either Chesterton's wit or his gall. He wrote a book called, "Heretics" and proceeds to skewer his contempories. One of his chapters is even titled simply, "Mr. Bernard Shaw."
  
  Chesterton has a way of turning contempory wisdom on its head. "Oh, you say that firm beliefs make bigots. Well, actually is it lack of firm beliefs that makes people bigoted." And the crazy thing is, most of the time it works.
  
  Its a great book. Not only is it fun, but once in a while it's nice to read a put that you need to put down and say, "oh wow, I was completely wrong."
• 
  Tess

  G.K. Chesterton was such a genius. He blows my mind repeatedly in his books, and gets me thinking about things in a completely different light from that which I am used to thinking about them. Amazing. Here are the greatest hits from this book, at least as far as I'm concerned:
  
  -- For with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages.
  
  -- And this gay humility, this holding of ourselves lightly and yet ready for an infinity of unmerited triumphs, this secret is so simple that every one has supposed that it must be something quite sinister and mysterious. Humility is so practical a virtue that men think it must be a vice. Humility is so successful that it is mistaken for pride. It is mistaken for it all the more easily because it generally goes with a certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity. Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold; pride is that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please it too much. In a word, the failure of this virtue actually lies in its success; it is too successful as an investment to be believed in as a virtue. Humility is not merely too good for this world; it is too practical for this world; I had almost said it is too worldly for this world.
  
  -- A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more. And when Nietszche says, "A new commandment I give to you, 'be hard,'" he is really saying, "A new commandment I give to you, 'be dead.'" Sensibility is the definition of life.
  
  -- When men were tough and raw, when they lived amid hard knocks and hard laws, when they knew what fighting really was, they had only two kinds of songs. The first was a rejoicing that the weak had conquered the strong, the second a lamentation that the strong had, for once in a way, conquered the weak. For this defiance of the statu quo, this constant effort to alter the existing balance, this premature challenge to the powerful, is the whole nature and inmost secret of the psychological adventure which is called man. It is his strength to disdain strength.
  
  -- There has been no rationalist festival, no rationalist ecstasy. Men are still in black for the death of God. When Christianity was heavily bombarded in the last century upon no point was it more persistently and brilliantly attacked than upon that of its alleged enmity to human joy. Shelley and Swinburne and all their armies have passed again and again over the ground, but they have not altered it. They have not set up a single new trophy or ensign for the world's merriment to rally to. They have not given a name or a new occasion of gaiety. Mr. Swinburne does not hang up his stocking on the eve of the birthday of Victor Hugo. Mr. William Archer does not sing carols descriptive of the infancy of Ibsen outside people's doors in the snow. In the round of our rational and mournful year one festival remains out of all those ancient gaieties that once covered the whole earth. Christmas remains to remind us of those ages, whether Pagan or Christian, when the many acted poetry instead of the few writing it. In all the winter in our woods there is no tree in glow but the holly.
  
  -- The one genuinely dangerous and immoral way of drinking wine is to drink it as a medicine. And for this reason, If a man drinks wine in order to obtain pleasure, he is trying to obtain something exceptional, something he does not expect every hour of the day, something which, unless he is a little insane, he will not try to get every hour of the day. But if a man drinks wine in order to obtain health, he is trying to get something natural; something, that is, that he ought not to be without; something that he may find it difficult to reconcile himself to being without...Hence comes the fact which every doctor knows, that it is often perilous to give alcohol to the sick even when they need it. I need hardly say that I do not mean that I think the giving of alcohol to the sick for stimulus is necessarily unjustifiable. But I do mean that giving it to the healthy for fun is the proper use of it, and a great deal more consistent with health. The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other sound rules—a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.
  
  -- Pater's mistake is revealed in his most famous phrase. He asks us to burn with a hard, gem-like flame. Flames are never hard and never gem-like—they cannot be handled or arranged. So human emotions are never hard and never gem-like; they are always dangerous, like flames, to touch or even to examine. There is only one way in which our passions can become hard and gem-like, and that is by becoming as cold as gems. No blow then has ever been struck at the natural loves and laughter of men so sterilizing as this carpe diem of the aesthetes. For any kind of pleasure a totally different spirit is required; a certain shyness, a certain indeterminate hope, a certain boyish expectation. Purity and simplicity are essential to passions—yes even to evil passions. Even vice demands a sort of virginity.
  
  -- This journalism does not merely fail to exaggerate life—it positively underrates it; and it has to do so because it is intended for the faint and languid recreation of men whom the fierceness of modern life has fatigued. This press is not the yellow press at all; it is the drab press.
  
  -- A general vague idea that in spite of all this, our yellow press is sensational, arises from such external accidents as large type or lurid headlines. It is quite true that these editors print everything they possibly can in large capital letters. But they do this, not because it is startling, but because it is soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification and a comfort to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner. The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their readers, for exactly the same reason that parents and governesses use a similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children to spell. The nursery authorities do not use an A as big as a horseshoe in order to make the child jump; on the contrary, they use it to put the child at his ease, to make things smoother and more evident.
  
  -- Now, I do not think that it can be honestly denied that some portion of this impossibility attaches to a class very different in their own opinion, at least, to the school of Anglo-Saxonism. I mean that school of the simple life, commonly associated with Tolstoy. If a perpetual talk about one's own robustness leads to being less robust, it is even more true that a perpetual talking about one's own simplicity leads to being less simple. One great complaint, I think, must stand against the modern upholders of the simple life—the simple life in all its varied forms, from vegetarianism to the honourable consistency of the Doukhobors. This complaint against them stands, that they would make us simple in the unimportant things, but complex in the important things. They would make us simple in the things that do not matter—that is, in diet, in costume, in etiquette, in economic system. But they would make us complex in the things that do matter—in philosophy, in loyalty, in spiritual acceptance, and spiritual rejection. It does not so very much matter whether a man eats a grilled tomato or a plain tomato; it does very much matter whether he eats a plain tomato with a grilled mind. The only kind of simplicity worth preserving is the simplicity of the heart, the simplicity which accepts and enjoys. There may be a reasonable doubt as to what system preserves this; there can surely be no doubt that a system of simplicity destroys it. There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle. The chief error of these people is to be found in the very phrase to which they are most attached—"plain living and high thinking." These people do not stand in need of, will not be improved by, plain living and high thinking. They stand in need of the contrary. They would be improved by high living and plain thinking. A little high living (I say, having a full sense of responsibility, a little high living) would teach them the force and meaning of the human festivities, of the banquet that has gone on from the beginning of the world. It would teach them the historic fact that the artificial is, if anything, older than the natural. It would teach them that the loving-cup is as old as any hunger. It would teach them that ritualism is older than any religion. And a little plain thinking would teach them how harsh and fanciful are the mass of their own ethics, how very civilized and very complicated must be the brain of the Tolstoyan who really believes it to be evil to love one's country and wicked to strike a blow.
  
  -- The child is, indeed, in these, and many other matters, the best guide. And in nothing is the child so righteously childlike, in nothing does he exhibit more accurately the sounder order of simplicity, than in the fact that he sees everything with a simple pleasure, even the complex things. The false type of naturalness harps always on the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The higher kind of naturalness ignores that distinction. To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained.
  
  -- The same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.
  
  -- The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one—absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor.
  
  -- That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened. That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so. That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred. Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of '70 which did.
  
  -- But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements from end to end.
  
  -- If any one wants to hold the end of a chain which really goes back to the heathen mysteries, he had better take hold of a festoon of flowers at Easter or a string of sausages at Christmas. Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French Revolution is of Christian origin. The newspaper is of Christian origin. The anarchists are of Christian origin. Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.
  
  -- Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. The word "kleptomania" is a vulgar example of what I mean. It is on a par with that strange theory, always advanced when a wealthy or prominent person is in the dock, that exposure is more of a punishment for the rich than for the poor. Of course, the very reverse is the truth. Exposure is more of a punishment for the poor than for the rich. The richer a man is the easier it is for him to be a tramp. The richer a man is the easier it is for him to be popular and generally respected in the Cannibal Islands. But the poorer a man is the more likely it is that he will have to use his past life whenever he wants to get a bed for the night. Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters. This is a secondary matter, but it is an example of the general proposition I offer—the proposition that an enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful
  
  -- If we were to-morrow morning snowed up in the street in which we live, we should step suddenly into a much larger and much wilder world than we have ever known. And it is the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from the street in which he lives. First he invents modern hygiene and goes to Margate. Then he invents modern culture and goes to Florence. Then he invents modern imperialism and goes to Timbuctoo. He goes to the fantastic borders of the earth. He pretends to shoot tigers. He almost rides on a camel. And in all this he is still essentially fleeing from the street in which he was born; and of this flight he is always ready with his own explanation. He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is exacting because it is alive. He can visit Venice because to him the Venetians are only Venetians; the people in his own street are men. He can stare at the Chinese because for him the Chinese are a passive thing to be stared at; if he stares at the old lady in the next garden, she becomes active. He is forced to flee, in short, from the too stimulating society of his equals—of free men, perverse, personal, deliberately different from himself.
  
  -- We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. That duty may be a hobby; it may even be a dissipation....But we have to love our neighbour because he is there—a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody. He is a symbol because he is an accident.
  
  -- Doubtless men flee from small environments into lands that are very deadly. But this is natural enough; for they are not fleeing from death. They are fleeing from life. And this principle applies to ring within ring of the social system of humanity. It is perfectly reasonable that men should seek for some particular variety of the human type, so long as they are seeking for that variety of the human type, and not for mere human variety. It is quite proper that a British diplomatist should seek the society of Japanese generals, if what he wants is Japanese generals. But if what he wants is people different from himself, he had much better stop at home and discuss religion with the housemaid.
  
  -- Anything is bad and artificial which tends to make these people succumb to the strange delusion that they are stepping into a world which is actually larger and more varied than their own. The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
• 
  Todd Stockslager

  Review title: Life is always a novel
  
  In the decades since his death, I imagine Mr. Chesterton has been bounding about Heaven in an unfeigned energy of pure virginal (his term) faith and and delight in its wonders, perhaps trading epigrams with Oscar Wilde (who would not be the only forgiven sinner in Paradise) in joyous competition, and quoting with delight the words of that new young songwriter Jimmy Buffett "the more we learn the less we know."
  
  OK, perhaps not, but after reading thousands of books in my life, and reviewing nearly a thousand here for The catholic reader, it is easy to become jaded or accepting of man in his imperfect sinfulness less than the amazing power that God gave him at creation. Chesterton restores that vision of the Garden with brilliant clarity like pure sunlight refracted through a perfect diamond, with no imperfections to color the refraction.
  
  What exactly is a G. K. Chesterton, and why is a book with the dry title "Heretics" worthy of such flashy praise. Chesterton was an English writer, a journalist he preferred to be called, of philosophy, religion, politics, criticism--and of the long-running and incredibly popular series of Father Brown mystery novels. His life (1874-1936) spanned the peak, decline, and the beginning of the dissolution of the Empire, but he was neither jingoist nor anarchist, neither freethinker nor scientific utopian, neither atheist nor utopian believer. He was, in style, substance, and content, a Christian of rational faith and pure passion, a walking contradiction in perfect unity with himself, his world, his world-view, and his God.
  
  And it is at world-view that "Heretics" strikes its simple yet powerful blow, beginning with a discussion of "the importance of orthodoxy." By this Chesterton means the position of caring that what one believes is right; it is his strong reaction to so-called open-mindedness, to tolerance, the all-purpose meaningless mental trance of our present-day. It is a position, says Chesterton, that leaves man in the absurd position that :
  
  

  A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. . . . Everything matters--except everything.

  
  
  Chesterton quickly segues logically into a topic which will consume much of "Heresy": the false contrast between "practicality" and "idealism", with a reference to his contemporary Wilde (my mention of him in the opening of this review not by coincidence):
  
  

  In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tormented a man because he preached some immoral attitude; in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached such an attitude, and then broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out. It may be a question which of the two methods was the more cruel; there can be no kind of question which was the more ludicrous. The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of having produced a society which made an idol of the very same man for preaching the very same things which it made him a convict for practicing.

  
  
  Know what you believe, says Chesterton, and live it like you mean it to the hilt; any other manner of living is heresy. Of course, your belief may be wildly wrong, and Chesterton will mercilessly mock you for it, as he does such famous names as Kipling, H. G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw. It is important to be orthodox, but it is just as important to be right, says Chesterton, in words so often quotable that for the first time in a long time I was underscoring dozens of passages and tempted to quote most of them here in this review
  
  The next topic which Chesterton sinks his teeth into is Wells's progressivism, which is doubly-cursed: practicality combined with scientific optimism.
  
  

  "Liberty" . . . is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. . . . "Progress" . . . is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. . . . "Education" . . . is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says "let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it." He says "Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This, logically stated, means "Let us not settle what is good, but let us settle whether we are getting more of it." He says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education." This, clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children."

  
  
  The next time someone throws "tolerance" in your face for speaking clearly and strongly about what you believe and why, throw Chesterton back in his face, and defy him with good humor and grace for the fool that he is. And if some one claims to tell you why you must vote for one candidate over another in this year's election, but this person has not read Chesterton, suggest that he is not qualified to vote intelligently until he has read and understood Chesterton. Most likely, given the general state of education and vote-mongers in this country today, he will neither have read Chesterton nor be able to understand him if he had.
  
  This is not to say that "Heresy" is a dull philosophical, religious, or political tract. Chesterton insisted that he be called a journalist, a worthy claim because a journalist must in all extremities be brief, precise, interesting and readable, and Chesterton is all of those things. Reading him is like sharing a brief but blazing battle of wits with a good friend on topics that you both feel deeply about but might not always agree on. His writing is also, though or perhaps because a journalist, still as timely as today's headlines even though over a century old (read p. 94-95 of the Barnes & Noble paperback edition to see Chesterton's thoughts on your Facebook friend list).
  
  There are several more page references and quotes I jotted down as I read, but I will let you discover them for yourself (yes, my review title is a quote too. You will understand it and enjoy it even more when you read the context). I will conclude with one last quote:
  
  

  Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin. . . . Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.

  
  
  It does matter what you believe, and why, and Chesterton is unapologetically Christian to the core. Know what you believe, and why. And please, don't vote unless you do.
• 
  Richard Thompson

  Mr. Chesterton would say that I am a person with no philosophy, that I have no principles and that I am not even wrong because I dislike rules and ideologies. I am of the view that we do best when we just muddle along, looking at all of the facts and circumstances and carefully planting our feet without thinking too far beyond the next few steps. There are no iron rules of history and few questions that have the same right answer at all times and places. Mr. Chesterton wants to live in a world governed by a neat set of rules. He thinks that English and Christian traditions provide the right answers. I don't like this part of his thinking. It's a small minded conservatism that ignores the injustices and suffering that were meted out for many years to anyone not lucky enough to be born a wealthy Englishman who was a practicing member of the established church. But then when I scratch below the surface, I find that I like Mr. Chesterton more and more. He carefully picks and chooses the kind of traditions that he wants to follow and bends the rules that don't work the way that he wants, so that his values are closer to my own than they first appear. This is a man with a heart. He has compassion for the downtrodden. He's smart. He has a sense of humor. He is able to find things to admire in the people with whom he disagrees. In short, he is the kind of conservative that I could do business with, someone with whom I disagree about important things, but who would have made a fine companion for a night of serious drinking and talking.
• 
  Richard Duncan

  No review by me could even remotely begin to do justice to the wit and wisdom in GK Chesterton's book Heretics.
  
  I read this book at the recommendation of my son, Alan. I'm glad he encouraged me – strongly, I might add – to read Heretics. Next, I will read Orthodoxy.
  
  Although Chesterton wrote in a different time and on a different continent, his words have strong application for what we are facing today with postmodernism, pluralism, and a new kind of religion called tolerance, which is really intolerant of any other view.
  
  Chesterton shows a breadth of understanding and appreciation of the art, literature, and philosophy of his day. He was a good-natured man who was friends with people with whom he disagreed. In Heretics, he discusses the worldviews and works of people like Richard Kipling, Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, George Moore, Lowes Dickinson, and many others.
  
  I was truly amazed at the breath of understanding that Chesterton has with his culture along with his ability to disagree in an agreeable, friendly, and joyous way.
  
  I'm sure that if I was more conversant with the literature, philosophy, and politics of his day then I would have an even greater appreciation for Chesterton's repartee.
  
  Trying to keep up with him in conversation would, no doubt, expose most of us as intellectual lightweights.
  
  Chesterton believes that the most practical and important thing about a man is his view of the universe. Therefore, Chesterton begins with the first things – one's worldview. Ideas matter to Chesterton. He believes that one should search out the truth and then hold to one's position vigorously and with good will and humor.
  
  Chesterton isn't fooling around. He says about Bernard Shaw, "I am concerned with him as a heretic – that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong." Chesterton feels his philosophy is quite right. And he is unapologetic about it. But he holds to his view in a friendly, joyous way.
  
  For Chesterton if there is to be mental advance, it must be mental advance in the construction of a definite philosophy of life. He would have little patience for postmodern, pluralistic, tolerant views that are commonly held in the 21st century. He writes, "No man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is right and the other man in error... If we talk of a certain thing being an aspect of truth, it is evident that we claim to know what is truth; just as, if we talk of the hind leg of a dog, we claim to know what is a dog." He decries the philosopher who talks about aspects of the truth and then goes on to ask, "What is truth?" If one denies the existence of truth how then can he recognize its aspects?
  
  Chesterton makes the case for orthodoxy and religion. He himself was an unapologetic Christian. He says that religion is the thing which cannot be left out – because it includes everything. He writes, "We have a general view of existence, whether we like it or not; it alters or, to speak more accurately, it creates and involves everything we say or do, whether we like it or not." In this way, Chesterton is saying that our worldview affects everything.
  
  Of special note to us in the United States, Chesterton shares a few concerns about America. "But at the present moment the matter which America has very seriously to consider is not how near it is to its birth and beginning, but how near it may be to its end."
  
  Chesterton is a man who very much appreciates the basic fundamental behaviors of life and encourages us to enjoy. "I should regard any civilization which was without a universal habit of uproarious dancing as being, from the full human point of view, a defective civilization. And I should regard any mind which had not got the habit in one form or another of uproarious thinking as being, from the full human point of view, a defective mind... Unless a man is in part a humorist, he is only in part a man. I import frivolity into a discussion of the nature of man because frivolity is part of the nature of man... If one objects to my treating of life riotously, I reply that life is a riot... I never look up at the stars without feeling that they are the fires of the schoolboy's rocket fixed in their everlasting fall."
  
  Chesterton has a way of looking at life and literature in an upside down or inside out way. He's prompted me to want to think more carefully and ask more questions. We should ask, "Is this true? Is this right? How could this idea be flipped or tweaked or turned upside down or inside out to make it better or truer?" Chesterton loves to look at things a third way. He's a conservative who sees the fallacies of both the snobbish secularists and the rigid religionists.
  
  Chesterton encourages us to drink because we are happy but never to drink because we are miserable. He says that we need to use wine not to shut out the universe but to reveal it. He says if we are to be truly happy and joyous we must believe that there is some eternal happiness and joy in the very nature of things. That's why he says, "Ultimately a man can enjoy nothing except religion."
  
  I guess my hearty recommendation can be no more heightened other than by my saying that I can't wait to read the next book on my list by GK Chesterton, that is, Orthodoxy.
• 
  Dominic Robin

  Not as good as Orthodoxy, but, then, nothing is as good as Orthodoxy. It's better than most anything else though.
• 
  Joshua Lake

  Chesterton was a jovial, good-natured man, known for his raucous laughter and his love for naps and good beer. But Chesterton was also criticized for his joy, particularly criticized for how many jokes he made at his opponents’ expense. Heretics exhibits that style of jovial criticism, as in its pages Chesterton contests the philosophies and the philosophers of his day, but does so with wit and flair.
  
  The chapters of this book are each devoted to a different writer or thinker of Chesterton’s day, as he tears down their ideas one at a time. Some names are recognizable today, while others have disappeared into the forgotten past.
  
  I give this book a rating of 3 out of 5 with some regret, because I found great enjoyment in its pages. But the primary weakness of the book is its strong ties to the past; many of the ideas and persons described within are no longer known to today’s society. While the chapter on H. G. Wells still carries some interest for today’s reader, there is little need for us to dwell on the weaknesses of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  
  As to the book’s strong suits, I thought the opening to be one of the most profound I have ever read. Chesterton described our modern world turned on its head, as illustrated by our use of the words “orthodoxy” and “heretic”:
  
  "The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. For obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical."
  
  Chesterton also wrote profoundly about the modern tendency to focus on evils and weaknesses, without pointing men and women toward any idea of what is good: “The human race, according to religion, fell once, and in falling gained knowledge of good and of evil. Now we have fallen a second time, and only the knowledge of evil remains to us.”
  
  I could continue to share dozens more quotes — the Kindle tells me I’ve highlighted 89 different passages in the book — but instead I encourage you to read Heretics yourself.
  
  This book will require more labor to read than any of today’s books, but the effort is worth your time. Chesterton was a brilliant social critic, and a fantastic wordsmith. If you are up for the challenge, Heretics will provide you with handfuls of pithy quotes, a picture of Chesterton’s coherent Christian worldview, and an example of how to winsomely critique the false ideas of your peers. It has not the accessibility of C. S. Lewis or even of Chesterton’s own Orthodoxy, but Heretics is a fascinating, if more difficult, read.
• 
  The Nutmeg

  Ack I'm so glad I reread this one! I liked it five years ago, but found it so muddling that I've always recommended people NOT read it until they've got acquainted with GKC in some more enjoyable way. I guess I'm finally steeped enough in Chesterton and his time to not be utterly confused every step of the way now. I feel the pride of Captain America: "I understood that reference."
  
  For example, two references I understood:
  
  1. "in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached such an attitude, and then broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out." (Aggggggggghhhhh I'm just sobbing over here don't mind me.)
  
  2. KISS ME, HARDY. (Which I understand more from Elizabeth Wein than from history itself but at least it meant something to me this time.)
  
  I think my favorite chapter is VII, "Omar and the Sacred Vine." That's where the quote "drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable" comes from and GOSH IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.
  
  Also, in the same general vein of cosmic happiness/eternal joy, Chapter XII, "Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson." I still don't know Mr. Lowes Dickinson any more than I did five years ago, but I gave my parents a five-minute speech based on this chapter because my poor dad happened to make a joke about celebrating the Winter Solstice. But it makes SO MUCH SENSE that when secularists try to bring back pagan rituals, they're not really trying to get back to pagan frivolity, they're trying to find an excuse to celebrate Christian holidays (holy days) without celebrating the Christian dogma at their heart. They don't want the Solstice. They want the Christmas party without the Christ Child.
  
  Anywho.
  
  Chesterton is a delightful, articulate, warm-hearted genius.
  
  And he's very funny.
  
  Y'all should read him.
• 
  Jim

  This is a re-read for me, though it has been over thirty years since I first encountered it. G. K. Chesterton makes the point that the most important thing about a person is his philosophy, whether it is spurious or sustaining. "We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them."
  
  What Chesterton refers to as heretics are those who espouse spurious ideals. These people include George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Omar Khayyam (?! - for boozing while unhappy), George Moore, Lowes Dickinson, Celtophiles, James McNeill Whistler, and various other fin-de-siècle figures who do not much signify in our time. (Maybe Chesterton was right?)
  
  In that case, why read the book? Perhaps, the answer is that Heretics is worth reading because Chesterton is in his own person a great thinker. He is an optimist who attempts to ferret out ways of thought that lead people to various dead ends. Reading GKC carefully is in itself a positive act that makes the reader feel good -- especially if he is inclined toward Catholicism, which Chesterton ultimately was.
  
  Although I myself consider myself to be an ex-Catholic, I respect Chesterton and love the act of reading him to come across those amazing paradoxes that make me think about what is true and what is merely phantasmagorical.
  
  
• 
  Darwin8u

  Funny and flamboyant. Quotable and often Quixotic. Chesterton is one of those writers (I think of Christopher Hitchens) I read not because I agree with him always, but because he forces me page after page to pick up, look at, and sharpen my beliefs. He is like a literary gypsy, who quoting parables about fairies and singing odd paradoxes about the Universe, comes into my room and offers to sharpen the edges of all my dogmas. After finishing his books most all my doctrines are wickedly sharpened, a few have disappeared, and some new ones have quietly been left behind.
• 
  Pinkyivan

  His best essay collection where he discusses ideas of his contemporaries.
  This makes you realize how modern public intellectual debates and whatnot are completely vapid compared to the lively discussion of early 20th century England where you had people like Chesterton, Kipling, Bernard Shaw, Wells, Belloc and a few others being what Dawkins and Lane Craig are today.
  Ye old days were at least in this much more interesting.
• 
  Nuno R.

  For a few years, I heard numerous references to Chesterton. I'm sure I will dive into his work and it's so good to know he has a long bibliography. He was a genius, a brilliant thinker and I wish I could find more conservatives like him. The quality of our argument depends a lot on the quality of our oponents. His ability to create/point out paradoxes makes his writting at the same time piercing and wity, challenging and delightful.