Resumen
Resumen de Herejes
Para quién es
For readers who enjoy argument, essays and quick wit, and anyone curious about how a believer answered the doubters of his time. Lovers of paradox and debates about faith, joy and ordinary life will find plenty to explore.
De qué trata este libro
Heretics is a book of essays by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1905. Chesterton was then a young London journalist, already known for his columns, his wit and his huge frame. The essays began as newspaper pieces and were gathered into one argument. The book is a tour of the leading writers and fashions of his day, from Rudyard Kipling and Bernard Shaw to H. G. Wells, the aesthetes and the champions of simple living.
Why call them heretics? Chesterton says the word has lost its sting, because people no longer believe there is a right view to depart from. He holds that this is the real problem of the age. Everyone has opinions about art, politics and manners, but few will say what they think life is for. Without that, he argues, no opinion can be tested, and every thinker ends up praising a part of life while forgetting the whole.
You get a fast, funny and sharply argued book, full of paradox, which means a claim that sounds wrong until you think it through. You also get a portrait of Edwardian England and its quarrels. Chesterton later answered his own challenge in Orthodoxy, but this book is where the challenge is made. Let us begin with his first claim, that a person's view of the universe matters more than anything else about them.
En este resumen
- 1Your view of the universe comes firstFree
- 2Doubt by itself builds nothing
- 3A wide world can make a small mind
- 4Shaw and Wells: bold minds without a fixed measure
- 5Joy is more basic than gloom
- 6Nations, races and the lure of fashionable science
- 7Wit, play and the dignity of the ordinary
- 8How the challenge has lasted and been answered
Idea clave 1 de 8
Your view of the universe comes first
Chesterton opens by attacking a habit of his age. People, he says, treat the question of what life means as a boring matter for priests, and they call themselves practical for ignoring it. He argues that this gets things backward. The most practical thing about a person is the picture of the world they carry in their head, because every choice grows out of it.
He gives an everyday comparison. If you rent a house, you would like to know the landlord's income, but it matters even more to know his philosophy. If you meet a general about to fight a war, you want to know the enemy's strength, and even more, the philosophy of the enemy. In each case the belief shapes the action.
From this he draws his main complaint. Modern writers love to say that they are free of dogma, meaning fixed belief. Chesterton replies that this freedom is only a way of dodging the hard question. A man who will not say what he thinks is good cannot tell whether a thing is better or worse. He can only say that it is new.
That is why he uses the word heretic. A heretic, in the old sense, was someone who chose one truth and pushed it so far that it crowded out the rest. Chesterton says the age is full of such people, though nobody calls them that. The word orthodoxy has become an insult, and he finds this a sign of something sick.
He is also careful about tone. He says he does not want to silence anyone, and he admires many of the men he criticizes. His quarrel is with the idea that argument about the final things is a waste of breath. If you care about people, he says, you will care what they believe, and you will say so plainly.
That’s 1 of 8 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Questions about Herejes
What is Heretics by G. K. Chesterton about?
It is a book of essays that challenges leading writers and fashions of Edwardian England, such as Kipling, Shaw and Wells. Chesterton argues that people must have a clear view of life's meaning, or they cannot judge anything well.
Why is the book called Heretics?
Chesterton uses the old word for someone who stresses one truth so far that it hides the rest. He says his age is full of such thinkers, though it no longer believes in a standard to depart from.
Is Heretics connected to Orthodoxy?
Yes. After Heretics appeared, people challenged Chesterton to say what he himself believed. He answered in Orthodoxy, published in 1908, so the two books are often read as a pair.
What is the main message of Heretics?
A person's view of the universe is the most practical thing about them. Without a firm standard of good, fashionable ideas become mood and taste, and even good instincts drift into excess.