Owlseyes 's Reviews > Orthodoxy

"And though St John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators"

"It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will"

"The new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking about death"

"Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism"



"But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity, for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing"

"Descartes said "I think therefore I am". The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says "I am not, therefore I cannot think"

"Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that men had once sought as good what we now call evil;..."

"...Nietzsche who preached something that is called egoism"

"Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be with such men still living...".







A fierce catholic, Chesterton never got into an university degree, only attending an arts school. He wrote around 4,000 essays; kept his weekly column in a British newspaper for 30 years; and wrote many books; noteworthy, the father Brown detective “series”; and this "Orthodoxy".

Some called him the "apostle of common sense". He was against: materialism, relativism, atheism, socialism and capitalism. His focus was “the ordinary man”. His values: family …and the catholic faith.

Alan Watts said of Chesterton: he knew how to perceive the world like a child: “an entirely new world”; he knew how to be child-like; he, somehow, kept the “innocent view”.

On his style, Watts recalled how Chesterton used non-sense in his writings (“the cosmic is the comic”). Watts had read Chesterton when an adolescent and then he’d found “the sense of wonder” in the British author. “Even God needs a surprise”. You’ll find a world vision in Chesterton contrary to this “everything completely controlled”. The Chesterton world is not the serious, solemn, grave (with gravity) world; but full of lightness; even frivolity. Heaven is not that serious. Satan is just a kind of prosecutor.

Dale Ahlquist (of the American Chesterton Society) said when you read Orthodoxy for the first time you underline the text (because you understand little, it’s implied); then you’ve got to re-read it; finally, on the third trial things start to "come together”.

Joseph Pearce acknowledged Chesterton had “gratitude and wonder” in his work; he could laugh at himself; his works “combine wisdom and innocence”.

Peter Kreeft joked about Chesterton:"...he leaves you feeling stupid".



I am on my first reading-trial. I know I’ll need other trials.
So far, it looks solid, these following assertions:

(1) the book is an attempt to justify his Christian belief, yet a “companion to heretics”

"Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey"

(2) the author has recourse to a sort of “absurd reduction” in the second chapter (The Maniac) when he admits he’s the “the fool of the story”, in order to prove his point. He’s discovered a NEW PERSPECTIVE. It is as if an Englishman departed from his nation, by ship, to discover a new world; yet, unknowingly, he returns to his departure nation; he’s again on land, thinking he’s found a new one in the South Seas, and preparing to put the flag on the ground of Brighton; you can imagine how people are looking at him. “I am that man”; looking like a fool.

(3) Chesterton won’t provide you with a set of “serious deductions” rather: a mental picture. That’s his method.

The book was dedicated to his mother.



(Chesterton and wife)

UPDATE; beatification of Chesterton, why not?
Check here:

"A Most Unlikely Saint
The case for canonizing G. K. Chesterton, the bombastic man of letters and paradoxical militant for God"
in: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...

11th December 2016