By G. K.
Chesterton
I
am even more convinced that this is absolutely required reading as an
introduction preceding Chesterton's Orthodoxy.
Of course, Chesterton himself says as much in calling the latter
book “a companion to 'Heretics,' […]
put[ting]
the positive side in addition to the negative”
(Orthodoxy,
“Preface”). I would not, however, characterize Heretics
as “negative” in the sense that we usually thing of it, as simply
an unrelenting attack on ideologies with which Chesterton disagreed.
Rather he presents carefully reasoned and always clever refutations
of those ideologies, eloquently demonstrating the limitations and
implications of disordered moralities and philosophies that erupted
into the 20th
century as traditional notions were increasingly turned on their
head, old certainties being questioned and rejected, in favor or …
what, exactly? – more or less, nothing.
Presciently, Chesterton realized the deleterious effects on society
that would be wrought by the current advent of relativism, the
abolition of the absolute or any accepted societal consensus of right
and wrong, of good and evil:
