Heretics and Orthodoxy: Two Volumes in One Paperback – Import, 4 April 2023

“The man who kills a man kills a man.The man who kills himself kills ALL men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.” -OrthodoxyDisclaimer: I have only read Orthodoxy, so I can only speak to half the contents of this book. But that half has more to say than 10 lesser books about Christianity (perhaps even about philosophy). GK Chesterton’s writing has the same ring of truth as CS Lewis. They both have a way of calmly and logically flipping your view on something upside down, but once they’ve done it their conclusions seem to have been obvious all along.Prime example of this is how he says a suicide is the opposite of a martyr, even though they both die willingly. The martyr cares so much for something outside of himself that he gives up his life in service of it. The suicide thinks nothing in the entire world is worth caring about, not even his own life.The book is full of ideas like this.“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”“But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress. ”It’s also amusing to see that a lot of the ideas we take as uniquely modern (materialism, rejection of traditional values, the self righteous idea that we are at the pinnacle of history) were present and able to be refuted 100 years ago. He’s got a good sense of humour too.

G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics and Orthodoxy is two books, two collections of essays, in one volume, containing some of the most powerful thinking that the world has ever seen. Chesterton is often categorized as a “Catholic” writer but that is a shallow assessment. From Dickens to Whistler, Chesterton lambasts the great thinkers of his time and in some cases makes mincemeat of notable writers including, but not limited to, Robert Browning, Rudyard Kipling H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.He reveals Friedrich Nietzsche as the fool that he really was by calmly asserting that Nietzsche’s “upper man” or “overman” never explicitly defines the real human being that evolution ought to produce. Nietzsche is not only a flawed thinker but weak. Chesterton has great fun with Tolstoy who he dismisses as a dandy praising peasants from his mighty high position as a gentleman landholder, a snob and an aristocrat.The entire body of Chesterton’s work is mired in paradox. Every sentence is rich with contextual meaning. If you are reading his work from a Catholic perspective or for Catholic enrichment, you will find fulfillment. (Dorothy Day held his work to be a key influence in her profound conversion to Catholicism.) The depth of his work is cradled in the true meaning of Catholicity—which means wholeness. The essence of exploring wholeness in our thinking is by understanding paradox and the very nature of our paradoxical world. The world is black. The world is white. Both truths can coexist in the same world and in the same mind. And that doesn’t mean the world is grey.At times, Chesterton is very funny. He holds Joan of Arc in high regard and offers her praise: “She did not praise fighting, but fought. She was not afraid of the army, while Nietzsche was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant but she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior, but she was the warrior.”Chesterton inspired me to think about the mystery of life instead of being mired in the current junky books that are being unleashed on our culture. Even though Heretics and Orthodoxy was my beach book for the summer, it was not an easy read, but admittedly, I am strange. I love the way my brain works and I love to think. If you are sick to death of the garbage that is currently being churned out by today’s publishing world, C.K. Chesterton is just the antidote. While I read slowly, and I can only stress, I read slowly, I found myself grimacing as though I had swallowed bitter medicine, but in the end, I was completely cured from thinking like an idiot.

Beware, this new edition is full of typos both large and small, which greatly detracts from the enjoyment of Chesterton's brilliant essays.

Not an easy read but very informative to say the least. If you're a fan of C.S. Lewis or Tolkien you'll find the academic language of the era most satisfying and edifying.

If you feel that you're above dazzling, rigorous and original thinking and can do without the pleasure of being engaged by a pure intelligence, then skip this; if not, order it instantly.