Tom McCarthy
speaker
238 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 2 Aug
Tom McCarthy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It was his way of kind of being atheist within the kind of, without technically breaking, you know, without technically getting burnt at the stake.
Or whatever.
And I think Eliot follows those contours.
She had a very religious upbringing.
She was completely disillusioned with religion.
But I mean, she has an enormous intellect and a generosity of intellect.
And she can see that.
I mean, she doesn't turn away from the church entirely and denounce it as religious.
a load of bullshit, even though she kind of thinks it is at the same time.
I mean, so the critic Bernard Paris writes, Christianity is not the source of the moral order for George Eliot, but as a form of organized experience, it is certainly an important part of the ethical process.
In other words, you know, she may have kind of lost her faith, but
But of course, she can recognize that this world of vicars is part of the texture and the fabric of lived experience in England.
And philosophically.
I mean, Eliot also translated Strauss, author of The Life of Jesus, critically examined from 1835.
And his point in that book is...
Jesus operates not as a historical reality or even a metaphysical reality, but as an organizing mythical structure.
And she also translated Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity from 1841, whose thesis is very similar.
You know, God is a projection.
like the Wizard of Oz by the man behind the curtain.
God is a projection of human desires and sensuousnesses, sensuousnesses, and so on.
Showing 161–180 of 238 · page 9 of 12
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