T.S. Eliot on Heresy
anecdote · T.S. Eliot ·
retold in 4 talks
Cites British conservative poet T.S. Eliot’s idea that sometimes the only way to save religious orthodoxy is through radical heresy, applying this to left-liberal orthodoxy.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“T.S. Eliot said at some point that sometimes in a religion the only way to save the orthodoxy is through radical heresy”
“The existing order is complete before the new work arrives... the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.”1:05:25 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 3pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:55:54
“Every really new work of art doesn't just introduce something new but retroactively changes the entire history of art.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Karl Wilhelm Leopold Krug1Alexander Pope1Jeb Bush1Lee Marvin1Édouard Balladur2Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau1Henri Rousseau1Donald Spoto1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Cites British conservative poet T.S. Eliot’s idea that sometimes the only way to save religious orthodoxy is through radical heresy, applying this to left-liberal orthodoxy., illustrating radical heresy
1:05:25 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 3pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:55:54
Žižek quotes T.S. Eliot’s 'Tradition and Individual Talent' to show that the past is altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past, illustrating the retroactive change of the 'pure past.', illustrating pure past,retroactivity
Every genuinely new work of art retroactively changes the meaning and narrative of the entire history of art, Žižek's example for the Hegelian theory of totality as retroactively rewritten., illustrating retroactive necessity,Hegelian totality,art history