Let me start with the simplest: I initially did not want to write on Eagleton because I felt that I could not properly engage with his arguments without having read Badiou. Can one, in other words, make an original, stand-alone argument in a review? This seems to me to be in part a question of ethics: while people do use reviews for all sorts of interventions (if I am being charitable) or self-aggrandizement (if I am not) should we? I realize this is a bit of trite question and one that has been solved by years of academic practice, but I had enough of discomfort at the thought of responding to the text that it gave me pause. Even now, upon a few days of reflection, I still cannot pinpoint an explanation, but evidently it was stayed in my head long enough to warrant this response. So perhaps what has ultimately happened is a revelation as to the fluid state of my own personal code of ethics.
Attendant upon this reflection was a single question: what does it mean that a review of a book on ethics deals so heavily with faith? I do not take "faith" to mean one that is attached to a particular religiosity or perhaps not even to a spirituality, but rather a long view that seems to pertain to both academics and activists: that our work will survive us, that it will mean something, that it will make a positive impact. This brings me to the second reason that I did not want to respond to Eagleton: his opening paragraph is so polemic I -- like a good responsible academic -- decided that I would ignore it entirely. But despite my declarations and protestations to the contrary, here I am.
My goal has always to become what Julia Sudbury calls an "activist scholar." A conceited title perhaps, but one that defines how I think of myself. Faith is fundamental here; revolutions (however one wants to think of those) are comprised of small steps. It seems than that an ethical faith of this variety would demand an impossible farsight: the ability to see the consequences of our actions. Eagleton's dichotomous consequences of transformation seem to be full of despair; what would a revolution look like that would leave us with the tools to understand the change?
At the end of things, the question that Eagelton's article leaves us with is this: why do we do what we do? If this question demands an ethical answer, or at least carries an assumption that our work has an imperative for change -- regardless of how small or large -- then we must be careful in how we answer this question. When this question is re-imagined as "what can you do with an English degree?" I, as Brianna posted, have answered along the lines of external goods. But it seems to me that internal and external goods are a false binary and neither is wholly satisfactory. At the very least, neither is ethical if we are to think of ethics and faith as important factors in academic scholarship.
But many people do pursue academic work for a good job or because they love research and teaching. Are these not valid answers? Are they devoid of faith and/or ethics? Badiou claims that ethics is a loyalty to truth, not in a universal way but truth events which may be singular and unique to each of us. Eagleton rightly questions what can count as a truth event, but without having read Badiou, I want to know whether or not our academic practice counts as a truth event. If so, then ethics as imagined by Badiou demands that we strive to remain loyal to the aims of our academic practice. If one's only goal is to get a job, than an ethics would be to do what one can to get that job. This seems to be the place where faith becomes so important in academic practice -- the question of whether that work that we do is bigger than us looms large.
I seemed to have returned to the beginning, but perhaps it is worth repeating again: why do we do what we do?
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