SOURCE: Wheatley, David. Review of On Belief, by Slavoj Žižek. Times Literary Supplement, no. 5136 (7 September 2001): 33.

In the following review, Wheatley offers a positive assessment of On Belief, calling the work “an honest and admirable meditation on what belief may mean today.”

Slavoj Zizek takes the question of belief very seriously. On Belief begins with a description of a recent episode of the Larry King Show in which a rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Southern Baptist are discussing ecumenism. The rabbi and the priest agree that, irrespective of creed, a truly good person can rely on divine grace and redemption. The Baptist thinks otherwise: only those who “live in Christ” can be saved, which means that sadly “a lot of good and honest people will burn in hell”. Zizek wants us to dwell on this as an illustration of the basic premiss of On Belief: that to...