Abstract: This essay explores the content and exceptionality of Terry Eagleton's idea of culture and its significance for contemporary thinking on culture, and it posits the exploration in the context of current academic heat on culture, the intellectual history of English cultural theory and the tradition of Western Marxism. The paper maintains that Eagleton's proposition of cultural crisis not only reveals the intrinsic contradiction of the cultural heat but also helps for the understanding of the fundamental logic of modern cultural theory. Cultural crisis has been in existence along the modern era and it has intensified into contemporary culture wars. It shows in the neglect of the historicity, materiality, productivity and politics of culture in the mainstream cultural discourses, which is resulted from the innate contradiction in capitalism. For Eagleton, the fundamental way out of the cultural crisis lies in the recovering of the original function of culture so as to promote socialism and enable everyone to live a cultured life of self-realization. The paper concludes that Eagleton's idea of culture is crucial for understanding the nature and features of his critical theory.

Key words: cultural theory, cultural crisis, cultural production, ideology, politics