The postmodernist tortoise

Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life
Oxford, 2007

Also from this book: Eudaimonia

It is also true that human beings, not least because they have language, are capable of objectifying their own existence in a way that tortoises presumably are not. We can speak of something called ‘the human condition’, whereas it is unlikely that tortoises brood under the shelter of their shells on the condition of being a tortoise. Tortoises are in this sense remarkably similar to postmodernists.