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Cargando... Endgames: Questions in Late Modern Political Thoughtpor John Gray
Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  keylawk | Sep 28, 2022 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
In this book John Gray argues that we live in a time of endings forthe ideologies that governed the modern period. The Enlightenmentprojects of universal emancipation animates all the politicaldoctrines and movements that are central in contemporary westernsocieties. Yet it does not reflect the reality of the plural worldin which we live. The western cultural hegemony which theEnlightenment embodied is coming to a close. Western liberalsocieties are not precursors of a universal civilization, but onlyone form of life among many in the late modern world. Our inherited stock of political ideas no longer tracks that world.The crisis of New Right thought is as profound as that of the Left.Green theorists and communitarian thinkers have not understood thedeep diversity and intractable conflicts of contemporary societies.And postmodernists, whose thought is ruled by the dated utopias ofthe modern period, do not engage with the real conditions of theworld's emerging postmodern societies. Late modern thought occursin an interregnum between modern projects that are no longercredible and postmodern realities that many find intolerable. John Gray suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress mustbe extinguished if we are to learn to respect cultural diversityand accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for otherspecies and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadianprojects that haunt modern thought. We should aim to moderate theimpact of human activity on the Earth while alleviating theunavoidable evils of human life. Yet the hubris which treats theEarth as an instrument of human purposes, and which regards othercultures as approximations to a universal civilization, embodiesancient and powerful traditions. John Gray's aim is to questionthese traditions and thereby to prepare our thinking for a time ofbeginnings. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)320.5Social sciences Political Science Political Science Political ideologiesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.67)
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Gray has written several influential books, including False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), which argues that free market globalization is an unstable Enlightenment project currently in the process of disintegration; Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002), which attacks philosophical humanism, a worldview which Gray sees as originating in religions; and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007), a critique of utopian thinking in the modern world.
"The Gaian perspective [hypothesis] is the most potent antidote within late modern culture to the hubris of humanism". [170]
Gray sees volition, and morality, as illusions. Portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life. "In the late modern phenomenon of the omnicompetent market, modernity may have become self-consuming." [184] The global "free market" is a destructive gale of toxic waste generation. We cannot control technology, and sites of incalculable risk already abound. He doubts if there is any late modern society with the cultural resources to initiate and sustain prudent risk-aversion.
Gray concludes on a fatalistic note, and it is already hollowed out by his atheism and an apparently constitutional inability to find hope in discoveries. For those who invoke the hoary hope of "examined life" as expressed in the Socratic project, he notes that "the idea of thinking human beings" remains an obstacle to thought. "The present inquiry has been intended as no more than a prelude to thinking. The preparatory thinking that is most needed in our time is that which is ready to put our certainty in question." [186] (