John Gray

'Straw Dogs' is a radical work of philosophy that challenges our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. John Gray explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned.

Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Straw Dogs

The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. Cats do not need to be instructed in the good life. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life that it gives them. In humans, on the other hand, discontent with our nature seems only natural. The human animal never ceases striving for higher meaning. Cats, however, make no such effort. They are just happy to be themselves. That is why cats have no need for philosophy. They already know how to live. So writes John Gray in this incisive new book about the follies of human exceptionalism and what we can learn from the animals that have long captured our imaginations. The history of philosophy has been a "predictably tragic" succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, and how to be loved—all of which held no relevance to their feline companions. In Feline Philosophy, Gray introduces us to some of these unburdened counterparts, showing how they approached issues of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose un-examined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy. The nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, is the subject of this book—and through it, Gray delivers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on just how vulnerable it is to be human.

Cats and the Meaning of Life

Feline Philosophy

A sophisticated investigation into the persistence of myth in the modern world draws on a wide range of memoirs, poems, fiction and philosophy to explore how the human imagination is compelled by hardship into worlds beyond real experience. By the author of Straw Dogs.

On Progress and Other Modern Myths

The Silence of Animals

When you explore older atheisms, you will find some of your firmest convictions - secular or religious - are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom fromthought.' For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood 'science'. John Gray's stimulating and extremely enjoyable new book describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition, a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself, as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its 'opposite'. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have, at different times and places, battled to understand this issue.

Seven Types of Atheism

In The Soul of the Marionette, his brilliantly enjoyable and freewheeling book, John Gray draws together the religious, philosophic, and fantastical traditions that question the very idea of human freedom.

A Short Inquiry Into Human Freedom

The Soul of the Marionette

The Delusions of Global Capitalism

False Dawn

Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Black Mass

A useful and breakneck tour of the perils of modernity. (Toronto Globe and Mail)

Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern

Turning his back on neoliberalism, voicing 'the end of history' and the unstoppable spread of liberal values across the globe, Gray's was a lone voice of scepticism. The thinking he criticised would lead to the invasion of Iraq. Today, its folly might seem obvious, but Gray has been trying to warn us for years.

Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age

Enlightenment's Wake

Perros de paja es una obra estimulante y radical, escrita con la intención de desafiar nuestras más arraigadas nociones de lo que es un ser humano. Desde Platón hasta el cristianismo, o desde la Ilustración hasta Nietzsche, la tradición occidental se ha basado en creencias arrogantes y erróneas sobre los seres humanos y su lugar en el mundo. Filosofías como el liberalismo y el marxismo conciben la humanidad como una especie cuyo destino es trascender los límites naturales y conquistar la Tierra. Incluso en la actualidad, a pesar de los descubrimientos de Darwin, la práctica totalidad de las escuelas de pensamiento parte de la creencia según la cual los seres humanos son radicalmente distintos al resto de los animales. John Gray sostiene que esa tesis humanista es una ilusión. El objetivo de Perros de paja es explorar cuál es el aspecto del mundo y de la vida humana una vez abandonado definitivamente el humanismo. Perros de paja analiza cuestiones filosóficas tales como la naturaleza del yo, el libre albedrío, la moralidad, el progreso y el valor de la verdad. Tomando el arte, la poesía, las ciencias y, cómo no, la propia filosofía como fuentes de inspiración, John Gray presenta una panorámica posthumanista del mundo y de la vida humana. Se trata de un libro estimulante, perturbador en ocasiones, que lleva al lector a cuestionarse sus más hondas creencias.

reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

Perros de paja

El silencio de los animales

By the author of the best-selling Straw Dogs, this book is a characteristically trenchant and unflinchingly clear-sighted collection of reflections on our contemporary lot. Whether writing about the future of our species on this planet, the folly of our faith in technological progress, or the self-deceptions of the liberal establishment, John Gray dares to be heretical like few other thinkers today.

Heresies

'The most prescient of British public intellectuals' Pankaj Mishra, Financial Times 'Gray has consistently anticipated the shape of things to come ...... he teaches us that true humanism is to be found in uncertainty and doubt' Will Self Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why do beliefs that humanity can be improved end in farce or horror? Is atheism a hangover from Christian faith? John Gray, one of the most iconoclastic thinkers of our time, smashes through civilization's most cherished beliefs, overturning our view of the world, and our place in it. 'Gray's dissection of modern delusion, cant and wishful thinking is to be welcomed in this moment of convulsion ...... This is a book to learn from and argue with' Ben Wilson, Literary Review 'A thoroughly enjoyable book ...... These essays cover a remarkable range of topics, from Isaiah Berlin to Damien Hirst, from torture to environmentalism. But their unifying theme is that our na�ve belief in the idea of progress has turned modern life into a constant round of shadow-boxing' David Runciman, Observer 'Demolishes the theory that we have reached the 'end of history', the dogmas of secular liberalism, the weaknesses of financial casino capitalism and the limits of energy-intensive economic growth' Economist

Selected Writings

Gray's Anatomy

John Gray's The Immortalization Commission- The Strange Quest to Cheat Death raises vital questions about the 'truths' science can offer, the technology we are still exploiting for immortality - and exactly what it means to be human. At the heart of all human experience lies our obsession with death. For many years, we turned to religion for our answers, but at the turn of the twentieth centuries ideas from evolution and politics seemed to suggest that our lives - and afterlives - were in our own hands. These ideas would have both trivial and terrible effects, from the nightmares of H. G. Wells's science fiction and the wild, sweeping craze of seances to the murder of millions in the Stalinist terror. 'Our sharpest critic of utopian fantasies skewers the crazed but enduring dream of cheating age, time and death' Boyd Tonkin,Independent 'Elegant ... He is on to something important regarding the delusion that science consists of indefinite progress' Sunday Telegraph 'One of the most important and insightful polemicists currently writing in English... humanism's most vocal critic' Financial Times 'Gray is an engaging writer, an entertaining historian and a controversialist whose opinions can never be taken for granted' New Statesman John Gray has been Professor of Politics at Oxford University, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. His books include False Dawn- The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Black Mass- Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopiaand Straw Dogs- Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. His selected writings, Gray's Anatomy, was published in 2009.

The Strange Quest to Cheat Death

The Immortalization Commission

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was the greatest intellectual historian of the twentieth century. But his work also made an original and important contribution to moral and political philosophy and to liberal theory. In 1921, at the age of eleven, Isaiah Berlin arrived in England from Riga, Latvia. By the time he was thirty he was at the heart of British intellectual life. He has remained its commanding presence ever since, and few would dispute that he was one of Britain's greatest thinkers. His reputation extends worldwide--as a great conversationalist, intellectual historian, and man of letters. He has been called the century's most inspired reader. Yet Berlin's contributions to thought--in particular to moral and political philosophy, and to liberal theory--are little understood, and surprisingly neglected by the academic world. In this book, they are shown to be animated by a single, powerful, subversive idea: value-pluralism which affirms the reality of a deep conflict between ultimate human values that reason cannot resolve. Though bracingly clear-headed, humane and realist, Berlin's value-pluralism runs against the dominant Western traditions, secular and religious, which avow an ultimate harmony of values. It supports a highly distinctive restatement of liberalism in Berlin's work--an agnostic liberalism, which is founded not on rational choice but on the radical choices we make when faced with intractable dilemmas. It is this new statement of liberalism, the central subject of John Gray's lively and lucid book, which gives the liberal intellectual tradition a new lease on life, a new source of life, and which comprises Berlin's central and enduring legacy. In a new introduction, Gray argues that, in a world in which human freedom has spread more slowly than democracy, Berlin's account of liberty and basic decency is more instructive and useful than ever.

An Interpretation of His Thought

Isaiah Berlin

Not available since the 1980s, this up-dated edition by the leading political philosopher, John Gray, outlines his new position on Hayek. In a substantial new chapter, Gray assesses how far the historical development of the last ten years can be deployed in a critique of Hayek's thought. His reassessment is not only a provoking study of a classical philosopher. It is also a timely contribution to the debate over the future of conservatism, as Gray argues that Hayekian liberalism - 'the most well-articulated political theory of the new right' - is flawed.

Hayek on Liberty

From the provocative author of Straw Dogs comes an incisive, surprising intervention in the political and scientific debate over religion and atheism When you explore older atheisms, you will find that some of your firmest convictions—secular or religious—are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought. For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself. Along a spectrum that ranges from the convictions of “God-haters” like the Marquis de Sade to the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer, from Bertrand Russell’s search for truth in mathematics to secular political religions like Jacobinism and Nazism, Gray explores the various ways great minds have attempted to understand the questions of salvation, purpose, progress, and evil. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary light on what it is to be human.

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series. Voltaire's savage laughter range out across eighteenth-century Europe, puncturing the pomposities and hypocrisies of power. Kings and cardinals felt the sting of his satire; governments and aristocracies endured his derision. Yet the aims of the Enlightenment's clown were nothing if not serious: to throw back the blinds of ignorance and superstition and let the sun of science and intellect stream in; to rebuild benighted Christendom as a new civilisation, secular and free. Herald of reason and revolution, Voltaire's mocking voice has echoed through two centuries of change. But as the Enlightenment's achievements have come increasingly into question, the joke has rebounded on the comedian himself. A creation of Christianity in way he never realised, Voltaire owed more to his epoch's orthodoxies than he could have ever guessed. John Gray's absorbing provocative introduction offers a radical reassessment of a fascinating and important figure, at once demythologizing the icon and revealing his genuine greatness.

The Great Philosophers: Voltaire

L’uomo è un animale come tutti gli altri, questa è la difficile eredità di Darwin, un’eredità che risulta ingombrante non solo per gli umanisti o i cristiani ma anche per tutti coloro che non rinunciano all’idea di poter governare razionalmente, consapevolmente il cammino evolutivo dell’umanità. Cadute le illusioni delle utopie politiche, svanita la fede in un aldilà ultraterreno, l’antico slancio prometeico alimenta oggi i sogni della tecnologia e della scienza. Scegliere il proprio patrimonio genetico, aspirare all’immortalità criogenica, rinunciare al corpo per entrare nella realtà virtuale: i miti sono in fondo gli stessi, segnati dall’inevitabile fede nella libertà e dall’aspirazione al controllo totale di sé e del mondo. Ma libertà e controllo sono per Gray due fatali illusioni, radicate nell’illusione più grande di essere noi umani diversi dagli animali, che non hanno bisogno di scopi, finalità, progetti per stare al mondo. In compagnia dei grandi maestri dello scetticismo e del pessimismo occidentali, il viaggio letterario di Gray attraverso le stazioni della cultura moderna e contemporanea approda all’antica sapienza taoista, che ci apre le porte dell’accettazione del limite come possibilità di godimento pieno, ci insegna la natura dell’agire morale come gesto esatto e distaccato, ci mostra l’inconsistenza della nostra idea di realtà. Uno sguardo poetico come unico antidoto all'illusione più pericolosa, quella di poterci mai liberare dalle illusioni; un invito a guardare, con quieta vertigine, allo spettacolo della vita e a sentire in questo il compiersi del suo unico scopo possibile. «Una vera rarità, un’opera di filosofia contemporanea priva di gergo filosofico, accessibile e di importanza fondamentale per il mondo in rapida evoluzione nel quale viviamo». Will Self «Cani di paglia sfida tutte le nostre convinzioni su cosa voglia dire essere uomini, e ci mostra che tutte ci deluderanno. Chi siamo e perché siamo qui? Le risposte di Gray lasceranno la maggior parte di noi profondamente scossi. Una guida essenziale al nuovo millennio». J.G. Ballard «Il notevole libro di John Gray ci mostra cosa sarebbe la nostra vita senza la distrazione delle consolazioni». Adam Phillips

Cani di paglia

John Gray is de belangrijkste levende Britse filosoof’ – The Independent Zeven vormen van atheïsme is een prikkelend boek. John Gray: ‘Wanneer je oudere vormen van atheïsme onderzoekt, ontdek je dat sommige van de meest standvastige overtuigingen zeer te betwijfelen zijn.’ Al een generatie lang wordt het publieke debat aangetast door karige, bekrompen bespottingen van religie, uit naam van ‘de wetenschap’, al geven deze spotters blijk van maar weinig kennis van die wetenschap. John Gray valt deze ‘heilige huisjes’ aan. Hij beschrijft de complexe wereld van de verschillende vormen van atheïsme, een traditie die volgens hem even rijk is als die van religie. Tevens een traditie die net zo diep verweven is met religiositeit in plaats van dat dit ‘het tegenoverstelde’ is, zoals het meestal wordt beschouwd. Het resultaat is een boek dat een bijzonder en veelzijdig licht schijnt op dat wat menselijk is, en op de denkers die, in verschillende tijden en op verschillende plekken, hebben gestreden om deze kwestie te kunnen begrijpen.

John Gray

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