Books

Gray’s Anatomy by John Gray

Floris van den Berg exposes John Gray’s unwilling secular humanism.

John Gray, Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, is an agonistic writer – a public intellectual who comments on politics and political thinkers without himself developing a general theory or ideal. Gray’s Anatomy is a selection of essays covering 30 years and a range of topics, but one looks in vain for a theoretical or ideological frame work connecting or organizing them. Gray rows against the current, whatever direction the current goes, thereby not noticing that sometimes the current is flowing his way. But what kind of social structure or government is Gray striving for, and by what criteria can it be judged?

Twilight Liberalism

The first part of this book is called ‘Liberalism: an autopsy’. Gray comes from a liberal intellectual background, but clearly he thinks liberalism is dead.

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