Review by Choice Review
Contemporary Darwinists often are attracted to universal applications of the theory of natural selection. Gray (London School of Economics) polemically pursues such a project, arguing that prior syntheses understate Darwinism's radical implications. According to Gray, such neo-Darwinians as E.O. Wilson (Consilience, CH, Jul'99) and such post-Christian thinkers as Nietzsche and Heidegger fail to fully discard key humanistic assumptions concerning human capacities. Gray's alternative is a melding of Darwin, Schopenhauer, Eastern animism, Gaia theory, artificial intelligence, and post-Left versus Right green politics that denies the self, free human agency, inherent human value, or substantive human control over history. Contradictions abound. Gray endorses a Taoist conception of ethics as skill, but denies that people have the capacity to judge their circumstances or actions objectively. Plato is in one context a misguided idealist, remaking the world according to the mind; in another he is a muddle-headed realist. Gray argues extensively that human language--including argumentation--is no more meaningful than bacterial secretions or the collective behavior of termites. Straw Dogs draws back the curtain to reveal that people are hopelessly deluded about themselves and their world. Gray's aphoristic rhetoric is bracing, even poetic, but it is ultimately unconvincing. ^BSumming Up: Optional. General readers. D. H. Calhoun Gonzaga University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
In a work of thoroughgoing iconoclasm, British philosopher Gray attacks the belief that humans are different from and superior to animals. Invoking pure Darwinism, he savages every perspective from which humans appear as anything more than a genetic accident that has produced a highly destructive species (homo rapiens)--a species that exterminates other species at a phenomenal rate as our swelling numbers despoil the global environment. Gray explains the human refusal to confront the darker realities of our nature largely as the result of how we have consoled ourselves with the myths of Christianity and its secular offspring, humanism and utopianism. Human vanity, he complains, has even converted science (which should teach us of our insignificant place in nature) into an ideology of progress. But neither hope for progress nor confidence in human morality passes muster with Gray, who envisions a future in which the human population finally contracts as a world politics that grows ever more predatory and brutal shatters all such illusions. As a work of ruthless rigor, this provocative book will force readers to reexamine their own convictions. --Bryce Christensen
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Humans think they are "free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals," writes London University economics professor Gray (Black Mass) in a series of brief and intriguing mini-essays. His themes include the similarities between hypnotism and financial markets and uncomfortable truths behind drug use and its prohibition. In a chapter called "Deception," Gray traces Humanism from Plato through Postmodernism. He critiques both science and religion: "Science can advance human knowledge, it cannot make humanity cherish truth. Like the Christians of former times, scientists are caught up in the web of power; they struggle for survival and success; their view of the world is a patchwork of conventional beliefs." At a certain point, it can be difficult to see where Gray's allegiances lie. He tears down institutions, especially consciousness, self, free will and morality, and questions our ability to solve the problems of overpopulation and overconsumption: "Only a breed of ex-humans can thrive in the world that unchecked human expansion has created." So what's left? Gray recommends a devaluation of progress, mastery, and immortality, and a return to contemplation and acceptance: "Other animals do not need a purpose in life. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?" This comforting question punctuates an otherwise profoundly disturbing meditation on humankind's real place in the world. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
