Zanziblog

John Gray, a philosopher who is much talked about these days, is the anti-philosopher’s philosopher. He is like the fresh-faced young boy who sees that the unquestioned assumptions on which his elders have based their lives are a mixture of unquestioned assumptions, blind faith, self-serving beliefs, riddled with such internal contradictions and fallacies that the whole lot needs to be thrown out and a new start made. Except of course that Gray is not a fresh-faced young boy but a serious thinker, and the elders in question are the vast majority of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, economists, religious and secular thinkers who have inhabited the human race since the golden age of the hunter gatherer.

I have brought Straw Dogs (Granta Books, 2003, ISBN 978-1-86207-596-2) with me, described as “a devastating critique of liberal humanism” (Will Self), which “challenges all of our assumptions about what it is to be human .. and shows that most of them are delusions (JG Ballard). The format of this short book is that of a series of short essays, some argued through, and some little more than one liners; all brilliant and challenging. My overall problem is that Gray’s statements have the flavour of ex cathedra pronouncements, backed up by limited evidence picked up from a wide range of sources - historical, philosophical, neurophysiological, genetic. One must assume that he is familiar with the wider literature ini these fields, but there does seem to be an amount of cherry picking, favourable evidence presented in an almost anecdotal manner, and so convenient to his thesis that one wonders if, by choosing different anecdotes, he could have made the opposite case with equal conviction. I suspect not, because he presents a cogent and coherent case, but the unworthy thought remains that this is a gigantic intellectual coup de theatre, designed to sweep the whole of the current pack of bien pensants of its collective perch.

I shall examine some of Gray’s arguments in following posts. All page references are to the edition mentioned above. Please do leave comments!