This is the first book to cover the evolution and scope of Aldous Huxley's socio-political ideas in a concise and highly accessible manner, both for political theorists and interested students from various disciplines. From his social journalism in the early 1930s, through his notoriously famous novel Brave New World, his involvement with the Peace Pledge Union in the mid-30s, his pivotal socio-anthropological study Ends and Means in 1937, his post-war essays, the black dystopia Ape and Essence, his involvement with Eastern philosophy and Krishnamurti, his lecture circuits in the 1950s (Santa Barbara, MIT, etc.) to his final novel, Island (1962), the counter-piece to Brave New World, the author explores how Huxley investigates the benefits and risks of democracy, anarchism, decentralisation, forms of authoritarianism, human engineering (education), the ideological pitfalls of the grand narratives of the early 20th century, as well as the anthropological dimensions underpinning social ideals and their means of realisation.

Autorentext

Uwe Rasch is Research Assistant at the Centre for Aldous Huxley Studies, and an English teacher at the University of Münster, Germany.