Black Mass

Offering a powerful critique of utopian politics, a leading British social critic condemns the rise in the West of the belief that a single model of political behavior should become a worldwide norm that should be enforced with military might if necessary, tracing the evolution of utopianism from the Reformation to the present and its implications in terms of global politics and security.

Autorentext

John Gray was Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at Aberdeen University in Scotland from 1962 to 1980. He published books on Middle Eastern archaeology and culture, as well as commentaries on several Books of the Bible. At his death in 2000, he left a manuscript of a commentary on the Book of Job which was published posthumously in 2010. He also left a manuscript of his poem, Job in a Cheviot Plaid.

Klappentext

For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas-most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint.

In Black Mass, celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political center. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches. Black Mass is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain's leading political thinkers.