Endgames : questions in late modern political thought

John Gray

In this book John Gray argues that we live in a time of endings for the ideologies that governed the modern period. The Enlightenment projects of universal emancipation animates all the political doctrines and movements that are central in contemporary western societies. Yet it does not reflect the reality of the plural world in which we live. The western cultural hegemony which the Enlightenment embodied is coming to a close. Western liberal societies are not precursors of a universal civilization, but only one form of life among many in the late modern world. Our inherited stock of political ideas no longer tracks that world. The crisis of New Right thought is as profound as that of the Left. Green theorists and communitarian thinkers have not understood the deep diversity and intractable conflicts of contemporary societies. And postmodernists, whose thought is ruled by the dated utopias of the modern period, do not engage with the real conditions of the world's emerging postmodern societies. Late modern thought occurs in an interregnum between modern projects that are no longer credible and postmodern realities that many find intolerable. John Gray suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress must be extinguished if we are to learn to respect cultural diversity and accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for other species and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadian projects that haunt modern thought. We should aim to moderate the impact of human activity on the Earth while alleviating the unavoidable evils of human life. Yet the hubris which treats the Earth as an instrument of human purposes, and which regards other cultures as approximations to a universal civilization, embodies ancient and powerful traditions. John Gray's aim is to question these traditions and thereby to prepare our thinking for a time of beginnings.

「Nielsen BookData」より

[目次]

  • Foreword. 1. The strange death of Tory England. 2. After social democracy. 3. Rawls's anti-political liberalism. 4. Ironies of liberal postmodernity. 5. Socialism with a professorial face. 6. Green theory undone? 7. What community is not. 8. Berlin, Oakeshott and Enlightenment. 9. The Tory endgame. 10. Beginnings. Notes. References. Index.

「Nielsen BookData」より

この本の情報

書名 Endgames : questions in late modern political thought
著作者等 Gray, John
出版元 Polity Press
刊行年月 1997
ページ数 xi, 212 p.
大きさ 23 cm
ISBN 0745618820
0745618812
NCID BA31053435
※クリックでCiNii Booksを表示
言語 英語
出版国 アメリカ合衆国
この本を: 
このエントリーをはてなブックマークに追加

このページを印刷

外部サイトで検索

この本と繋がる本を検索

ウィキペディアから連想