Straw Dogs
by John Gray
Buy on Amazon"Straw Dogs is a work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the Earth. Even in the present day, despite Darwin's discoveries, nearly all schools of thought take as their starting point the belief that humans are radically different from other animals. John Gray argues that this humanist belief is an illusion.…
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Patrick Collison's Bookshelf · patrickcollison.com
"What I like about the book is the anti-humanism. The rejection of this idea we all have, that humanity is at the centre of the cosmos, which is a post-Christian thing. John Gray is an unreconstructed pessimist, particularly on environmental issues. Not really, no, it’s not the globalisation stuff that interests me. It’s more about the human ecology. He thinks that we are going to hell in a handcart and there is nothing that we can do about it. A bit like Lovelock’s later books. It’s just refreshing to read stuff where somebody isn’t desperately trying to claw some minor positive out of the situation. There is always the temptation in these books to say there are these horrible trends that are leading to a hellish fiery future but we can still do something about it. Yes, of course. But, it is still quite refreshing to read somebody who doesn’t have any time for that kind of stuff. Yes."
The Environment · fivebooks.com