The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism

Synopsis

‘Britain’s best philosopher – he knocks it out of the park with a book that details the unravelling of the Western order’ Telegraph, Books of the YearEver since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the world. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes' cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities.In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the world of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes' classic work. The collapse of the USSR ushered in an era of near-apoplectic triumphalism in the West: a genuine belief that a rational, liberal, well-managed future now awaited humankind and that tyranny, nationalism and unreason lay in the past. Since then, so many terrible events have occurred and so many poisonous ideas flourished, and yet still our liberal certainties treat them as aberrations which will somehow dissolve away. Hobbes would not be so confident.Filled with fascinating and challenging perceptions, The New Leviathans is a powerful meditation on historical and current folly. As a species we always seem to be struggling to face the reality of base and delusive human instincts. Might a more self-aware, realistic and disabused ethics help us all?

Copyright:

2023

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

192 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780141999449

Related ISBNs:

9781802063943, 9780141999432

Publisher:

Penguin Books Ltd

Date of Addition:

10/30/24

Copyrighted By:

John Gray

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Education, Social Studies, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Philosophy, Politics and Government, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.