John Gray | |
|---|---|
&sq=Qlik&lang=&file=File:Brainwash_Festival_2015_-_John_Gray_(3).jpg) John Gray in 2015 | |
| Born | John Nicholas Gray 17 April 1948 South Shields, County Durham, England |
| Education | Exeter College, Oxford (BA, MPhil, DPhil) |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
Main interests | Political philosophy, history of ideas, philosophical pessimism |
Notable ideas | Agonistic liberalism, criticism of humanism |
John Nicholas Gray (born 17 April 1948) is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy, the history of ideas,[1] and philosophical pessimism.[2] He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist.[3]
Gray has written several influential books, including False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), which argues that free market globalisation is an unstable Enlightenment project currently in the process of disintegration; Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002), which attacks philosophical humanism, a worldview which Gray sees as originating in religions; and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007), a critique of utopian thinking in the modern world.
Gray sees volition, and hence morality, as an illusion, and portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life. Gray has written that "humans ... cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them."[4]
- ^ "John Gray at the Writers' Festival – Part 1 – The Philosopher's Zone – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 28 June 2008. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
- ^ De Botton, Alain (4 March 2013). "Alain de Botton on five great philosophical pessimists". The Telegraph. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
- ^ Preston, John (28 February 2013). "John Gray interview: how an English academic become the world's pre-eminent prophet of doom". The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, (Granta Books 2002), p. 12. ISBN 1-86207-512-3