Straw Dogs
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€16.99
'Powerful and brilliant ... Straw Dogs challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be human, and convincingly shows that most of them are delusions.' J. G. Ballard
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. In his radical work of philosophy John Gray sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human.
Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism enthrone 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 belief in human difference is a dangerous illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. The result is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question our deepest-held beliefs.
John Gray has been Professor of Politics at Oxford University, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. His many books include Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia and Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life.