Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93058 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-16
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Publishing News
`If we had philosophy groups instead of reading groups, this would be an ideal book choice'

Sunday Herald
'Gray provides a philosophical form of chemotherapy: frightening but necessary if we are to save man.'

Financial Times
`Pervasive but bracing. It's like reading Jonathan Swift, without the satire'

Customer Reviews

Controversial Brain Food
I imagine most people who buy this book will be readers of Gray's other works such as Straw Dogs and Black Mass who were impressed by his deep scepticism and deep analysis of many of the things that we (or our leaders) take for granted and allow to define our actions.

This book covers a wide range of subjects, but with many of his pet themes running through them. It is divided into three sections looking at Progress, War and Terror and Politics and Society. There are a handful of essays under each topic.

As can be expected from Gray's other works (and from the title of the book) his stance is often counter to conventional wisdom. This is often very refreshing and eye opening, but occasionally it leaves an uneasy (or even near sickening) feeling, for example with his views on torture. Here Gray believes that torture should be brought back within the legitimate tools of law enforcement and regulated (including having special solicitors to deal with the inevitable accidental deaths under torture). He believes that misguided and impractical ideals of human rights for terrorists prevent us from using all expedient means of preventing further acts of terror. I found this argument highly dubious as for a 'realist' Gray does not explain how these powers would be used in practical terms. Would a suspect be tortured for a confession? (i.e. a potentially innocent person), or would it only be applied to convicted people, making vulnerability to torture a part of their punishment? He also fails to mention the weight of evidence suggesting that torture is not a reliable way of gaining useful information anyway. And could torture, once sanctioned, be used in non-terrorist cases? We've already seen this happen with police using terror legislation on detaining suspects outside its original bounds.

I understand that torture is happening outside of the law at places like Guantanamo and through rendition, but its value appears very limited and perhaps the cost of eliminating torture from our law enforcement tools is a good than is greater than the benefits torture can bring us.

Sometimes Gray's stances counter to the morality of our times are exciting and perspective changing, but at others they can make you glad he doesn't run the country! However, his pre-invasion analysis of the problems that the US would face in trying to implement regime change were spot-on. On a lighter note, I really enjoyed the final chapter on the culture of celebrity and the 'dandifying' of western society.

Whether you agree with Gray or not, his ideas and analyses are always provocative and make you think in much greater depth about the important issues of our time. A great book to dip in and out of as the chapters are discreet and fairly brief (as they were once magazine articles).

The Mirror of the Human Condition
As John Gray reads the derogatory remarks of some reviewers he must be amused, given that the idea of his book is that it is a heresy to say the things he does.
Heresies is much like his other work Straw Dogs. It is a selection of Essays on the human condition and on war and politics.
What is satisfying about Gray's writing style is that he arrives at rapid conclusions .
We are not left wondering what he means when he forms his ideas.
I found the essay on the Matrix to be an excellent example of how humans live their lives of fantasy.
The essays on the illusion of the free market written in 2002 have proven to be accurate in the light of today's uncomfortable developments in trade among nations.
John Gray is the great "mirror" in which we see ourselves as we truly are.

Necessary Heresy
Gray's book, a collection of essays first published in the New Statesman offers a refreshingly different perspective on issues such as war, the environment, Europe, and Blair's leadership amongst other things. Gray uncompromisingly undermines and exposes the illusions which support liberal ideas and the stranglehold which these ideas have on western society. He is to the liberal establishment as a pin is to a baloon. The author's prose style is sharp and his arguments are delivered in a logical and accessible way.

'Heresies' is broken up into three parts: Part 1 is called 'The Illusion of Progress'. It is in this section that Gray expounds his thoughts on how 'Progress', in a technological sense, does not result in increased peace and stability or requisite 'progress' in human values. The human animal, the author explains, will always be infected by certain dersires, often negative, and 'progress' means only that those who benefit from better technology can pursue their desires with increased efficiency. Thus 'Progress', for Gray, leads to the ability to destroy the human species with nuclear weapons and the destruction of hundreds of other species. The modern faith in progress then, as something which will lead us towards a brighter, better future is horribly delusional.

In section 2 'War, Terrorism, and Iraq', Gray heralds the 'resumption of history' which began with 9/11 and the end of the dream of a peaceful, globalised world. He argues that we are seeing a return to a Westphalian inter-state world in which the competition for scarce resources is becoming ever more fierce. It is in this context that Gray places the US 'War on Terror'. Devastatingly accurate in his views on the debacle in Iraq, the author shatters the illusion that anything good could come from the invasion of that country.

In the third, and final, section 'Politics Without Illusions', Gray addresses issues such as the rise of the Far Right in Europe, the cult of celebrity, and Blair's Premiership. This part of the book does not see Gray at his strongest, however it's subject matter reveals the author's breadth of vision.

Gray is perhaps at his best when denouncing - and not without ample evidence - both market liberalism and Marxism as 'secular religions', whose belief in the possibility of a Utopian future is utterly misplaced. Understandably however, points that Gray makes in one essay are repeated later in others and while this is slightly annoying at times, this does not detract from the value of the book.

'Heresies' is not a book for those who are in need of an optimistic take on the prospects for improving the depressing state into which we humans have flung ourselves with such vigour. It is a candid, logical, and effortlessly elegant attempt to make us aware of the ways in which most people in the West have been deceived into thinking that 'free trade', 'liberal values' and their spread to the rest of the 'uncivilized' world will leave us better off. Even if one does not agree with Gray's arguments - something which is probably common - this collection of essays will encourage debate. Further, it is refreshing and necessary to lend an ear to the arguments of someone who is unafraid to go against the mainstream grain. Heresy is no bad thing.