Enlightenment's Wake

Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age

John Gray (London School of Economics, UK London School of Economics, UK)

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English

Routledge
19 October 1995

Political science & theory; Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies; Conservatism & right-of-centre democratic ideologies

John Gray's previous book Beyond the New Right developed a radical critique of the New Right from the standpoint of traditional conservatism. Enlightenment's Wake goes

beyond the sceptical conclusion of that book to stake out the elements of a new position, whose starting point is the obsolescence of the received traditions of thought, conservative as well as liberal. The author argues that all the intellectual traditions of modernity are applications of the Enlightenment project and thereby suffer the fate of that project, which has proved to be self-undermining. This effect was due to the project's extension of rational self-criticism and demystification to its own foundational commitments, which

ultimately dissolved them. From this position Gray argues that both the desire of fundamentalist liberalism to salvage the Enlightenment, and the traditionalist or reactionary desire to reverse it, are doomed to failure. The central problem of contemporary political thought and practice, he contends, is that of securing peaceful co-existence for incommensurable world-views in an intellectual and cultural context that is at once post-rational and post-traditional. While it is crucial to resist the re-enchantment of the world by new forms of fundamentalism, neither the Left nor the Right in any of their traditional forms are able, according to Gray, to offer a viable alternative.

By: John Gray (London School of Economics UK London School of Economics UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 16mm
Weight: 498g
ISBN: 9780415124751
ISBN 10: 0415124751
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 19 October 1995
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

John Gray is a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He has been visiting professor at Harvard, Yale and Tulane universities.