| Full name | John N. Gray |
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| Born | 17 April 1948 South Shields, Tyne & Wear |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy 21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Political philosophy |
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John N. Gray (born 17 April 1948, in South Shields, Tyne & Wear) is a British political philosopher and author, formerly School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.
Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement, and has written several influential books on politics and philosophy, including False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), which argues that free market globalization is unstable and is in the process of collapsing, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2003), which attacks philosophical humanism, a worldview which Gray sees as originating in religious ideologies, 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 writes that 'humans ... cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them.'[1]
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Gray is from a working class family. He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), completing his B.A., M.Phil. and D.Phil.
He formerly held posts as lecturer in political theory at the University of Essex, fellow and tutor in politics at Jesus College, Oxford, and lecturer and then professor of politics at the University of Oxford. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University (1985–86) and Stranahan Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University (1990–1994), and has also held visiting professorships at Tulane University’s Murphy Institute (1991) and Yale University (1994). He was Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science until his retirement from academic life in early 2008.
Among philosophers, he is known for a thoroughgoing rejection of Rawlsianism and for exploration of the uneasy relationship between value-pluralism and liberalism in the work of Isaiah Berlin.[2]
An advocate for the New Right in the 1980s and then of New Labour in the 1990s, Gray now sees the conventional (left-wing/right-wing) political spectrum of conservatism and social democracy as no longer viable.[3]
More recently, he has criticised neoliberalism, the global free market and some of the central currents in Western thinking, such as humanism, while moving towards aspects of Green thought, drawing on the Gaia theory of James Lovelock. It is perhaps for this critique of humanism that Gray is best known.[4]
Central to the doctrine of humanism, in Gray’s view, are the inherently Utopian beliefs that humans are not limited by their biological natures and that advances in ethics and politics can accumulate or that they can alter or improve the human condition in the same way that advances in science and technology have altered or improved living standards.[4]
Gray contends, in opposition to this view, that history is not progressive, but cyclical. Human nature, he argues, is an inherent obstacle to cumulative ethical or political progress.[4] Seeming improvements, if there are any, can very easily be reversed: one example he has cited has been the use of torture by the United States against terrorist suspects. [5][6]
Furthermore, he argues that this belief in progress, commonly imagined to be secular and liberal, is in fact derived from an erroneous Christian notion of humans as morally autonomous beings categorically different from other animals. This belief, and the corresponding idea that history makes sense, or is progressing towards something, is in Gray’s view merely a Christian prejudice.[4]
He argues, in Straw Dogs, that the idea that humans are self-determining agents does not pass the acid test of experience. Darwinist thinkers who believe humans can take charge of their own destiny to prevent environmental degradation are, in this view, not naturalists, but apostles of humanism.[4]
He identifies the Enlightenment as the point at which the Christian doctrine of salvation was taken over by secular idealism and became a political religion with universal emancipation as its aim.[4] Communism, fascism and ‘global democratic capitalism’ have all led to needless suffering, in Gray’s view, as a result of their ideological allegiance to this religion.[7]
Gray’s work has been praised by, amongst others, the novelists J. G. Ballard, Will Self and John Banville, the theologian Don Cupitt, the journalist Bryan Appleyard, the political scientist David Runciman, the investor and philanthropist George Soros and the environmental scientist James Lovelock.[8][9][10][11][12][13]
His 1998 book False Dawn was praised by George Soros as 'a powerful analysis of the deepening instability of global capitalism' which 'should be read by all who are concerned about the future of the global economy.'[12] John Banville praised both Black Mass and Gray's Anatomy, saying that 'Gray's assault on Enlightenment ideas of progress is timelier than ever'.[14]
His 2002 book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals has received particular praise. J. G. Ballard wrote that the book 'challenges most of our assumptions about what it means to be human, and convincingly shows that most of them are delusions’ and described it ‘a powerful and brilliant book’, ‘an essential guide to the new millennium’ and ‘the most exhilarating book I have read since Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene.’[15] Self called the book ‘a contemporary work of philosophy devoid of jargon, wholly accessible, and profoundly relevant to the rapidly evolving world we live in’ and wrote ‘I read it once, I read it twice and took notes. I arranged to meet its author so I could publicise the book – I thought it that good.’ [8][15]
In 2002, Straw Dogs was named a book of the year by J. G. Ballard in The Daily Telegraph; by George Walden in The Sunday Telegraph; by Will Self, Joan Bakewell, Jason Cowley and David Marquand in the New Statesman; by Andrew Marr in The Observer; by Jim Crace in The Times; by Hugh Lawson Tancred in The Spectator; by Richard Holloway in the Glasgow Herald; and by Sue Cook in The Sunday Express.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written that he considers John N. Gray the modern thinker for whom he has the most respect, calling him "prophetic".[16]
| “ | To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different. | ” |
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— John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism
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| “ | The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge — not even in the long run. | ” |
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— John Gray, essay "Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary" in Heresies
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| “ | The most pitiless warriors against drugs have always been militant progressives. In China, the most savage attack on drug use occurred when the country was convulsed by a modern western doctrine of universal emancipation- Maoism. It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness- the United States. For the corollary of that improbable quest is a puritan war on pleasure. | ” |
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— John Gray, Straw Dogs
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| “ | What could be more natural for a species that has exterminated its animal kin than to look into a mirror and find that it is not alone? | ” |
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— John Gray, Straw Dogs
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| “ | People need to believe that order can be glimpsed in the chaos of events. | ” |
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— John Gray, Heresies
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In August/September 2011 John Gray presented a series of talks for BBC Radio 4. Across six talks for A Point of View he reflected on a range of topical issues, including: