The New Leviathans

August 15, 2023
In a challenging book, an esteemed philosopher examines how liberalism yielded to a totalitarianism impulse. Gray is emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics and a prolific author. In his latest, he gathers a number of the themes he has pursued throughout his life and work. He uses Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan as a starting point, explaining how Hobbes believed that a powerful government was necessary to protect people from one another and from external enemies--and nothing more. In the past century, however, we have seen the rise of the "New Leviathans," who want to go much further, to "become engineers of souls." Gray looks at the attempts of the Soviet leaders to mold people and at how that pattern was adopted by Putin. It justifies a totalitarian level of control, all in the name of the greater good. There is a similar pattern in China, with leaders who see themselves as fulfilling a quasi-divine purpose. A related strain of thinking Gray labels as "hyper-liberalism," which "vulgarizes post-modern philosophy." Though "enclaves of freedom persist...a liberal civilization based on the practice of tolerance has passed into history," writes the author. "In schools and universities, education inculcates conformity with the ruling progressive ideology. The arts are judged by whether they serve approved political goals." Gray questions the obsession with race and slavery, noting that slavery and racism have had many faces throughout history, and he views as arrogant the idea that the American experience represents a universal experience. Gray does not provide an easy solution, but he sees an obligation to fight totalitarianism in whatever way we can. He concludes: "If we go on, it is because we cannot do otherwise. It is life that pulls us on, against the tide, life that steers us into the storm." Dense with provocative ideas--a solid choice for budding political philosophers.

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September 18, 2023
Political philosopher Gray (Feline Philosophy) proffers an idiosyncratic excoriation of liberalism, authoritarianism, and dogmatism in this wild and wide-ranging treatise. Gray’s departure point is 17th-century Englishman Thomas Hobbes, who argued that only Leviathan—the state, a single entity more powerful than any individual—could provide the stability and safety necessary to extinguish the individualistic free-for-all of every man for himself. Gray contends that today, the liberal Leviathan of Western democracy is little more than a hollow husk riven by internal division, and that illiberal worldviews proposed by Russia and China pose a serious threat as appealing alternatives. “The new Leviathans offer meaning in material progress, the security of belonging in imaginary communities and the pleasures of persecution,” he writes, citing as examples the “intelligent despotism” of Xi Jinping’s China and charismatic oligarchy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Both of these illiberal orders seem, to Gray, to function better and have more promising futures than the woke “antinomian intelligentsia” of Western societies, “which professes to instruct society by deconstructing its institutions and values.” Drawing on thinkers from H.P. Lovecraft to Nietzsche to Russian mystics and 20th-century psychoanalysts, this florid romp, while entertaining, fails to convince. Gray aims to outrage, but for those who do not already agree with him, his impassioned posturing falls flat.