Heresies

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1. SEPT. 2004

Gray, a philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics, sounds like the quintessential grumpy, world-weary intellectual: he disagrees with almost everyone and is pessimistic about almost everything. In these essays, originally published in the New Statesman, he contents himself with criticizing ideas and politics on both the right and left, but proposes little that might solve the problems he sees, apart from a typically contrarian endorsement of the use of torture (arguing that "in a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured") and a wishful argument for why Europe needs to style itself as a "counterweight to American power." The book is divided into three parts: the first expands on Gray's view that humans (he calls them "Homo rapiens") have an apocalyptic capacity for self-destruction; the second looks at the war on terror; and the third focuses on European, mainly British, politics. Many of the essays revolve around current events-the earliest was written in 1999, the most recent in early 2004-but they already feel dated and distant, especially when he refers to the aftermath of 9/11 and the early stages of the Iraq war. Theoretically, Gray's cynical, nonpartisan opinion might appeal to Americans frustrated with the ideological polarization and intransigence of American politics, but his relentlessly crotchety discussion of not-so-current events is most likely to turn off readers.