Books : Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 321.07
EAN: 9780374105983
ISBN: 0374105987
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: October 16, 2007
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: October 16, 2007
Sales Rank: 151739
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Product Description:
For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas—most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In Black Mass, celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political center. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches. Black Mass is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain’s leading political thinkers.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
First I want to get something off my chest: who, over at the publishing company, came up with the godawful cover for this edition of the book? It looks like something out of a 1940's sci-fi comic book, or taken from one of those Bobby Sands graffiti pictorials you might see on an old Belfast brick wall - totally lame.
And it's a shame, too, because there is nothing lame about Gray's dour, penetrating, sobering book. It is an unsparing critique of not only utopianism, but the very idea of progress (in human terms) itself.
Gray in effect argues that the Enlightenment project, in a profound sense, is a sort of fraud, in that it has largely occupied the "framework of thought" created by Christian theology, while claiming to have escaped that framework altogether by the relatively trivial act of substituting other ideals for a god figure. Characteristics of that framework include ideas of a linear march of (human) history towards some end or final culmination (apocalypse), the possibility of moral or ethical progress, and belief based not on any sort of evidence or precedent, but on nothing more than human hope (blind faith). Gray along the way devotes quite a bit of time to the Iraq War...but it's hard to do a book this dense any real justice in a review. Suffice to say, I find many of his arguments distressingly compelling (perhaps partly because of his terse, clear prose).
The only concern I have with this book, and with all other books like ... Read More
Rating: -
The other reviews say it all.
If you had to pick 3 books from john Gray, (I've read all of them) I'd place The three mensioned above as must have top 10, all times reference books in political science/economy/philosophy, among the hundreds i have.
Rating:  -
Gray's basic argument that modern political movements are based on or disguised as religions is not really new. But, if you think you've heard it all, don't let that stop you from reading this book. Even if the arguments are rather familiar, I found reading Grey's exposition of these ideas an enjoyable experience.
While some reviewers seemed to think that the author crowned his achievement in the final chapter, "Post-Apocalypse", I found he over-reached himself and fell into glibness too often. I wondered if one reason the hyperbole fell a bit flat was the evanescence of the movements he cited earlier, including Communists, Nazis, and now the neocons.
I noted that the New Yorker magazine reviewer observed that Gray tried "to fit too much into his model of utopianism with too little argument". To the contrary, I thought that Gray's argument was persuasive enough, and that there was much more that he should have fitted into his model; in other words, he failed to adequately discuss all of the available modern utopias. Gray seems unaware of any genuine research into the 9/11 events, therefore shapes his arguments to fit the received mythology about Islamofascism (which he calls Islamo-Jacobinism -- fair enough) and the phony war on terror, which is actually a war *of* terror. His analysis of the neocons is therefore unfortunately stunted, as he misses out on the true implications of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and the New Pearl Harbor that ... Read More
Rating: -
Like all books by John Gray, Black Mass is a compelling example of the power of an overwhelming and logical examination of vital events. At this point, I would classify Mr. Gray as one of the five top philosophers in the English language. In addition to the impeccable quality of his reasoning, he writes in an accessible and beautiful Englsih, without all the word-splitting typical of philosophers, particularly of the French breed. Kudos!
Rating: -
Not often I give 5 stars to any book. But I have to give it to this one. Its good....I'm not sure that it compares with Niail Fergusson's latest Opus "The War of the World" in many ways... but from what he tries to do it is very good at analyzing apocalyptic politics - which I think no one has really done.
The danger is of course really only one that I can see... he does get reductionist at time. That and I think he savages Tony Blair a bit too much... but that's it... good contemporary analysis using the methodology of Cohn... his book is called "The Pursuit of Millenium." --- also a wonderful book!
His basic thesis is that people propounding ideas that are catagorically against commonly accepted explainations of what we know of human behaviour -- advocating ideas and theories -- these people have historically been millenialist, deluded, and very dangerous indeed.
Gray starts with a historical interpretation of apocalyptic ideas -- christianity, the crusades, and then advances into the twin scourges of 20th Century Naziism and Marxism. From this he comes right up to present day and argues the Bush League in the Whitehouse, along with Tony Blair and his compradours, are responsible for believing in and foisting an idealistic interpretation of Iraq and the results of war. He argues that it was never realistic to believe that Iraq would ever turn into a democracy, and that neocons deluded themselves into a sort of millenialist intepretation ... Read More
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