Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Arizona Sen. John McCain has a quality that is sadly lacking in the current Bush administration; he is willing to listen to 'Old Europe' with respect, even though he bluntly disagrees with many of its positions. This is the central theme of this book; if America cannot dominate the entire world, it is wise to listen to others with respect. Instead, Gray says Bush's ambition "to reshape the Middle East comes from the Christian fundamentalist belief that a major conflagration will fulfill biblical prophecies of a catastrophic conflict in the region. To the extent that it reflects this type of thinking, American foreign policy is itself fundamentalist." Gray directly challenges a modern American myth that "Western societies are governed by the belief that modernity is a single condition, everywhere the same and always benign." Instead, he says modernity also produces organizations such as al Qaeda, and thus if we are to defeat modern terrorism we must recognize it as a fully modern development. No one would accuse Bush of being a throwback to the Puritans; likewise, al Qaeda is not a throwback to the Middle Ages or some earlier time. The difficulty, Gray writes, is ". . . many Americans believe that all human beings are American under the skin. On the other hand, they have long viewed the world -- especially the Old World of Europe -- as corrupt, possibly beyond redemption." Thus, the ideal expressed by President Woodrow Wilson of exporting American ideas to Europe after World War I, and the subsequent isolationism of Republicans in Congress which lasted until Dec. 7, 1941. How valid is this? Well, Wilson sent the US Marines to Haiti with the gift of democracy in 1915; US forces stayed until 1934, providing Haiti with its most prosperous and peaceful era of the past century. After the Marines came home, Haiti collapsed into chaos and then a tyranny which lasted until 1986. President Bill Clinton sent US forces to Haiti in 1994, then pulled them out six months later. The success of America's long effort at "nation building" is reflected in today's ongoing headlines of Haitian horror. We live in a world of chaos. As long ago as Euripides, it was recognized that knowledge cannot undo fate and virtue gives no protection against disaster. Gray urges that we return to these values, and thus understand the complexity, diversity and tolerance of life. But he adds, "Though we can imagine such a world, it is hard to imagine anything resembling it coming about by design. The proselytising fury of faith -- religious and secular -- forbids any peaceful evolution. He says, "The most that humans can do is to be brave and resourceful, and expect to achieve little. Very likely we cannot revive this pagan view of things; but perhaps we can learn from it how to limit our hopes." It's a grim view of the future, something almost out of 'Brave New World.' Unfortunately, he supports his pessimism with clear, logical and frightening logic; in short, science gives us wonderful rewards at the cost of our souls. It's not a new idea; but, like the best of the science which he deplores, Gray thoroughly modernizes the old Faustian legend. It's a somber view of the future. Interesting, and fascinating, if true. This book will give any reader a lot to think about.
Rating:
Summary: It's a Real Pain to be Modern
Review: Arizona Sen. John McCain has a quality that is sadly lacking in the current Bush administration; he is willing to listen to 'Old Europe' with respect, even though he bluntly disagrees with many of its positions. This is the central theme of this book; if America cannot dominate the entire world, it is wise to listen to others with respect. Instead, Gray says Bush's ambition "to reshape the Middle East comes from the Christian fundamentalist belief that a major conflagration will fulfill biblical prophecies of a catastrophic conflict in the region. To the extent that it reflects this type of thinking, American foreign policy is itself fundamentalist." Gray directly challenges a modern American myth that "Western societies are governed by the belief that modernity is a single condition, everywhere the same and always benign." Instead, he says modernity also produces organizations such as al Qaeda, and thus if we are to defeat modern terrorism we must recognize it as a fully modern development. No one would accuse Bush of being a throwback to the Puritans; likewise, al Qaeda is not a throwback to the Middle Ages or some earlier time. The difficulty, Gray writes, is ". . . many Americans believe that all human beings are American under the skin. On the other hand, they have long viewed the world -- especially the Old World of Europe -- as corrupt, possibly beyond redemption." Thus, the ideal expressed by President Woodrow Wilson of exporting American ideas to Europe after World War I, and the subsequent isolationism of Republicans in Congress which lasted until Dec. 7, 1941. How valid is this? Well, Wilson sent the US Marines to Haiti with the gift of democracy in 1915; US forces stayed until 1934, providing Haiti with its most prosperous and peaceful era of the past century. After the Marines came home, Haiti collapsed into chaos and then a tyranny which lasted until 1986. President Bill Clinton sent US forces to Haiti in 1994, then pulled them out six months later. The success of America's long effort at "nation building" is reflected in today's ongoing headlines of Haitian horror. We live in a world of chaos. As long ago as Euripides, it was recognized that knowledge cannot undo fate and virtue gives no protection against disaster. Gray urges that we return to these values, and thus understand the complexity, diversity and tolerance of life. But he adds, "Though we can imagine such a world, it is hard to imagine anything resembling it coming about by design. The proselytising fury of faith -- religious and secular -- forbids any peaceful evolution. He says, "The most that humans can do is to be brave and resourceful, and expect to achieve little. Very likely we cannot revive this pagan view of things; but perhaps we can learn from it how to limit our hopes." It's a grim view of the future, something almost out of 'Brave New World.' Unfortunately, he supports his pessimism with clear, logical and frightening logic; in short, science gives us wonderful rewards at the cost of our souls. It's not a new idea; but, like the best of the science which he deplores, Gray thoroughly modernizes the old Faustian legend. It's a somber view of the future. Interesting, and fascinating, if true. This book will give any reader a lot to think about.
Rating:
Summary: A new angle
Review: As, once more, I am by far not the first to review this volume, and most worth saying has already been stated, let me just add a brief praise.
Gray has, once more, given us an excellent analysis of a highly pertinent issue. He invites us to take a look, from a very different and new angle when compared to mainstream media and authors, at fundamentalism, US policies, and globalisation in general.
To read this book is time well spent.
Rating: 
Summary: A Misrepresentation Designed to Enrich
Review: Being a reader of his earlier work "False Dawn", which I enjoyed, I was interested to see how he argues Al Queda and the western doctrines. I am disappointed with this one. This book is nothing but an inappropriate display of intellect (pedantry). The author's thoughts are a repeat of arguments espoused in "False Dawn". What's more I agree with a previous reviewer. The title is misleading. There is very little on Al Queda, and is clearly an attempt to hoodwink readers. Furthermore, the reviews found on the back of the book, which spout forth with praise are all for a previous book "Straw Dogs". This only becomes apparent when reading the small print. A disgraceful display of short-sighted marketing. I would suggest that John Gray stop beating the capitalist flaws when this book was clearly written and marketed in a manner designed to profit from the exploitation of loyal supporters of his earlier arguments. There has been no value added here. The misrepresentation has been grave enough for me to seriously reconsider any future works from this author. I would assert you give this one a miss.
Rating: 
Summary: Intellectually Dishonest Verbiage
Review: Gray's intellectual dishonesty is appalling, and so are the gaps in his knowledge. This book is not about Al Qaeda. For example, he discusses Saint Simon's ideas about intellect and physiology and claims that a right wing project is associated with these ideas. This would be an opportunity to discuss the notions of evolutionary psychology; of course this doesn't arise as Gray is (one presumes) unaware of it. At any rate his erudition is NOT such that one thinks he wouldn't show off his knowledge. He makes throw away comments like 'in Gunratna's work' without having referred to "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror -- by Rohan Gunaratna" previously, he talks about Judaeo-Christianity as opposed to Islam, when one can as legitimately talk about Judaeo Islamic thought (he doesn't know that though). All in all Gray is a chancer who knows nothing about al Qaeda, peppers his work with rhetorical flourishes and intellectual tricks and spends alot more time trying to look clever than saying anything worth hearing.
Rating: 
Summary: Misleading title
Review: In this rather slim book John Gray, professor at the London School of Economics, tries to put the current domination of the United States into a historical, economical and philosophical perspective. He shows that the Western way of thinking has dominated the economic and technical developments over the last 2 centuries, but that it is only one of various alternative ways to establish a society. He also shows that purely secular movements like Marxism and Nazism are firmly rooted in the Christian way of thinking and looking at the world. And he shows that extremely fundamental muslim movements like Al-Queda, who seem to oppose vehemently to the western, Christian way of thinking, are not as different as they seem to be. Both are based on the idea that a better world on earth is possible. The main objection of the non-Western world (and I believe by now also of a decent part of the Western world) is the messianic behaviour of the USA that wants to press its type of society as the Only Right One upon the rest of the world. This is an interesting book: not easy, but smoothly written. My main concern is the misleading title: this book is much more about the United States than about Al-Queda, but probably books on Al-Queda sell better, so the title is rather misleading.
Rating:
Summary: Best thing I've read on the current crisis
Review: John Gray has written a credible, immensely readable and remarkably perceptive account of modernity's inherent contradictions. Gray argues that the "modern" accounts for how "progress" has come to center the collective ambitions of diverse stakeholders. Indeed, for Gray, progress (the modern disposition itself) is a faith-based (though not always theological) journey waged by various utopians who seek to carve a brave new world out of what they perceive to be social chaos and moral degradation. The problem is that the various "moderns" of the past 200 years, most notably Marxists, neo-liberal adherents to the Western free market, and Islamist militants like Al Qaeda, all have radically divergent plans for bringing the ultimate "new world" into existence. Prospects for arriving at a global equanimity among these competing senses of modernity look bleak. The upshot of Gray's argument is that there can be more than one way to be modern and thus the West does the world a disservice by insisting that progressive social development must be ITS way or not at all. Indeed, Gray suggests that the most successful non-Western modernizing nations (e.g. Japan, China, and especially India) have been wise to preserve their own traditions even as they unlock the power of technology and free market enterprise in their culture. Anyone with an interest in political science and critical theory should read this book at once. Indeed anyone who enjoys lucid argumentation would be well-served to crack open this elegant and slim volume of thought. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Not about 'al Qaeda'; not really about modernism either
Review: Some reviewers have already noted that the title of John Gray's new book, _Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern_, is somewhat misleading. Many meretricious books have been launched into the world with the words "al Qaeda" on the titlepage: those words sell books. This book is unusual, not for being unreliable about al Qaeda, though it is that, but for failing to bother overmuch with the topic so prominently announced in its title. Gray's book spends most of its time being unreliable about modernity, instead. Gray's attack on modernity, sometimes modernism, is his real project; al Qaeda was cited partly for sales considerations but also to associate Gray's real bugbears with things that people revile. Gray's book exhibits three fundamental flaws. First, Gray tends to conflate the Enlightenment, "modernism" and modernity, assuming that modern (or modernist) thinking, like Enlightenment thinking, privileges rationality as a guide to truth, assumes that liberal democracy is the only sensible future for humanity, and is on the whole optimistic. This is simply wrong; Gray's modernity, like modernism, includes strong respect for the irrational, nostalgia for the "primitive" both in discourse and in art, and is significantly more distrustful of technology and "progressive" politics, and less optimistic, than Enlightenment thinking. Second, Gray seems to think that if he demonstrates that a set of ideas has a single silly aspect, then he has demolished that entire set of ideas. So Gray makes much of the quasi-religious aspects of the "Positivism" (not positivism in its current sense) of Saint-Simon and Compte. Fine; there's good comedy there. But Gray seems to think that showing that Saint-Simon and Compte said some silly things, among the many sensible things they said, and identifying them as Enlightenment figures, must necessarily discredit the whole Enlightenment project. Here Gray is being bewilderingly silly. It's not even as if Saint-Simon or Compte were particularly central or important Enlightenment figures. Even if they had been, ridiculing their quasi-religious projects no more damages their other ideas than noting Newton's interest in numerology discredits Newton's physics. It's like singling out two learned divines of the late 18th century, who perhaps believed in God and phlogiston, and claiming that because those two clerics said some silly things therefore the whole of Christianity, all of it, must necessarily collapse. I find it hard to believe that Gray took his own rhetoric seriously, here. He either made a very feeble logical mistake or he hoped to win at rhetorical sleight of hand. But successful sleight of hand requires speed; and though this is a short book it is ponderous. Third, Gray's "modern" has no clear boundaries: it includes anything that suits Gray's argument. Gray's conflation of the Enlightenment, modernism and the "modern" helps his claim that Stalinism drew on Enlightment ideas, though the most important and nightmarish aspects of Stalinism had nothing of the Enlightenment in them. Moreover Stalinism embraced some aspects of modernist ideology and style, so it's not quite meaningless to claim Stalinism as modern. But Stalinism's anti-intellectual authoritarianism, bloody and millenarian, really dates back to totalitarianisms that long pre-dated the Enlightenment, or modernism, or "modernity". Examples include the Spanish-ruled Netherlands and Cromwell's republic, but really Russia's own ancient history provides the real ancestors for Stalin. Gray counts Nazism as a modernist movement, a claim that would have offended both Nazis and modernists. Again, Gray's conflation of modernism and the Enlightenment makes it necessary to point out that Nazism was not a product of the Enlightenment except in the negative sense that Enlightenment ideas were among the things the Nazis most passionately rejected. Nor was Nazism modernist; modernists were people that the Nazis silenced, or exiled, or killed. Gray claims the Nazis as modern simply because of their well-earned status as villains: the same reason he has for claiming that al Qaeda is modern. How does Gray argue that al Qaeda is modern? First, he seems to think that the idea of changing human culture, changing the world, is essentially modern, so that if al Qaeda has global aims (as it obviously does), then it surely must be modern too. But both Christianity and Islam had projects for changing the whole world, also and changing human nature, long before modernism or modernity existed. Al Qaeda's fantasy of murderous conquest (enacted in real murders) is precisely Medieval in seeking the restoration of the 7th century Caliphate and the expansion of an early-Medieval version of Islam to the world. Second, Gray makes much of al Qaeda's use of technology like the Internet. But Al Qaeda's use of technology no more links them to the modern, or modernism, or the Enlightenment, than the innovative use of gunpowder in combat, nearly a thousand years ago, by al Qaeda's predecessors in murderous religious irredentism, Christian as well as Muslim. Third, Gray is right to say that important aspects of al Qaeda's ideology resemble those of 20th century movements like Stalinism and Nazism. But he overlooks the extent to which both Nazism and Stalinism have their roots in essentially religious and statist authoritarianisms that long pre-date the last few centuries: Nazism, Stalinism and al-Qaeda all have important common ancestors which are much older than modernity, or modernism. And the Enlightenment should not take the rap for any of them. So this book is another example of a writer connecting their personal hobbyhorses to best-selling search keywords like "al Qaeda", "terrorism", "9/11", etc. The book's connection to the subject matter announced in its title is so slight as to be significantly misleading. But it's not a worthwhile book even in its own terms. Finally, reading Gray has reminded me that the Enlightenment is looking pretty fresh, clean and attractive, from this vantage point in history. Certainly Gray has reawakened my interest in Enlightenment writers like Hume, Voltaire and others, all of whom write better than Gray. Cheers! Laon
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book solidly refutes the widely disseminated arguement that al-Qaeda is a medieval, tribal organization. Gray is spot-on in his assessment. There are few organizations - violent or not - as modern as al-Qaeda. John Arquilla's and David Ronfeldt's works on networks support this. For people trying to understand the threat to the US, percieving our adversaries as 'in the stone age' isn't going to get us very far. This book was money well spent.
Rating:
Summary: A failed hack job
Review: This is a mercifully short book, an essay really, but ought to be much shorter. There are many broad points that I agreed with before reading this book, but Gray's hasty and loose arguments even for what I do agree with are just lousy.
I don't know if this is even worthy of being called a polemic, although it resembles one in its self-serving and highly selective historicism. It mainly seems to be a self-congratulatory rehash of his previous books (which I admit I haven't read) since a good third of his citations refer to them, wrapping up in a light-weight and curiously unironic defense of cultural relativism.
That said, I agree with the premise that al-Qaeda owes a direct debt to some enduring philosophical perversions of the Enlightenment. Whether this is a profound or superficial debt I'm not too sure. Whether it is an issue of resemblance, emulation, or some inevitability I haven't decided, but it doesn't appear Gray knows either. In fact, while reading this book I wasn't too clear on just what it is John Gray does know.
However, I do think it is clear that Gray knows very little about al-Qaeda. It also is clear that Gray knows just as little about the Enlightenment and about philosophy in general. "Superficial acquaintnance" with said topics is almost too generous. He seems to have some familiarity with modern economics, and I think many of his criticisms of a-historical economic theories is on the money. However, I felt he was mimicking Karl Polanyi's THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, but there was no attribution. Actually, he was probably just regurgitating Stiglitz now that I think of it.
When it comes to al-Qaeda, we can ascertain that Gray picked up Ruthven's A FURY FOR GOD (which I highly recommend) once or twice, but that is it. As for a "modern" movement, it would at least be reasonable to familiarize oneself with the Islamic doctrines that play a role: Ibn Taymiyya's scholarship and Hanbali's legalism in particular. Why is it these thinkers, fairly obscure through much of Islam's history, suddenly have such a relevance to contemporary Islamist terrorism? There is a unique intersection of these minor schools, contemporary political conditions, and European philosophy that plays such an interesting role in al-Qaeda's philosophy. Beyond aping Ruthven in a brief discussion of Qutb (author of "The Neglected Duty" and MILESTONES), Gray is obviously unable to comment on such things. It is simplistic to argue al-Qaeda is a modern movement and leave it at that, as it is as equally insufficient to merely call them "fundamentalists," so I don't know what it is Gray thinks he is accomplishing.
Gray seems to see Russian anarchism of the late nineteenth century as the most relevant movement here, but it is unclear if he thinks the relationship to al-Qaeda is direct, analogous, ideological, aesthetic, or what. If he's just drawing a parallel, the force of his argument is weak. If he is drawing a direct philosophical thread between them, it requires a much more sophisticated historicism than Gray seems willing or able to indulge in. While associating an anti-state movement with a non-state group like al-Qaeda may be appealing, the connection is superficial at best, especially given those anarchist's radical individualism. The problem is that Gray doesn't understand Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment philosophy any better than he does al-Qaeda. Even the Russian nihilism of that period and the continental nihilism of German and French philosophy are incredibly distinctive. Thus Gray's indictment of the Enlightenment as a whole must do better than simply name drop its most prominent philosophers (Hume, Kant, Condorcet, etc.) and expect that to make the case for a totalitarian utopianism that al-Qaeda mimics.
From the footnotes, it seems that Gray relies on general histories and some favorite quotes from contemporary Enlightenment commentators for his views. Apart from maybe having read some Comte, there is little evidence that Gray is directly familiar with the philosophers he discusses.
For instance in a paragraph on the "Counter-Enlightenment" we get this: "Later in the nineteenth century, thinkers such as Fichte and Nietzsche glorified will over reason" (p. 25). Where to begin? First of all, Fichte was a contemporary of Kant, and wrote in the late eighteenth century. He was an early and avid roponent of enlightenment, not the other way around, and his philosophy of reason and will is obviously misunderstood by Gray. Fichte's radical idealism theorized that the will could not be legitimately restrained if the self is rational. The 'I' is absolute because of its rationality. Not only does Gray miss the boat on that (it's his only reference to Fichte), but it is with this Enlightenment philosopher that German nihilism, in its ultimately narcissistic and aesthetic dimensions, began. The relationship to al-Qaeda's aestheticized death worship is much clearer than to Russian nihilism's egalitarian dimensions(let alone to Logical Positivism and analytic philosophy for crying out loud). This is just for starters too (I won't even get into Nietzsche). The whole book is like this. He might as well have titled it A.J. AYER & Al-QAEDA; it would capture its trite quality fairly well. Gray needs to get Schmidt's collection of primary sources, WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT? and read the Germans before he again holds forth on what Western philosophy amounts to.
It's not that the complexity of enlightenment is too much for such a small book, but rather that Gray seems totally unfamiliar with it and doesn't know how to present it in a relevant way. There are many, many threads in Enlightenment philosophy, and its scientism is probably the most wide-spread and the most dangerous. Its damage to twentieth century epistemology is incalculable, for instance. If we follow these
threads, we can see relationships with radical ideologies like fascism, Marxism and Leninism, Darwinism and colonialism, etc. But the relationships are complex and it is disingenuous toindict ALL such philosophy on the basis of myriad perversions (of which I agree al-Qaeda is one of the more perverted and complex examples). On these issues I recommend Saul's VOLTAIRE'S BASTARDS for a critique of Western rationality, Jonathan Israel's RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT focuses on Spinozism and can therefore give some good examples of early enlightenment absolutism (via Spinoza's panentheism), and the classic critique DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT by Horkheimer and Adorno (2002 Stanford translation) for an extended dose of hyperbole on Western rationality as barbaric irrationalism.
I sympathize with Gray's generic anti-utopianism, whether of
neo-liberal economics, marxism, scientism, islamofascism, etc. However, the last act of his book is a vague call for a bankrupt cultural relativism. "Respect for other societies" and all that good stuff. Very nice, yet he seems blind to both the fact that some of these other societies we ought to honor harbor their own virulent utopianism, as well as to the implications of sublimated modernism in his own position. How to address these? Gray is silent. With only one reference to MacIntyre's AFTER VIRTUE, he probably hasn't read it seriously
enough to know that perhaps there he has a starting point to work with in both addressing the failure of the Enlightenment project's ethical and political ambitions, and in being able to evaluate not only our own short comings but those of others in a historicism that will appeal to him.
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