Endgames
Questions in Late Modern Political Thought

This work suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress must be extinguished if people are to learn to respect cultural diversity and accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for other species and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadian projects that haunt modern thought.

John Gray suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress must be extinguished if we are to learn to respect cultural diversity and accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for other species and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadian projects that haunt modern thought. We should aim to moderate the impact of human activity on the Earth while alleviating the unavoidable evils of human life. Yet the hubris which treats the Earth as an instrument of human purposes, and which regards other cultures as approximations to a universal civilization, embodies ancient and powerful traditions. John Gray's aim is to question these traditions and thereby to prepare our thinking for a time of beginnings.

Foreword.
1. The strange death of Tory England.
2. After social democracy.
3. Rawls's anti-political liberalism.
4. Ironies of liberal postmodernity.
5. Socialism with a professorial face.
6. Green theory undone?
7. What community is not.
8. Berlin, Oakeshott and Enlightenment.
9. The Tory endgame.
10. Beginnings.
Notes.
References.
Index.