Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

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Granta, 2002 - Nature - 246 pages
A radical work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche and Marx, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the Earth. Even in the present day, despite Darwin's discoveries, nearly all schools of thought take as their starting point the belief that humans are radically different from other animals.

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Contents

THE DECEPTION
35
THE VICES OF MORALITY
85
THE UNSAVED
117
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

John Gray was born on April 17, 1948 in South Shields, England. He received a B.A., M.Phil., and D.Phil. from Exeter College, Oxford. He taught at several universities including the University of Essex, Jesus College, Oxford, and the University of Oxford. He retired as Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2008. He contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is the author of several books including False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death of Utopia, and The Immortalisation Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death.

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