The New Leviathans
Thoughts After Liberalism
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The New Leviathans
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Narrated by:
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Justin Avoth
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By:
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John Gray
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the World. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes' cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities.
In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the World of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes' classic work. The collapse of the USSR ushered in an era of near apoplectic triumphalism in the West: a genuine belief that a rational, liberal, well-managed future now awaited humankind and that tyranny, nationalism and unreason lay in the past. Since then, so many terrible events have occurred and so many poisonous ideas flourished, and yet still our liberal certainties treat them as aberrations which will somehow dissolve away. Hobbes would not be so confident.
Filled with fascinating and challenging perceptions, The New Leviathans is a powerful meditation on historical and current folly. As a species we always seem to be struggling to face the reality of base and delusive human instincts. Might a more self-aware, realistic and disabused ethics help us all?
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- djmp
- 22-11-24
The challenge
The direct stark analysis of the human condition and it's general failure to recognise the inherent contradictions in so many of the belief structures avowed by many. I shall relisten soon
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 15-08-24
Thought provoking + excellent narration
A short but very thought provoking book. A lot is packed into it. The narration is excellent.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- john
- 21-09-23
Typically erudite and brilliant
As usual, J.G. displays a range and depth of knowledge and insight that few can match.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 19-10-23
Not as billed
Gray can write a much better book than this, he has the erudition. Interesting reading of Hobbes but not sure that the horrors of the Soviet Union has much to say about contemporary firms of Liberal thought. Narration - sounds like a fictional John Le Carre don ruminating over his memoirs and musings in some Oxbridge hide away.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Amazon Customer
- 17-11-23
Captivating from start to finish
I loved this, and have already recommended it to several friends and bought the hard copy. The closest thing I can compare it to is the book version of an Adam Curtis documentary, only with AC being at his essential best.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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- J. Leigh
- 22-11-23
Weak
Very weak. A hodgepodge of miscellaneous quotations, but no serious or sustained argument. Not recommended.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Robin Young
- 13-06-24
Brilliant analysis
As applied to the West, a brilliant exposition of how and why hyper liberalism tends inexorably towards progressive illiberalism
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Rob Grayson
- 19-10-23
Excellent
Excellent, as always with Gray. His analysis is both illuminating and sobering. The narration is very good overall, though with a small number of puzzling mispronunciations.
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- Stuart Piper
- 14-03-24
Fascinating stuff
While I tend to avoid reductive labels, I'm something towards liberal, and Gray argues against Liberalism in this book. But guess what - it's possible to be interested in, and even enjoy, reading about views which differ to our own. I didn't agree with everything, but there was so much that gave me new viewpoints to consider, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating read, which I was inspired to read from seeing John giving some really intellectually stimulating interviews on YouTube. Highly recommend.
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- Paul
- 17-10-23
Outstanding
Extremely perceptive and thought provoking and a well aimed dagger to the horror of the collaboration between governments corporations and the dumb woke
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