Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia [Hardcover]

The most important living philosopher

'[Gray is] the most important living philosopher'

'This is a stimulating enquiry into the religious roots of present day conflict...a total page-turner from start to finish...exciting and rewarding'

'[Gray is] the most important living philosopher'

`[Gray is] one of the most brilliant - and funny - men I have ever met'

'John Gray's book...tells you to be afraid, be very afraid'

'...a wise, furious and informative book about political and religious thought, and how they do and don't fit together'

`I was impressed by John Gray's Black Mass, which rigorously takes apart the slippery connections between religious belief and ideas about history and politics - he is very good on the philosophical background of the neocons.'

During the last century global politics was shaped by utopian projects. Pursuing a dream of a world without evil, powerful states waged war and practised terror on an unprecedented scale. From Germany to Russia to China to Afghanistan entire societies were destroyed. Utopian ideologies rejected traditional faiths and claimed to be based in science. They were actually secular versions of the myth of Apocalypse - the belief in a world-changing event that brings history, with all its conflicts, to an end. The war in Iraq was the last of these secular utopias, promising a new era of democracy and producing blood-soaked anarchy and an emerging theocracy instead. "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia", John Gray's powerful and frightening new book, argues that the death of utopia does not mean peace. Instead it portends the resurgence of ancient myths, now in openly fundamentalist forms. Obscurely mixed with geopolitical struggles for the control of natural resources, apocalyptic religion has returned as a major force in global conflict.

John Gray's most recent books are Straw Dogs ('That rarest of things, a contemporary work of philosophy, wholly accessible and profoundly relevant to the rapidly evolving world' Will Self), Al-Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern ('The most arresting account I have read of our current crisis' Ian McEwan) and Heresies ('Swiftian contempt for our latter-day priestlings, the believers in progress' John Banville).

The twenty-first century has been a time of terror, and it is easy to imagine that in this it is different from the one that has just ended. In fact terror was practised during the last century on a scale unequalled at any other time in history, but unlike the terror that is most feared today much of it was done in the service of secular hopes. The totalitarian regimes of the last century embodied some of the Enlightenment's boldest dreams. Some of their worst crimes were done in the service of progressive ideals, while even regimes that viewed themselves as enemies of Enlightenment values attempted a project of transforming humanity by using the power of science, whose origins are in Enlightenment thinking. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.