- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Zed Books Ltd (28 May 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1848134037
- ISBN-13: 978-1848134034
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 702,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
'Stephen Chan was advised not to write this book. The reader would be advised to read it and even to read it again. It is a novel of true philosophy, it is philosophy through a novel, it is impressive and fascinating. It is about thought, commitment and love. The point is not to agree or not with Chan but to embark with him on his journey, from certainty to compassion, and to try, with humility and dignity, to find and to give some meaning to our common humanity. This important book is like a circle crossed by woven threads, it is a window to the world as much as a mirror to the self. Profound and refreshing.' --Tariq Ramadan
'...a long and rather splendid dinner with Stephen Chan: a ten-course tasting menu from a three-star Michelin restaurant specialising in global cultural history. [...] Chan is arguing that the discipline of international relations, which is central to the way in which the West perceives the rest of the world and acts towards it, does not have much sense of the international. What other culture could take seriously Fukyama's End of History and Huntington's Clash of Civilisations, models of international relations that either write the rest of the world out of the story or permanently locate them on the dangerous peripheries? It is no surprise that we have, despite all the claims of universalism, failed to think and act universally. [...] I left the restaurant with a sound appreciation of the limits of my own knowledge, and a sense of how superficial are my pretensions to cosmopolitanism. So I'll be coming back for more. I hope Stephen Chan keeps cooking' --David Goldblatt, The Independent
'This is a gloriously ambitious book. No one has done anything like it. The great scholar Stephen Chan sought to write an intellectual essay which would read like a magical realist novel and succeeds. He wanted to speak about complex things with imagination, drawing upon literature, music, history, philosophy and psychoanalysis. He wanted to take us on a journey across continents so that we might challenge the political orthodoxies of our times, which insist with certainty that the values to be championed in a conflicted world are those of the West. The project has produced a book light in touch but displaying extraordinary erudition, which unveils the riches and illuminating perspectives of other cultures and which shows us that there are other ways of creating a better world. Forget Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington. Stephen Chan is the public intellectual with his finger on the global pulse.' --Baroness Helena Kennedy
'...a long and rather splendid dinner with Stephen Chan: a ten-course tasting menu from a three-star Michelin restaurant specialising in global cultural history. [...] Chan is arguing that the discipline of international relations, which is central to the way in which the West perceives the rest of the world and acts towards it, does not have much sense of the international. What other culture could take seriously Fukyama's End of History and Huntington's Clash of Civilisations, models of international relations that either write the rest of the world out of the story or permanently locate them on the dangerous peripheries? It is no surprise that we have, despite all the claims of universalism, failed to think and act universally. [...] I left the restaurant with a sound appreciation of the limits of my own knowledge, and a sense of how superficial are my pretensions to cosmopolitanism. So I'll be coming back for more. I hope Stephen Chan keeps cooking' --David Goldblatt, The Independent
'This is a gloriously ambitious book. No one has done anything like it. The great scholar Stephen Chan sought to write an intellectual essay which would read like a magical realist novel and succeeds. He wanted to speak about complex things with imagination, drawing upon literature, music, history, philosophy and psychoanalysis. He wanted to take us on a journey across continents so that we might challenge the political orthodoxies of our times, which insist with certainty that the values to be championed in a conflicted world are those of the West. The project has produced a book light in touch but displaying extraordinary erudition, which unveils the riches and illuminating perspectives of other cultures and which shows us that there are other ways of creating a better world. Forget Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington. Stephen Chan is the public intellectual with his finger on the global pulse.' --Baroness Helena Kennedy
Product Description
'The End of Certainty' is a magical realist book on world politics. Stephen Chan takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through how we can establish a new kind of international relations and construct a common future for the planet. The book's main argument is that international politics has failed because the certainties of singular traditions of philosophy fail to help us in understanding power shifts and struggles in an endlessly diverse world. Chan argues that fusing different strands of Western, Eastern, religious and philosophical thought, is far more likely to help us understand and move forward amidst uncertainty. In doing so, he takes us on a journey from the battlefields of Eritrea to the Twin Towers, via the 'Book of Job', Clausewitz, Fanon and Wahabism. You'll never think about politics in quite the same way again.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
9/11 has been responsible for more rubbish, at both ends of the political spectrum, than anything since [you fill in the gap] but this one is just impenetrable. 'An egg is its own enclosure.. it cannot be accused of anything.. The opening pages of [Malraux's novel] Man's Estate, however, are a vibrant antidote to eggness.' The reviewers were remarkably kind - though I suppose they have their deadlines - but a Stephen Poole non-fiction pick of the year? Of the many 9/11-infused tracts I have dipped into in hopes of a way forward, this self-indulgent olla podrida is by some way the worst. The author's hubris irresistably brings to mind America's own, while his magpie free association is the contestataire cousin to right-wing rabble-rousing. Philosophy (with anecdotes and divagations) by a Professor of International Relations, on his day off presumably - who's the target audience here, Zed? I really can't convey the sheer horror, the unjoined-upness of this work, but Foucault on page 44 will give you the flavour. [This review is of the hardback, lacking the afterword]
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