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John N. Gray é um escritor e filósofo britânico com interesses na filosofia analítica e a história das ideias.

Ensinou Filosofia na Universidade de Oxford atualmente ensina Pensamento Europeu na London School of Economics. Escreve também regularmente para o The Guardian, o New Statesman ou o The Times Literary Supplement.

Possui diversas obras, e dos vários livros influentes que escreveu sobre teoria política, destaca-se Humanos e outros Animais ; outros dos seus livros que merecem destaque O Falso Amanhecer; Al-Qaeda e o Que Significa Ser Moderno; Cachorros de Palha; Missa Negra: Religião Apocalíptica e o Fim das Utopias , entre outras. Gray influenciou decisivamente a ascensão ao poder de Margaret Thatcher.Algumas das ideias de Gray:





== Referências == Wikipedia  

✵ 17. Abril 1948   •   Outros nomes John Gray, John Gray (philosopher)
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John N. Gray frases e citações

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“Os seres humanos se matam e, em alguns casos, eles próprios, por muitas razões, mas nenhum é mais humano do que a tentativa de dar sentido às suas vidas. Mais do que a perda de vidas, eles temem a perda de significado.”

John N. Gray
De vida , Perda

John N. Gray: Frases em inglês

“In Leopardi’s view, the universal claims of Christianity were a licence for universal savagery. Because it is directed to all of humanity, the Christian religion is usually praised, even by its critics, as an advance on Judaism. Leopardi – like Freud a hundred years later – did not share this view. The crimes of medieval Christendom were worse than those of antiquity, he believed, precisely because they could be defended as applying universal principles: the villainy introduced into the world by Christianity was ‘entirely new and more terrible … more horrible and more barbarous than that of antiquity’. Modern rationalism renews the central error of Christianity – the claim to have revealed the good life for all of humankind. Leopardi described the secular creeds that emerged in modern times as expressions of ‘half-philosophy’, a type of thinking with many of the defects of religion. What Leopardi called ‘the barbarism of reason’ – the project of remaking the world on a more rational model – was the militant evangelism of Christianity in a more dangerous form. Events have confirmed Leopardi’s diagnosis. As Christianity has waned, the intolerance it bequeathed to the world has only grown more destructive. From imperialism through communism and incessant wars launched to promote democracy and human rights, the most barbarous forms of violence have been promoted as means to a higher civilization.”

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John Gray

The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.32-3)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“An old fairy tale has it that science began with the rejection of superstition. In fact it was the rejection of rationalism that gave birth to scientific inquiry. Ancient and medieval thinkers believed the world could be understood by applying first principles. Modern science begins when observation and experiment come first, and the results are accepted even when what they show seems to be impossible.”

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John Gray

Foreword: Two Attempts to Cheat Death (pp. 5-6)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

“Nietzsche was an inveterately religious thinker, whose incessant attacks on Christian beliefs and values attest to the fact that he could never shake them off.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Nietzsche's Optimism (p.45)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“As commonly practised, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs. In Kant's time the creed of conventional people was Christian, now it is humanist. Nor are these two faiths so different from one another.Over the past 200 years, philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error — the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: At the Masked Ball (p. 37)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“A far smaller proportion of the population is in jail in Japan than in any Western country - around a twentieth of that in the United States. Evidently the Japanese have yet to embrace Western values.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: 'Western Values' (p.180)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Through all of history and pre-history it has been accepted that there is something wrong with the human animal. Health may be the natural condition of other species, but in humans it is sickness that is normal. To be chronically unwell is part of what it means to be human. It is no accident that every culture has its own versions of therapy. Tribal shamans and modern psychotherapists answer the same needs and practise the same trade.”

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John Gray

Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 84)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

“The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion. Most people need the organised distraction of work (if they can find it). Idleness - the life of the playboy who doesn't answer the phone - is simply too demanding.”

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John Gray

"A difficult business," http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/04/bourgeois-life-work-botton New Statesman (2009-04-16)

“Though it is often assumed that naturalism must be hostile to religion, the opposite is true. Enemies of religion think of it as an intellectual error, which humanity will eventually grow out of. It is hard to square this view with Darwinian science – why should religion be practically universal, if it has no evolutionary value?”

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John Gray

Sweet Morality (p. 224)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

“Autonomy means acting on reasons I have chosen; but the lesson of cognitive science is that there is no self to do the choosing. We are far more like machines and wild animals than we imagine. But we cannot attain the amoral selflessness of wild animals, or the choiceless automatism of machines. Perhaps we can learn to live more lightly, less burdened by morality. We cannot return to a purely spontaneous existence. If humans differ from other animals, it is partly in the conflicts of their instincts. They crave security, but they are easily bored; they are peace-loving animals, but they have an itch for violence; they are drawn to thinking, but at the same time they hate and fear the unsettlement thinking brings. There is no way of life in which all these needs can be satisfied. Luckily, as the history of philosophy testifies, humans have a gift for self-deception, and thrive in ignorance of their natures.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: Animal virtues (p. 115-6)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence of the decline of cohesive societies that has occurred alongside the rising demand for individual freedom.”

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John Gray

In the Puppet Theatre: An Iron Mountain and a Shifting Spectacle (p. 121)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“The idea that consciousness is a mystery is a prejudice inherited from monotheism. The early seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes believed that animals other than humans are insensate machines. Obviously, this was a restatement in rationalist terms of the Christian belief that only humans have souls. Even if mind and matter were categorically distinct, that would not mean humans alone have minds. It was reported that in order to test his theories, Descartes used to throw animals out of the window and observe their reactions. Looking at behaviour of this kind, one might reasonably conclude that humans are the senseless machines.”

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John Gray

Freedom for Über-Marionettes: What Science Won't Tell You (p. 151)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“Action preserves a sense of self-identity that reflection dispels. When we are at work in the world we have a seeming solidity. Action gives us consolation for our inexistence. It is not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality. It is practical men and women, who turn to a life of action as a refuge from insignificance.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

As it is: The consolation of action (p. 194)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Nothing is more alien to the present age than idleness. If we think of resting from our labours, it is only in order to return to them. In thinking so highly of work we are aberrant. Few other cultures have ever done so. For nearly all of history and all prehistory, work was an indignity.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

As It Is: Sisyphus's Progress (p. 195)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning."”

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John Gray

I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."
Quoted in "John Gray at the Writers' Festival, part 1," http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2008/2284016.htm The Philosopher's Zone, a discussion with Alan Saunders on ABC Radio National (2008-06-28)

“In Kleist’s essay humans are caught between the graceful automatism of the puppet and the conscious freedom of a god. The jerky, stuttering quality of their actions comes from their feeling that they must determine the course of their lives. Other animals live without having to choose their path through life. Whatever uncertainty they may feel sniffing their way through the world is not a permanent condition; once they reach a place of safety, they are at rest. In contrast, human life is spent anxiously deciding how to live.”

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John Gray

The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.25-6)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“Instead of enabling humans to improve their lot, science degrades the natural environment in which humans must live. Instead of enabling death to be overcome, it produces ever more powerful technologies of mass destruction. None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.”

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John Gray

Sweet Morality (p. 235)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

“The result of toppling tyranny in divided countries is usually civil war and ethnic cleansing.”

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"The death of this crackpot creed is nothing to mourn," http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/31/comment.politics1 The Guardian (2007-07-31)

“In evolutionary prehistory, consciousness emerged as a side effect of language. Today it is a by-product of the media.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: A Theory of Consciousness (p. 171)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“How we come to have the world-views we do is an interesting question. No doubt reason plays a part, but human needs for meaning and purpose are usually more important. At times personal taste may be what decides the issue. There is nothing to say that, when all the work of reason is done, only one view of the world will remain. There may be many that fit everything that can be known. In that case you might as well choose the view of the world you find most interesting or beautiful. Adopting a world-view is more like selecting a painting to furnish a room than testing a scientific theory. The test is how it fits with your life.”

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John Gray

Freedom for Über-Marionettes: What Science Won't Tell You (p. 150)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one’s mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space … Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal.”

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John Gray

Sweet Morality (p. 235)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

“To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.”

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John Gray

Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2000, ISBN 0-745-62259-3. 168 pages), ch. 1: Liberal Toleration (p. 21)

“The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America's financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America's political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess.”

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A shattering moment in America's fall from power (2008)

“Progress is a fact. Even so, faith in progress is a superstition. Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This is the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions. The growth of knowledge is real and - barring a worldwide catastrophe - it is now irreversible. Improvements in government and society are no less real, but they are temporary. Not only can they be lost, they are sure to be. History is not progress or decline, but recurring gain and loss. The advance of knowledge deludes us into thinking we are different from other animals, but our history shows that we are not.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: De Quincey's Toothache (p. 155)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Against the many Russian thinkers influenced by Hegel who believed that history was governed by universal laws to which one could only submit, Turgenev upheld the freedom of different societies to pursue different paths of development and of individuals to pursue, even in opposition to powerful historical forces, their own goals and values. Here Turgenev endorsed the celebrated dictum of Alexander Herzen, with whom he disagreed on other matters: that history has no libretto. Human history is a realm of contingency and unpredictability, in which each generation faces conflicts that have no ideal solution.”

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John Gray

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.105)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

“… the idea of Gaia is anticipated most clearly in a line from the Tao Te Ching, the oldest Taoist scripture. In ancient Chinese rituals, straw dogs were used as offerings to the gods. During the ritual they were treated with the utmost reverence. When it was over and they were no longer needed they were trampled on and tossed aside: 'Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.' If humans disturb the balance of the Earth they will be trampled on and tossed aside. Critics of the Gaia theory say they reject it because it is unscientific. The truth is that they fear and hate it because it means that humans can never be other than straw dogs.”

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John Gray livro Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Straw Dogs (p. 33-4)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Contrary to generations of western progressives, it was not Russian backwardness or mistakes in applying Marxian theory that produced the society that Lyons observed. Similar regimes came into being wherever the communist project was attempted. Lenin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Ceausescu’s Romania and many more were variants of a single dictatorial model. From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. If 1984 is such a powerful myth, one reason is that it captures this truth. Yet there is a flaw in Orwell’s story, which emerges in his picture of the all-powerful interrogator. The dystopia of perpetual power is a fantasy, and so is O’Brien. Soviet torturers were sweating functionaries living in constant fear. Like their victims, they knew that they were resources that would be used up in the service of power. There was no inner-party elite safe from the contingencies of history.”

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John Gray

An Old Chaos: Two Times Two Equals Five (p. 52)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

“The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge — not even in the long run.”

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"Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary," from Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (2004)

“The belief that there is some hidden cabal directing the course of events is a type of anthropomorphism – a way of finding agency in the entropy of history.”

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In the Puppet Theatre: Puppetry, Conspiracy and Ouija Boards (p. 133)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.”

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John Gray

A shattering moment in America's fall from power (2008)

“If we are to put interrogators to work in defence of liberal values, their role in the community must receive proper recognition. They will require intensive counselling to overcome the inevitable traumas that this difficult work involves. They must be enabled to see themselves as dedicated workers in the cause of progress. Psychotherapy must be available to help them avoid the negative self-image from which some torturers have suffered in the past.”

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John Gray

A Modest Proposal (2003)