"Philosophical anthropology on the grandest scale. . . .Gellner has produced a sharp challenge to his colleagues and a thrilling book for the non-specialist. Deductive history on this scale cannot be proved right or wrong, but this is Gellner writing, incisive, iconoclastic, witty and expert. His scenario compels our attention."Adam Kuper, New Statesman

"A thoughtful and lively meditation upon probably the greatest transformation in human history, upon the difficult problems it poses and the scant resources it has left us to solve them."Charles Larmore, New Republic

1. In the Beginning

The Need for Philosophic History

The Structure of History

Trinitarianisms

Production, Coercion, Cognition

Which Way Will the Stone Age Vote Swing?

The Suspect Witness

2. Community to Society

The Cognitive Evolution of Mankind

Multiple Sensitivities

Generic Types of Strand

Social and Logical Coherence

The Terminus

The Overall Plot

3. The Coming of the Other

Paths of Cognitive Transformation

The Disembodied Word

"Platonism"

The Indirect Route

The First Unification

The Authority of Concepts

Plato's Sociological Mistakes

4. The Tension

A Divine Order

Church and State and their Separability

Protestantism, Generic and Specific

5. Codification

Reformation to Enlightenment

The Sovreignty of Knowledge

The Dethronement of the Concept

Concept-Implementing and Instrumental Cultures

The Enlightened Solution and its Problems

The Age of Progress, or Operation Bookstrap

6. The Coercive Order and Its Erosion

Patterns of Power

Conditions of the Exit

General Summary

7. Production, Value and Validity

The Economic Transformation

Production and Coercion

The Three Stages of Economy

The Ideological Transition to the Generalized Market

The Re-Entry Problem

The Circularity of Enlightened Reasoning

Objectivity or Not?

8. The New Science

The Concept of Culture and the Limits of Reason

Egalitarianism

What Next?

9. Self-Images

Economic Power (Wealth as Lever)

The New Coercive System

The Two Running-Mates

The Right-Wing Alternative

Acorn or Gate

The New Social Contract

1945 and Some Recent Clauses in the Contract

10. Prospect

The Division of Labour and Back Again

The Future of Production

The Future of Cognition

The Future of Coercion

Summary of Argument

Notes

Index