Synopses & Reviews
A vital defense of free enquiry as a democratic force against state and corporation.Today's media commentators and politicians constantly enlist the language and prestige of the historical Enlightenment to defend western science and rationality from its irrational enemiesEvangelicals, post-modernists, and Islamists, are on the march, they say. Yet, in exploring how the Enlightenment continues to operate as a powerful guiding principle in Western politics, The Threat to Reason reveals how the truly pressing threats to free inquiry reside within the allegedly enlightened institutions of state and corporation. In their hands, the potential of Enlightenment ideas is implicated in the maintenance and furthering of neoliberal market values, while the permanent war envisaged by American state planners transforms the Enlightenment into a resource for establishing information dominance. By default science becomes what corporations want, and progress becomes what the US military can impose on the world. In recovering the concept of Enlightenment from its self-appointed defenders, The Threat to Reason demonstrates its crucial importance to a truly democratic politics, rather than a political performance in which we remain merely spectators.
Review
"The exciting thing about Dan Hind's book is his refusal to treat the Enlightenment as merely an episode in our past. Instead he sees it as an ongoing enterprise which has to engage with current developments, such as religious fundamentalism, in a new dialogue. The book is full of unexpected insights, not least about the United States." Larry Siedentop, author of Democracy in Europe
Synopsis
Today, media commentators, intellectuals and politicians declare that westernscience and rationality are threatened by irrational enemies.Evangelicals, postmodernists, and Islamists are on the march, they say.The Rome that science built is under siege. But there’s a problem withthese stirring attempts to defend the truth. They aren’t true.
In this urgent new book, Dan Hind confronts the great machinery ofdeception in which we live, and which now threatens to destroy ourcivilization. In particular, he takes to task a group of prominentintellectuals who have exaggerated the threat posed by the so-calledforces of unreason—religion, postmodernism and other “mumbo-jumbo.”The commentators, says Hind, distract us from much more pressingthreats to an open democratic society based on freedom of speech andinquiry.
This book shows that the real threats to reason aren’t wacky or foreignor stupid; they reside in our state and corporate bureaucracies—and,one way or another, they probably pay your salary. In recovering theidea of Enlightenment, Hind explores its vital importance and revealshow it can help us to achieve a truly democratic politics, in which wehave a genuine say in the decisions that are taken on our behalf.
Synopsis
A vital defence of the Enlightenment as a democratic force against state and corporation and a striking atheist attack on "fundamentalist" atheists such as Richard Dawkins.
About the Author
Dan Hind was a publisher for ten years. in 2009 he left the industry to develop a program of media reform centered on public commissioning. His journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New Scientist, Lobster and the Times Literary Supplement. His books include The Threat to Reason and The Return of the Public. He lives in London.