The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death

John Gray

Apr. 2011 · Doubleday Canada

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A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life.

For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas — from psychiatry to evolution to Communist — seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God.

This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals — popularized through mediums and automatic writing — that there was a non-religious form of life after death.

Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians, charlatans and mass murderers, all of whom felt driven by a specifically scientific and modern world view. He raises a host of fascinating questions about what it means to be human. The implications of Gray's book will haunt its readers for the rest of their lives.

Autoren-Profil

JOHN GRAY is Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics. From 1998 to 2007 he was Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. He is the acclaimed author of Black Mass: How Religion Led the World into Crisis, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism and Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings.