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The Illusion of Progress: John Gray’s Anatomy of Liberalism
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We live in an age that believes it has outgrown religion, yet our most cherished political project—**Liberalism**—is, according to John Gray, nothing more than a secularized shadow of Christian eschatology. While we claim to be rational and scientific, we have merely swapped the "providence" of God for the "progress" of history.
### The Myth of Secular Progress
John Gray, a former Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, argues that the central pillar of liberalism—the belief in the steady improvement of the human condition—is a delusion. In his seminal work, [*Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Dogs:_Thoughts_on_Humans_and_Other_Animals), Gray dismantles the idea that human history is a linear journey toward enlightenment.
While scientific knowledge is cumulative, Gray insists that human ethics and politics are not. We gain technology, but we do not "improve" our nature; the same impulses that drove ancient conflicts drive modern ones.
> "In science, progress is a fact; in ethics and politics, it is a superstition... The hope of progress is the last refuge of those who cannot bear the truth that history is a series of cycles and contingencies."
> — John Gray, *Straw Dogs* (2002)
### The Two Faces of Liberalism
Gray’s critique is most surgically applied in [*The Two Faces of Liberalism*](https://archive.org/details/twofacesoflibera0000gray). He identifies a fundamental tension within liberal thought:
1. **Universalist Liberalism:** The belief that one specific way of life (liberal democracy) is the rational end-point for all of humanity. Gray views this as an imperialistic project rooted in Enlightenment dogmatism.
2. **Modus Vivendi:** Drawing from [Isaiah Berlin’s Value Pluralism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berlin/), Gray proposes that different cultures have fundamentally different, yet equally valid, conceptions of "the good life."
Gray argues that because human values are inherently in conflict—for example, the tension between absolute liberty and absolute equality—there is no single "rational" solution that fits all societies. Therefore, the goal of politics should not be to convert the world to liberalism, but to find a **modus vivendi**—a way for different ways of life to coexist without descending into violence.
### Dismantling the Global Project
Gray’s most scathing political critique, found in [*False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dawn:_The_Delusions_of_Global_Capitalism), targets the "Washington Consensus." He argues that the attempt to impose a single global market is an Enlightenment fantasy that ignores the local social and cultural roots required for any economy to function. For Gray, the liberal attempt to "end history" through global markets and universal rights is not just doomed; it is a recipe for instability and backlash.
***
**To deepen your exploration, consider these questions:**
- If "progress" is a myth, what becomes of our motivation for social reform and political activism?
- Does Gray’s "Modus Vivendi" provide a realistic framework for international relations, or is it a surrender to moral relativism?
- How does Gray’s view of humans as "straw dogs"—creatures driven by biological impulse rather than reason—change our understanding of the social contract?
Then
Question
what has he said or written in the last 12 months on liberalism
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Answer
The New Leviathans and the Hyper-liberal Twilight
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While the foundation of John Gray’s thought rests on the critique of progress, his writings over the last 12 months—culminating in the reception and discussion of his latest book, [*The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism*](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/446261/the-new-leviathans-by-gray-john/9780141997384)—suggest that we have entered a "post-liberal" era where the state has fundamentally changed its purpose. If the classical liberal state sought to provide a neutral framework for different ways of life, the "New Leviathan" seeks to engineer the inner lives of its subjects.
## From Security to Social Engineering
In his recent essays for [The New Statesman](https://www.newstatesman.com/author/john-gray), Gray argues that the West has reverted to a Hobbesian "state of nature," but with a modern, bureaucratic twist. Drawing on [Thomas Hobbes’s *Leviathan*](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/), Gray observes that the original purpose of the state was to provide physical security—protection from "violent death."
However, Gray contends that modern Western states have mutated. They no longer aim for a *modus vivendi* between differing groups; instead, they have become "New Leviathans" that seek to enforce a singular, evolving moral orthodoxy.
> "The New Leviathans are not traditional autocracies... they are states that find their legitimacy in the promise of delivering their subjects from the burdens of identity and history."
> — John Gray, *The New Leviathans* (2023)
## The Rise of Hyper-liberalism
A central theme in Gray’s recent work is the concept of **hyper-liberalism**. He argues that contemporary "woke" movements are not a departure from liberalism but its logical, radicalized conclusion. This hyper-liberalism discards the old liberal concern for tolerance and instead focuses on the absolute autonomy of the "atomized self."
Gray suggests this creates a paradox: in the name of liberating the individual from social norms, the state must expand its power to police language, thought, and private associations. This results in a "soft totalitarianism" where the pursuit of individual rights leads to the destruction of the very institutions (like universities and the law) that originally protected those rights.
## The Geopolitics of Delusion
In his commentary on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza throughout 2024, Gray has dismantled the lingering hope of a "rules-based international order." He views the Western response to these crises as a desperate attempt to maintain the fiction of global liberal hegemony.
1. **The Return of Scarcity:** Gray argues that liberalism flourished in an era of expansion and cheap energy. In a world of shrinking resources, states are returning to "Great Power" realism, ignoring the legalistic frameworks established after 1989.
2. **The End of the "West":** Gray posits that the "West" as a coherent political entity is dissolving. European states are fracturing under the weight of internal value conflicts, while the United States is embroiled in a "cold civil war" between rival versions of hyper-liberal and populist ideologies.
For Gray, the tragedy of the last year is the refusal of the liberal elite to accept that their world is gone. He suggests that by clinging to the "mirage of a global civilization," we leave ourselves unprepared for the actual task of 21st-century politics: navigating a world of permanent conflict and shifting allegiances.
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Beyond the Mortal God: Exploring Hobbesian Architecture
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To understand Thomas Hobbes is to look into the abyss of human insecurity and find a machine staring back. While his *Leviathan* is often cited as the blueprint for absolute rule, it is also a foundational text for artificial intelligence, visual propaganda, and the psychological architecture of the modern self.
## 1. The Automaton State and Cybernetic Sovereignty
**The Hook:** Hobbes did not view the state as a biological growth or a divine gift, but as a giant robot—an "Artificial Man"—built to prevent human hardware from crashing.
**The Connection:** Hobbes was a radical materialist who redefined life as "but a motion of limbs." By treating the commonwealth as a machine (the *Engine of Sovereignty*), he bypassed traditional morality in favor of mechanics.
**The Insight:** This perspective bridges the gap between 17th-century philosophy and modern [Cybernetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics). It suggests that the State is the first "AI"—a system designed to process the "input" of human fear and produce the "output" of order.
**Primary Source:** The Introduction to [Leviathan](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1103/1103-h/1103-h.htm), where Hobbes explicitly compares the heart to a spring and the nerves to strings, setting the stage for a purely mechanistic view of humanity.
## 2. The Iconography of the Frontispiece
**The Hook:** The most famous image in political philosophy hides a terrifying optical secret: the Sovereign’s body is literally composed of hundreds of tiny, faceless citizens.
**The Connection:** The original [frontispiece](https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/frontispiece-to-thomas-hobbess-leviathan), created by Abraham Bosse in collaboration with Hobbes, is a masterclass in visual political theology. It illustrates the "Body Politic" not as a metaphor, but as a literal absorption of the individual into the state.
**The Insight:** It reveals that the Leviathan’s power is "perspectival." If the citizens stop looking at the Sovereign as their representative, the giant vanishes. It highlights the role of perception and "prestige" in maintaining political stability.
**Key Text:** *The Iconography of the Leviathan* by [Horst Bredekamp](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/books/42557/the-face-of-power), which deconstructs how Hobbes used art to define the modern state’s visual identity.
## 3. Carl Schmitt and the "Mortal God’s" Fatal Flaw
**The Hook:** Hobbes may have accidentally invented modern liberalism by trying to destroy it, creating a "private" space that eventually swallowed the state whole.
**The Connection:** The 20th-century jurist Carl Schmitt argued that Hobbes made a crucial mistake: he allowed for a distinction between inner belief and outward obedience.
**The Insight:** This "crack" in the Leviathan’s armor allowed the individual conscience to flourish, eventually leading to the very pluralism and "culture wars" Hobbes feared. It explains why totalitarians and liberals both claim Hobbes as an ancestor.
**Primary Source:** [The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes](https://uchicago-press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3645326.html) by Carl Schmitt.
> "The Leviathan, the 'mortal god,' is a machine. But it is a machine that can only function as long as it is believed in."
## 4. The Thucydidean Shadow
**The Hook:** Before he wrote a word of political theory, Hobbes spent years translating the history of a plague-ridden, war-torn Greece, which taught him that civilization is a thin veneer over madness.
**The Connection:** Hobbes’s first major work was a translation of Thucydides’s *History of the Peloponnesian War*. His "State of Nature" is a direct philosophical evolution of the [Stasis](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thucydides/) (civil strife) he encountered in ancient Corcyra.
**The Insight:** It grounds Hobbes’s abstract "war of all against all" in concrete historical trauma. This reveals that *Leviathan* is not just a theory, but a desperate response to the collapse of social trust.
**Primary Source:** Hobbes’s *Translation of Thucydides*, specifically the passages regarding the Corcyraean Revolution, which serve as the empirical laboratory for his later political philosophy.
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