From : The Australian
Photo : http://www.theaustralian.com.au/
The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope.
By Roger Scruton Atlantic Books, 232pp, $35 .
IDEAS are big again. A decade of Islamic terrorism, US-led wars and financial excess has sent intellectuals back to the archives to check the small print on the social contract.
Evangelical progressives, evangelical conservatives, even evangelicals, set out their stalls in the marketplace of ideas, with many an intellectual trinket to tempt the jaded passer-by.
Moreover, communism, the ideology whose death, according to American theorist Francis Fukuyama, was supposed to herald the end of ideology, is undergoing a modest recrudescence, with philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek leading the way. The liberal-democratic consensus is showing signs of strain. Intellectuals are going back to the future.
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