Fionnáin reviewed Straw Dogs by John Gray
Review of 'Straw Dogs' on 'GoodReads'
1 star
I rarely mark books down - I normally have something I can at least hold onto when I read a book.
However, here we go.
It draws spurious conclusions from poor research that is approached with no academic rigour. There is only one side to Gray's story ("HUMANISM BAD"). It is repeated on almost every second page. It is repeated on almost every second page.
Pessimism is one thing, but this is just bad research, poorly formed arguments and populist meanderings. A whole section is dedicated to belittling 19th Century philosophy, with no heed paid at all to 20th Century philosophy, as if it had never happened. You can learn nothing from this book that you can't learn from a half-hour Wikipedia hole, and you might learn a whole lot more there.
If you want to learn about human-ness, nature and technology read other theorists (I recommend Bernard Stiegler). Absolutely …
I rarely mark books down - I normally have something I can at least hold onto when I read a book.
However, here we go.
It draws spurious conclusions from poor research that is approached with no academic rigour. There is only one side to Gray's story ("HUMANISM BAD"). It is repeated on almost every second page. It is repeated on almost every second page.
Pessimism is one thing, but this is just bad research, poorly formed arguments and populist meanderings. A whole section is dedicated to belittling 19th Century philosophy, with no heed paid at all to 20th Century philosophy, as if it had never happened. You can learn nothing from this book that you can't learn from a half-hour Wikipedia hole, and you might learn a whole lot more there.
If you want to learn about human-ness, nature and technology read other theorists (I recommend Bernard Stiegler). Absolutely give this one a miss.
