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• catalog abstract "In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis.".
• catalog alternative "Dictatorship of reason in the West.".
• catalog contributor b3560216.
• catalog created "c1992.".
• catalog date "1992".
• catalog date "c1992.".
• catalog dateCopyrighted "c1992.".
• catalog description "Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis.".
• catalog description "In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. ".
• catalog description "Includes bibliographical references (p. [587]-620) and index.".
• catalog description "Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. ".
• catalog description "pt. I. Argument. 1. In which the Narrator Positions Himself. 2. The Theology of Power. 3. The Rise of Reason. 4. The Rational Courtesan. 5. Voltaire's Children. 6. The Flowering of Armaments -- pt. II. Scenes from a System That Doesn't Work. 7. The Question of Killing. 8. Learning How to Organize Death. 9. Persistent Continuity at the Heart of Power. 10. In the Service of the Greater Self. 11. Three Short Excursions into the Unreasonable. 12. The Art of the Secret. 13. The Secretive Knight. 14. Of Princes and Heroes. 15. The Hero and the Politics of Immortality. 16. The Hijacking of Capitalism. 17. The Miracle of the Loaves -- pt. III. Surviving in Fantasy Land: The Individual in the World of Reason. 18. Images of Immortality or The Victory of Idolatry. 19. Life in a Box -- Specialization and the Individual. 20. The Stars. 21. The Faithful Witness. 22. The Virtue of Doubt.".
• catalog extent "x, 640 p. ;".
• catalog hasFormat "Voltaire's bastards.".
• catalog identifier "0029277256 :".
• catalog isFormatOf "Voltaire's bastards.".
• catalog issued "1992".
• catalog issued "c1992.".
• catalog language "eng".
• catalog publisher "New York : Free Press : Maxwell Macmillan International,".
• catalog relation "Voltaire's bastards.".
• catalog subject "909/.09821 20".
• catalog subject "BC177 .S28 1992".
• catalog subject "Civilization, Western.".
• catalog subject "Rationalism.".
• catalog subject "Reason.".
• catalog tableOfContents "pt. I. Argument. 1. In which the Narrator Positions Himself. 2. The Theology of Power. 3. The Rise of Reason. 4. The Rational Courtesan. 5. Voltaire's Children. 6. The Flowering of Armaments -- pt. II. Scenes from a System That Doesn't Work. 7. The Question of Killing. 8. Learning How to Organize Death. 9. Persistent Continuity at the Heart of Power. 10. In the Service of the Greater Self. 11. Three Short Excursions into the Unreasonable. 12. The Art of the Secret. 13. The Secretive Knight. 14. Of Princes and Heroes. 15. The Hero and the Politics of Immortality. 16. The Hijacking of Capitalism. 17. The Miracle of the Loaves -- pt. III. Surviving in Fantasy Land: The Individual in the World of Reason. 18. Images of Immortality or The Victory of Idolatry. 19. Life in a Box -- Specialization and the Individual. 20. The Stars. 21. The Faithful Witness. 22. The Virtue of Doubt.".
• catalog title "Dictatorship of reason in the West.".
• catalog title "Voltaire's bastards : the dictatorship of reason in the West / John Ralston Saul.".
• catalog type "text".