John Gray's title pays tribute to Lao Tzu: 'Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.' Had the sage's name been Sid Jenkins, would it have so challenging a ring? Who still maintains that God gives a recognisable damn about human beings? Voltaire chose the Lisbon earthquake as evidence of His indifference to human suffering; others waited for Auschwitz. God's not in His heaven and all's wrong with the world. Next case.
Its blurb claims that Straw Dogs is a 'radical work of philosophy É a demolition of 2,500 years of thought', and has 'garnered rave reviews'. Short, easy books which deliver readers from any obligation to con long, abstruse ones are often applauded. For my generation, Freddie Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic carried the time-for-a-game-of-bridge news that we need never read Hegel or Heidegger or any other 'metaphysicians'. The role of philosophy was henceforth to be the lens-polishing handmaiden of science, plus some Wittgensteinian community service showing flies the way out of the fly-bottle.
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