Outspoken Essays

William Ralph Inge, the famously pessimistic Dean of St Paul's, собрал these essays as a bracing antidote to post-WWI optimism. Written in the turbulent aftermath of the Great War, they offer an unflinching critique of the progress worship that defined the Victorian age and the hollow promises of democracy and capitalism that followed. Inge argues with ruthless consistency that human nature remains essentially unchanged: the same noble aspirations and savage impulses that drove ancient Greece now drive the modern industrial state. His Christian Platonism provides the lens through which he examines everything from the rise of the totalitarian God-state to the eugenics movement, always returning to the same uncomfortable thesis, that civilization advances technologically while the human soul stands still. This is not a comforting book, but it is a brilliant one: the thinking person's guide to understanding why revolutions devour their children and why faith in progress so often curdles into barbarism. For readers who enjoy their philosophy with teeth and their essays genuinely outspoken.