The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death John Gray
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2011
ISBN: 978-0374175061
...acclaimed political philosopher and critic John Gray takes a brilliant and frightening look at humankind’s dangerous striving toward a scientific version of immortality.
Darwin had drawn on science to conclude that humans had evolved over the millennia from within the animal kingdom - that life itself had no grand design and no ultimate purpose. But he hadn't proved there was no life after death. In this exciting work, Gray examines humanity's struggle to understand that we are animals like any other, condemned to death and eventual extinction.
In The Immortalization Commission, John Gray, a leading political author and philosopher tries to answer whether there really is life after death and comes up with some thought-provoking arguments. Gray examines how scientists, politicians, world leaders, poets and writers have obsessed over death and tried to find reason amid the chaos of the universe.
The Immortalization Commission is split into two halves, focusing first on ‘Cross-Correspondences’ which examines the world of the occult, and then moves onto ‘God-Builders’ which looks at man’s attempts to control the destiny of the human race itself. It raises questions such as, if there is nothing after death, then what are we doing here? And, is it really a good thing to be able to live forever?
John Gray is undoubtedly one of the most important and insightful philosophers writing today. Like most of Gray’s work, this book is filled with diverting anecdotes and ironic asides, yet swells to a powerful philosophical conclusion. Gray warns us that many of the advances in science and technology are capable of leading us to our complete extinction and his conclusions allow the reader to form their own opinions about life after death.
JOHN GRAY is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including Black Mass, Straw Dogs, and Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern. A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.
