The Cunning Of Unreason

by John Dunn

All human action lies under the shadow of prospective regret, but there are few areas of contemporary life over which that shadow falls so darkly as it does over politics. We hear constantly that Americans are less likely than ever to vote and are increasingly cynical about the ability of politicians to effect change. Why is politics so consistently disappointing? Starting from the premise that the professional study of politics can offer us a way to understand why we have so little faith in the political process, The Cunning of Unreason explores competing definitions of politics, probing the hidden assumptions and implications of each. In energetic and engaging prose, Cambridge political theorist John Dunn makes a convincing case for the ongoing relevance of great political thinkers from Aristotle to Marx. Along the way, he bridges the academic world of political theory and the public world of debate about democracy, corruption, globalization, and the recent trend toward conservatism. A must read for every politician, spin doctor, and professional pundit, The Cunning of Unreason offers a greater understanding of the way politics works in contemporary society and what its promise is for the future.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics

416 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A while back I read a book that started by telling its readers what it wasn't. Dunn's book needs the same disclaimer. This is really a book about understanding politics- it discusses, analyzes and judges different ways of understanding, not different kinds of politics. He begins by describing what he takes politics to be - essentially, conflicts within and between states - but most of the book is about how we might try to understand and change this subject matter. So the book is structured more often than not around a binary or ternary: should we be fatalists or voluntarists when it comes to understanding politics? Should be we understand politics from a Platonic or a sociological perspective? Is politics best understood with the tools of disinterested epistemology, or from the perspective of a particular political interest? Is politics best understood as brutal power plays, or as the realm of human cooperation?

If you can accept that, it's bracing stuff, until he gets around to suggesting, as he almost always does, that you take a bit from each member of his binary or ternary or quarternary, if that's a word. Which sometimes feels like a let-down.

There are other problems, too. Someone suggested that Dunn writes like Mozart. And that is true. But it doesn't mean it's clear and easy. It means that, like Mozart, it's excruciatingly difficult to follow and awesomely abstract, but sounds pleasant. Dunn has written about the early modern English political theorists a lot, and it shows. This is political theory in the *literary* tradition of Hobbes, not of utilitarian prose. It's like late Henry James. If you can't cope with that, you probably want to avoid this book. I actually quite like it.

The most serious problem is his vacillation over the importance of the State for political understanding. Against anarchists or libertarians or neo-liberals he wants to insist on the importance of the state for our political understanding; but as a clear-eyed social scientist he essentially admits that the moving force of political change over the last fifty years hasn't been the state at all: the state has been an effective tool, not the major force, for the spread of capitalist policies. I'm not sure that this is an irresolvable contradiction, but it's very hard to read his conclusion - that the creation of the modern democratic republic is humanity's most advantageous deed, and that all political understanding must start from it - without flicking back through to check whether you missed something in the previous 200 pages which were about how, basically, it's the economy, stupid.

Also, he's got the usual 'I used to be a socialist but then the USSR collapsed and now I know that socialism was always a fairy tale' pessimism that you find in older political thinkers. Newsflash! Our options are not capitalism or Stalinism. It just isn't true to say that "there is a clear surplus of conflict over co-operation in human interactions and... there will always continue to be so," 361. This might be true at certain levels of abstraction and at certain times; but in general, everyone gets on pretty well: I drive on the correct side of the road, I stop at stop-signs, I use my indicator. The exceptions and conflicts are more noticeable, but only because the cooperation is so all-pervasive. And that cooperation is reason for optimism that we can, in fact, improve our lot.

[Gulsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books that I've ever read on contemporary political theory. It is a shame that it has been somewhat underrated, mostly, I would suggest, due to its difficult to follow construction and language. It is a book for patient readers!

[nat loves spring ❀ · Rating 2 out of 5]

i hate the person that set off the chain of events that lead up to the creation of this book, but i hate my lecturer even more for making me read this steaming fucking pile of horseshit. Good fucking god, not even a shotgun to the head could get rid of this headache. TWO DAYS OF MY LIFE RUINED. I HATE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

[amélie williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolute waffle and never reached any solid conclusion, kept going round and round in circles, not fun and very bland/pretentious writing