The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West

Front Cover
Basic Books, 2007 M08 2 - 312 pages
Whether by choice or not, the West finds itself in a low-grade yet bitter war with Islamic fanaticism. It is a war the West is singularly ill-equipped to fight. The foe is resistant to any of the normal methods of conflict resolution such as negotiation, economic sanctions, or conventional armed confrontation. Since the Enlightenment, the West has forgotten how to oppose fanaticism, and it is Lee Harris's goal to remind us what we are up against.

In The Suicide of Reason, he explains the logic of fanatical movements from the Crusades through Nazism to radical Islam; describes how the Enlightenment overcame fanatical thinking in the West; shows why most Western attempts to address the problem are doomed to fail; and offers strategies by which liberal internationalism can defend itself without becoming a mirror of the tribal forces it is trying to defeat.

From inside the book

Contents

Fanaticism and the Myth of Modernity
3
The Denial of Fanaticism
15
Fanaticism and Resentment
29
The End of History?
39
Clash or Crash?
55
The Fanaticism of Reason
61
part two Reason Fanaticism and the Struggle for Existence
77
Demystifying Reason
79
Condorcets Tenth Stage
137
The Logic of Fanaticism
205
The Legacy and Future of Jihad
215
part five
237
Our New World Disorder
253
Conclusion
265
Index
281
Copyright

Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Reason
105

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Page 190 - ... town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in the spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain...
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About the author (2007)

Lee Harris is the author of Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History and a frequent contributor to Policy Review, the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal," and other publications, both print and online. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

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