Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights That Made the Modern Western World

by A.C. Grayling

Book Overview

In Towards the Light, A.C. Grayling tells the story of the long and difficult battle for freedom in the West, from the Reformation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the battle for the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802716369
• ISBN13: 9780802716361
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Walker & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Strong, flawed, important work with a valuable, urgent message (a history teacher's review)

I had to pick up this book as soon as I stumbled upon it. One of the themes in my history classes is the expansion of freedom in the West following the same general timeline that Grayling follows. Who doesn't like to have his own thoughts echoed by a major English philosopher? Strengths: I do recommend this book - it is a readable, admirable attempt at covering a vast, important topic. Grayling covers John Locke especially well (although he disposes with the views of Hobbes rather quickly by asserting that people are not necessarily nasty and brutal with one another). Grayling's most important message is quite simple: the rights that we have are the product of a lot of time and a lot of struggles and they should be cherished and well-guarded. When the reader has completed this book it should be quite clear that this inheritance is too valuable to be squandered. To his credit, Grayling does not treat Marx and Engels as if they were true prophets. Rather, he successfully counters their arguments and, unlike many academics, expresses no sympathy with their devotees in the USSR - tyranny is tyranny, no matter its political leanings with Mr. Grayling. Weaknesses: Grayling has intended this book to be an answer to 19th century English historian Lord Acton's incomplete "History of Liberty" - a work that is friendly to the role of religion in Liberty and Freedom in the West. Grayling is most definitely not agreeable to that point. It is too bad that this bias runs throughout the book. This work is strong in so many ways, but this attitude is over-emphasized Grayling begins with Martin Luther and the Reformation. The longest argument that Grayling makes is against the uniform power of the Catholic church during those dangerous times, especially the Inquisition. Grayling overplays his hand by painting all religions with the taint of the Inquisition over and over throughout the book. At one point (p. 234) he even argues that religious people are not good citizens because their loyalties are divided between the "secular state" and their religion. Too my mind, his argument comes dangerously close to swinging to becoming zealous opposite of the Inquisition - an anti-religious inquisition, if you will. The book gets bogged down for about 20 pages in a detailed look at the labor movement in England in the 1800s. I am not quite sure why he focused this intently on reciting this story because it stands in stark contrast to the philosophical and idea-centered writing that fills the rest of the book. My advice - skim and move on to the meatier portions that follow. Grayling includes photos in the center of the book. Oddly they include photos of Martin Luther King, anti-segregation protestors in both America and South Africa and Algerians being hassled by French troops in the 1950s - these topics are not actually addressed in the book. A pet peeve - Grayling has lots of endnotes - many of them with comments. Why not make them footnotes so the reader does

A Fascinating Read

I'm something of a Goldwater conservative, so I don't entirely agree with all of Grayling's leftism, but I do agree with his stance on the separation of church and state and the importance of The Enlightment. Read and enjoy and apply his concepts of free thinking even as you consider the author's own opinions.

From Torquemada to the War on Terror

A.C. Grayling is a British philosopher. He is a friend of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and although he is not as well known as these two authors, his book is every bit as valuable as the writing of his secular compatriots. Prof. Grayling does an excellent job explaining how the West moved from the Spanish Inquisition (in the 1500s) into the relative daylight of liberty enjoyed in contemporary democracies. One of the highlights of Prof. Grayling's book is his clear explication of the importance of John Locke in the story of liberty. Wheras Hobbes' argued that human life in a state of nature is "nasty, brutish, and short," Locke argued that what is most important about individual human nature is not its violence, but its unique capacity (among animals) for reason and freedom. This shifted the debate concerning the role of the state from the Hobbesian one (the state is a "Leviathan" that a people surrenders its rights to in the name of collective safety and protection) to a Lockean one (in which the state is at the service of protecting the ability of individuals to reason and exercise freedom). The book lays out clearly what is at stake for the West if we collectively succumb to the temptation (in the name of security) of conceiving of our world as a Hobbesian one (as opposed to a Lockean one). According to Grayling, we have to be very careful (in the West) not to erode our hard won liberties in the name of "the war on terror," or mute our freedom of speech in the name of multicultural and religious sensitivity. Grayling is a liberal in temperament, not a conservative, and he deals with these issues in a moderate and nuanced fashion, while nevertheless emphasizing the frailty of our liberties, and reminding us of how difficult they have been to attain, and how easy they might be lost in a time of economic or war-time crisis. Mr. Grayling is not as polemical as Dawkins or Hitchens, but he is every bit as intelligent and interesting to read.