Recycling Eschatology and Utopia

I subscribed CBC’s Ideas podcast a while ago as a way to keep me up on a show that I often cannot turn off if I happen to catch it on the radio. John Gray (not the suspect relationship guru) is a British philosopher whose idea seems to be that the past century or two of Western political thought has just been a continuation of Western religion by other means. What Gray means by this is has nothing to do with the “clash of civilizations” or the religious right or anything of the sort, but rather the eschatology and Utopian visions of secular political programs, notably communism and unrestricted free markets. I’m still digesting what Gray says, but you can listen to the podcast of John Gray on Ideas here.