The New Leviathans: Thoughts after Liberalismby John GrayFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023; 192 pp.John Gray is a strange case. He is a political philosopher who taught for many decades at Oxford and the London School of Economics, and he has become one of the leading British “public intellectuals.” A friend of the rich and famous, including George Soros, he abandoned long ago the classical liberal beliefs he held in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By no means, though, has he turned into a conventional leftist. He realizes that a powerful state is dangerous and warns against utopian projects that purport to make the world a better place by bringing people under control. This realization has not led him to embrace the free market, as he did in his youth. Why not? This is the topic I’d like to
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