The Unconscious Civilization
- Publisher
- House of Anansi Press Inc
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2005
- Category
- Political, General, Democracy
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780887847318
- Publish Date
- Aug 2005
- List Price
- $19.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780887848964
- Publish Date
- Nov 1995
- List Price
- $16.95
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Description
Governor General's Award Winner
Tenth Anniverary Edition, with a new preface
Our society, John Ralston Saul argues in his 1995 CBC Massey Lectures, is only superficially based on the individual and democracy. Increasingly it is conformist and corporatist, a society in which legitimacy lies with specialist or interest groups and decisions are made through constant negotiations between these groups.
The paradox of our situation is that knowledge has not made us conscious. Instead, we have sought refuge in a world of illusion where language is cut off from reality. Reconnecting language to reality, clarifying what we mean by individualism and democracy, making these realities central to the citizen's life, identifying ideologies in order to control them, these are among the first elements of equilibrium which Saul proposes in these lectures.
About the author
John Ralston Saul is one of Canada’s leading social and political commentators. He is the author of numerous books on philosophy and contemporary politics, including Voltaire’s Bastards, Reflections Of A Siamese Twin, and most recently The Collapse of Globalism. Saul was the Massey lecturer in 1995, and won the 1996 Governor General’s Award for nonfiction for The Unconscious Civilization, based on those lectures. He is the former president of PEN Canada and the creator of the acclaimed LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture series. A regular speaker and panelist across Canada and internationally, John Ralston Saul currently lives in Toronto.
Awards
- Winner, Governor General's Award: Nonfiction
- Winner, Gordon Montador Award
Other titles by
The Comeback
How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence
Comeback, The
Doubters Companion
A Dictionary Of Aggressive Common Sense
Voltaire's Bastards
The Dictatorship Of Reason In The West
The Four Walls of My Freedom
Lessons I've Learned from a Life of Caregiving
Dark Diversions
A Traveler's Tale
Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin
Inuit Modern
Masterworks from the Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection
Extraordinary Canadians Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baa
A Penguin Lives Biography
The Collapse of Globalism Revised Edition
And The Reinvention Of The World