The suicide of reason : radical Islam's threat to the enlightenment / by Lee Harris

Includes index.

Fanaticism and the myth of modernity -- The denial of fanaticism -- Fanaticism and resentment -- The end of history? -- Clash or crash? -- The fanaticism of reason -- De-mystifying reason -- Thomas Hobbes and the politics of reason -- Condorcet's tenth stage -- Reason and autonomy -- Liberal exceptionalism -- The logic of fanaticism -- The legacy and future of jihad -- Can carpe diem societies survive? -- Our new world disorder.

"The Suicide of Reason shows how modern liberal societies, whose political theories are born of the Enlightenment, are unfamiliar with the nature of mass fanaticism. The West, so accustomed to thinking of history as an inevitable progress toward enlightenment, can only think of fanaticism as a social pathology, a failure to modernize, rather than as what it is: a variety of social order that is not only fully viable in the modern world but that possesses weapons to which the West is uniquely vulnerable. A governing philosophy based on reason, tolerance, consensus and deliberation cannot defend itself against a strategy of ruthless violence without being radically transformed - or worse, destroyed." "Extraordinarily original and thought-provoking, The Suicide of Reason 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."--BOOK JACKET.