Realism revisited

I was reading a newspaper the other day, something I rarely do, and came across an article written by John Gray in which he puts forward his case for a new embrace of realism. Dr. Gray is a philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics. I agree with much of what he says, but most of what I agree with is trivial, at least in my eyes. There is no hope of engaging the problems in todays world through any kind of dogmatic, idealistic let alone ideological thinking. In this sense Gray is fighting a noble battle against anti-rationalist trends (often inspired by religion) alongside staunch defenders of our scientific tradition like Richard Dawkins. We certainly need more of such voices in a chaotic world with daunting problems of complexity that is not at all helped by a resurgence, or should we say regression, of non-rationalist dogmatic religious system.

I am no great apologist for rationality. We as human are certainly only very partially rational. But our ability to reflect and rationalize is certainly one of the great mechanisms for learning to manage our vicious unconscious drives and at times boundless violence towards each other.
I agree with Gray, as I do with Dawkins, that it is important to create alternatives to the voices of impassioned anti-rationalism, but I certainly disagree with some of Gray's other suggestions.

The analysis is blatantly based on mainstream conceptions of 'reality', and therefore the espoused 'realism' is presuposed. This is still business as usual. Philosophy is the art of both exposing and creating unexamined presupositions. In this article Gray describes the neo-conservatives as pursuing an agenda of 'global democratic revolution'. I'm certain such terms occur in the writings of Rumsfeld et alii, but these neo-cons are the ones who have systematically sabotaged their own American democracy, with illigitemate wars (Nicaragua), electoral fraud (2004), and the insanity of an ever growing prison industrial complex. Attricuting the term 'democratic' to the American system of government is commiting a semantic crime.
In the end Gray is a rationalist in the old school tradition. An enlightenment man who believes that universal concepts, inspired by humanism and a scientific worldview, can save the day. And, much as the naive philosopher in me might wish otherwise, he is wrong there.
To illustrate my point I will put my finger on exactly where I think he turns concepts upside down. Gray argues that we will always have conflicts in this world (something I agree with), and need not dabble in utopianism. His argument is that the conflicts are about differing needs, and that universal values can help us mitigate these conflicts. This is incorrect. The conflicts in the world are all about values, these conflicts exist because of the fact that there are no 'universal' values. You can make a much stronger arguments that it is the needs that are Universal, if only for the fact that we share biological needs throughout our own species and with other animals, and we would be wise not to underestimate the degree to which we are biological creatures. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a special kind of animal, but an animal still. Culture and technology are fascinating phenomena, but no reason to distinguish fundamentally between us and all other creatures in nature. All traditionally constructed formal rigid distinctions between man and animal, juxtaposing man against nature, are easily dismantled or 'deconstructed'. Homo Sapiens? Most of our drives stem from our limbic system, not our cerebral cortex. Homo Habilis? Many animals use tools, and the sonar technology dolphins have built into their sinuses or the electrical sensitivity of shark senses are tools of extraordinairy and superior quality. Home Ludens? Play is everywhere in nature. We are less unique than we think, and we are still too arrogant.