The Unconscious Civilization

John Ralston Saul

House of Anansi Press, 2005 - Civilization, Modern - 205 pages

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.

What people are saying

Review: The Unconscious Civilization

User Review  - Sabrina Ali - Goodreads

The author makes no sense. He will propose a premise, but the following sentences tend not to address that specific premise and give no rationale for the conclusion he draws. I agreed with many of his ...

Review: The Unconscious Civilization

User Review  - Gordon Hilgers - Goodreads

For those of us who are at odds with the free market mumbo jumbo machine and the endless references to Frederick Hayek and Ludwig von Mises as the godheads of the so-called market, John Ralston Saul ...

About the author

John Ralston Saul was elected President of International PEN in October 2009. He is author of a number of national bestsellers, including Voltaire's Bastards, The Doubter's Companionand The Unconscious Civilization, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues. He lives in Toronto.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Unconscious Civilization; CBC Massey lecture series
• Author: John Ralston Saul
• Edition: 2
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2005
• ISBN: 0887847315, 9780887847318
• Length: 205 pages