Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World (Chantal Delsol)
It is easy today to see that Western civilization has hit the skids. Twenty years ago, when the French political philosopher Chantal Delsol published Icarus Fallen (the English translation of a work first published in French in 1996), it was not so clear. The signs were all there, and the truth that the Enlightenment scheme had failed was not obscure. But the obvious conclusion, that we should terminate the experiment, was far from mainstream. What is good about this book is that its analysis is incisive and insightful, and thus its prophecies have proven largely accurate. What is bad about this book is that it too quickly rejects the wisdom of the past, and instead calls for that most fatal of projects, a new anthropology of man.