An uncertain fate awaits the most bracing and contrarian writers: Will the insights they offer still come across as stingingly original if the disillusion they so often recommend becomes commonplace?

I was thinking about this while reading John Gray’s peculiar new book, “Feline Philosophy,” the latest in a provocative oeuvre that has spanned four decades and covered subjects including Al Qaeda, global capitalism and John Stuart Mill.

Gray, a British philosopher, has long been one of the sharpest critics of the neoliberal consensus that emerged after the end of the Cold War. (He happens to share a name with an American self-help author, leading to some unintentional comedy whenever someone has to explain that the writer of books like “Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia” isn’t also responsible for the best seller “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.”)

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