Books by Susan Neiman

A compelling look at the problem of evil in modern thought, from the Inquisition to global terrorismEvil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts-combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade-eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense. Featuring a substantial new afterword by Neiman that raises provocative questions about Hannah Arendt's take on Adolf Eichmann and the rationale behind the Hiroshima bombing, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and thought-provoking meditation on good and evil, life and death, and suffering and sense.

In Why Grow Up, the latest volume in the Philosophy in Transit series, world-renowned philosopher Susan Neiman looks at growing up as an ideal with urgent relevance todayBecoming an adult today can seem a grim prospect. As you grow up, you are told to renounce most of the hopes and dreams of your youth, and resign yourself to a life that will be a pale dilution of the adventurous, important and enjoyable life you once expected. But who wants to do any of that? No wonder we live in a culture of rampant immaturity, argues internationally-renowned philosopher Susan Neiman, when maturity looks so boring.In Why Grow Up, Neiman explores the forces that are arrayed against maturity, and shows how philosophy can help us want to grow up. Travel, both literally and as a metaphor, has been seen as a crucial step to coming of age by thinkers as diverse as Kant, Rousseau, Hume and Simone de Beauvoir. Neiman discusses childhood, adolescence, sex, and culture, and asks how the idea of travel can help us build a model of maturity that makes growing up a good option and leaves space in our culture for grown-ups. Refuting the widespread belief that the best time of your life is the decade between sixteen and twenty-six, she argues that being grown-up is itself an ideal: one that is rarely achieved in its entirety, but all the more worth striving for.Susan Neiman is an American moral philosopher who has taught at Yale and Tel Aviv University. She currently lives in Germany, where she is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam.

In Moral Clarity, Susan Neiman shows how the philosophical resources of the eighteenth-century Englightenment can help us to construct a politics that does not repeat the mistakes of Marxism or succumb to the temptation of a cynicism that masquerade as realism.