Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists

Description

Distinguished scholar, Susan Neiman, argues for a commitment to a more just world that is rationally grounded, implacable and insatiable. 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. Through her commitment to the claims of reason and the facts of the world, her shrewd and generous readings of the Western canon, and above all through her conviction that politics is a moral endeavour, Neiman issues an irresistible invitation to make the world more just.

Susan Neiman is an American philosopher who taught at Yale University and Tel Aviv University, and is currently the director of the Einstein Forum. She is the author of three previous books, most recently Evil in Modern Thought. Neiman lives with her three children in Berlin.

A powerful wake-up call for the progressive left to have some faith in its Enligtenment project * Observer * Forget the Man Booker long list. Susan Neiman's superb new book should be at the top of beach reads this summer. For what Neiman beautifully chronicles is how in all sorts of policy areas the left has let slip its Enlightenment bearings and is no longer able to act on moral impulses.... Now is the time to turn to Neiman and re-inject some morality into progressive politics - for the good of everyone -- Tristram Hunt * Guardian * In Moral Clarity Susan Neilman criticises the philosophical ideas that dominate contemporary culture and politics on a grand scale... By the end of the 20th century, scepticism about reason and agnosticism about morality pervaded political life and popular culture. Neiman skewers this well-worn genealogy with splendid directness -- Onora O'Neill * Financial Times * Neiman asks people to reject the false choice between Utopia and degeneracy. Moral progress, she writes, is neither guaranteed nor hopeless. Instead, it is up to us * Economist * Neiman's particular skill lies in expressing sensitivity, intelligence and moral seriousness without any hint of oversimplification, dogmatism or misplaced piety. She clearly and unflinchingly sees life as it is, but also sees how it might be, and could be, if we recaptured some of the hopes and ideas that currently escape us * New York Times *