Susan Neiman

As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.

Race and the Memory of Evil

Learning from the Germans

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 today Becoming 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.

Philosophy in Transit

Why Grow Up?

A compelling look at the problem of evil in modern thought, from the Inquisition to global terrorism Evil 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.

An Alternative History of Philosophy

Evil in Modern Thought

a guide for grown-up idealists

Moral clarity

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. The woke may do some good in the short term but without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise. One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again.

Left Is Not Woke

Alternatif Bir Felsefe Tarihi

Modern Dusuncede Kotuluk

Wie Gesellschaften mit dem Bösen in ihrer Geschichte umgehen können

Von den Deutschen lernen

eine andere Geschichte der Philosophie

Das Böse denken

Perché devo diventare grande, ricevere un’educazione, obbedire alle regole che la società mi impone? Sono domande che ci facciamo tutti, da bambini o da adolescenti, e che poi tendiamo a dimenticare, come se la crescita fosse un dato di fatto e non un delicatissimo processo che coinvolge ogni aspetto della vita, materiale o psicologico che sia, nel lungo cammino verso l’ambita e al contempo temuta “maturità”. Chiamando a raccolta le opere e le esperienze di pensatori antichi e moderni, da Platone a Hannah Arendt, da William Shakespeare a Jean-Jacques Rousseau, la filosofa e scrittrice Susan Neiman ribalta l’idea diffusissima per cui crescere sarebbe soltanto un percorso di inevitabile declino. Le esperienze fondamentali della crescita, come l’ingresso nel mondo del lavoro, i viaggi e l’incontro con culture diverse, sono invece una grande conquista personale, ancora più importante e dirompente perché ci permette di affermare noi stessi e liberarci da una condizione di minorità. «Noi eravamo fatti per essere uomini; le leggi e la società ci hanno rituffati nell’infanzia.» Così scriveva Jean-Jacques Rousseau duecentocinquanta anni fa, ma il suo insegnamento è più che mai attuale, in un’epoca come la nostra che mitizza l’infanzia. Ma allora, perché diventare grandi? Perché è nell’età adulta che impariamo a scegliere cosa fare delle nostre vite, a rendere reali le nostre aspirazioni, a partecipare alla società in modo più profondo e responsabile di quanto non vorrebbero, spesso, coloro che esercitano il potere. Chi sceglie di non crescere, di non pensare con la propria testa, non è un cittadino ma un suddito. Un consumatore famelico di gadget tecnologici confezionati come giocattoli. Un Peter Pan che preferisce delegare ad altri le proprie decisioni pur di non aprire gli occhi sulla realtà.

Perché diventare grandi?

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 today. Becoming 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.

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise. One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again.

Michael Wildt

Der neue Historikerstreit über die Wurzeln des Holocaust und die Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert Erneut steht die Frage im Raum: War der Holocaust ein singuläres Ereignis, und wie unterscheidet er sich von anderen Völkermorden? Heute geht es nicht mehr um den Vergleich mit den stalinschen Gräueln wie noch beim ersten Historikerstreit 1986/87. Das drängende Problem der Gegenwart ist: Wie kann eine Gedenkkultur aussehen, die auch die lange verdrängten deutschen Kolonialverbrechen einbezieht? Mit Beiträgen von Emily Dische-Becker, Omer Bartov, Yehuda Bauer, Sebastian Conrad, Mischa Gabowitsch, Mario Keßler, Sami Khatib, Volkhard Knigge, Per Leo, Eva Menasse, A. Dirk Moses, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Ingo Schulze, Fabian Wolff und Benjamin Zachariah.

Gewalt und Holocaust – die Debatte | Mit Beiträgen von Omer Bartov, Ingo Schulze, Per Leo, Eva Menasse, A. Dirk Moses u.a.

Historiker streiten

BERLIN--East and West, day and night--in the 80s before the Wall fell. Through the eyes of a U.S. philosophy student. And Jewish, which makes for moments awkward, poignant, crass, funny, and always lurking. A city was divided, America the occupier, and the cigarettes not named Salem because it sounds too Jewish. The debut memoirs from the author of Moral Clarity, a N.Y. Times "2008 Notable Book."

Jewish Notes from Berlin

Slow Fire

Becoming an adult today can seem a grim prospect. As you grow up, you are told to renounce most of the dreams of your youth and resign yourself to an existence that is a pale dilution of the adventurous, important and enjoyable life you once expected. But who wants to do that? No wonder we live in a culture of rampant immaturity, argues renowned philosopher Susan Neiman. In Why Grow Up, the fourth in a series of short books of original thought, Neiman shows how philosophy can help us want to grow up. Travel, both literally and metaphorically, has been seen as a crucial step to coming of age by thinkers as diverse as Kant, Rousseau and Simone de Beauvoir. Neiman asks how this idea can help us build a new model of maturity. Refuting the widespread belief that the best time of your life is between sixteen and twenty-six, she argues that being grown-up is an ideal worth striving for.

Philosophy in Transit Why Grow Up?

Un'analisi che obbliga più volte il lettore ad alzare lo sguardo dalla pagina e a riflettere. "Panorama" Da Leibniz a Hegel, da Marx a Hume, da Schopenhauer a Nietzsche, fino ad arrivare a Rawls, Freud e Camus: Susan Neiman scandaglia le grandi costruzioni filosofiche che hanno cercato di misurare con il metro umano l'immensità del Male. "Avvenire" Il male è stato oggetto di un libro dopo l'altro, ma questo è un libro diverso da ogni altro. "The Times Literary Supplement" Susan Neiman mostra come il male non sia solo una violazione etica, esso sradica e sfida le nostre interpretazioni del mondo. "The New York Times" Susan Neiman segue l'argomento come un segugio, e, anzi, il suo libro è una sorta di thriller: che cosa ci minaccia? Riusciremo a comprendere cos'è il male? E come possiamo fuggirlo? Il percorso conduce da un Dio assente a una natura indifferente, fino a giungere all'uomo stesso. "Harper's Magazine"

Storia filosofica del male

In cielo come in terra

For years, moral language has been the province of the Right, as the Left has consoled itself with rudderless pragmatism. In this profound and powerful book, Susan Neiman reclaims the vocabulary of morality--good and evil, heroism and nobility--as a lingua franca for the twenty-first century. In constructing a framework for taking responsible action on today's urgent questions, Neiman reaches back to the eighteenth century, retrieving a series of values--happiness, reason, reverence, and hope--held high by Enlightenment thinkers. In this thoroughly updated edition, Neiman reflects on how the moral language of the 2008 presidential campaign has opened up new political and cultural possibilities in America and beyond. --

A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists - Revised Edition

Moral Clarity

Unsere Kultur verklärt die Zeit der Jugend mehr, als Peter Pan zu träumen gewagt hätte. Und alles, was danach kommt, erscheint als unaufhaltsamer Niedergang. Doch schon Kant wusste, dass Unmündigkeit einfacher ist – für den Einzelnen, vor allem aber für staatliche Obrigkeiten, denen infantilisierte Konsumenten lieber sind als selbstdenkende Bürger. Susan Neiman wendet sich gegen diese resignative Sicht auf das Erwachsensein. Sie liest die Philosophen neu und plädiert mit Rousseau und Kant: Nehmen wir uns die Freiheit, etwas vom Leben zu verlangen! Denn Reife bedeutet nicht das Ende aller Träume, sondern ein subversives Ideal: das Leben in seiner Widersprüchlichkeit zu ergreifen und glücken zu lassen.

Eine philosophische Ermutigung

Warum erwachsen werden?

Wendy Doniger

Peter Galison

This collection demonstrates the range of approaches that some of the leading scholars of our day take to basic questions at the intersection of the natural and human worlds. The essays focus on three interlocking categories: Reason stakes a bigger territory than the enclosed yard of universal rules. Nature expands over a far larger region than an eternal category of the natural. And history refuses to be confined to claims of an unencumbered truth of how things happened.

Susan Neiman

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