Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists - Revised Edition

Front Cover
Princeton University Press, Sep 6, 2009 - Philosophy - 470 pages

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.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Part One Ideal and Real
27
Part Two Enlightenment Values
119
Part Three Good and Evil
297
End Matter
438
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2009)

Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum. She is the author of "Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin", "The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant", and "Evil in Modern Thought" (Princeton).

Bibliographic information