Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists
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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. The New York Times - Simon Blackburn It is very hard to write well about ethics, and especially so in a way that engages and interests that elusive phantom of writers' imaginations, the general reader. But Susan Neiman's previous book on ethics, Evil in Modern Thought, was widely and favorably reviewed, and the present work is a worthy successor. 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 ideals that currently escape us. In other words, like its predecessor, Moral Clarity is a sustained defense of a particular set of values, and of a moral vocabulary that enables us to express them. Neiman sees these values as neglected or threatened all along the political spectrum. They received their strongest defenses in the moral thought of the Enlightenment, in David Hume and Adam Smith, but more particularly in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. So the book is not only a moral polemic, but a powerful argument in support of the resources that these Enlightenment figures left us.
Pt. 1 Ideal and Real1 American Dreams 252 Ideals and Ideology 483 Facing Gallows 79Pt. 2 Enlightenment Values4 Myths or Monsters 1075 Heaven and Earth 1246 Happiness 1507 Reason 1778 Reverence 2159 Hope 242Pt. 3 Good and Evil10 The Odyssey: An Excursion 28911 What about Evil? 32512 Enlightenment Heroes 37213 Moral Clarity 415Acknowledgments 431Bibliographical Notes 433Bibliography 441Permissions Acknowledgments 451Index 453
