Susan Neiman

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Susan Neiman (2015)

Susan Neiman (born March 27, 1955 in Atlanta , Georgia ) is an American philosopher and has been director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam since 2000 .

Neiman's philosophical thinking essentially revolves around the question of how people deal with the fact that the reality of life they experience is in many ways not what it should be according to the hopes and expectations, the ideas of justice and ideals of reason. Susan Neiman was already politically active as a teenager, at the time against the actions of the USA in the Vietnam War , in the more recent past against the Iraq war of the Bush administration and as an election campaign assistant for Barack Obama. Her philosophically based demand for moral clarity aims to make conventional moral concepts fruitful again for left-liberal thinking and acting, i.e. not to leave them to conservative appropriation and interpretative sovereignty.

Career

Neiman grew up in a Jewish family in Atlanta. At the age of 14 she left school and lived and worked in local communities. She was involved in the movement against the Vietnam War, felt drawn to philosophy after reading Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre , graduated from school while working and studied philosophy at Harvard University , where she was assistant to John Rawls and received his doctorate with him and Stanley Cavell in 1986. On the basis of a scholarship, a longer stay in Germany at the Free University of Berlin followed , which ended before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German reunification process .

From 1989 to 1996 Neiman was a professor at Yale University , then for five years at Tel Aviv University . Her main areas of work are moral philosophy , political philosophy and the history of philosophy . She is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences . In 2000 she became director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam .

After the early death of her first husband, Susan Neiman was married to the Viennese psychoanalyst Felix de Mendelssohn , who died in October 2016 . She has three grown children from her first marriage and currently lives in Berlin-Neukölln .

Philosophical reflections and deductions

Thinking in her main philosophical work, Das Böse. Another history of philosophy determined Neiman, the two main strands of its investigation as follows: ". The historical investigation forms an axis conceptual reflection another" The selected by her thinkers are not dealt with in strict chronological order, but assigned to different orientations: one hand, such who are looking for an order behind the “so disturbing events”, on the other hand those who want “only reality” to speak.

Understanding past thinking can, according to Neiman, also help us find our way around today. In this way, the role of luck and chance in life emerges clearly. “We wonder,” continues Neiman in preparation for her path of reflection, “whether an explanation of things does not come too close to justifying it, and where we should stop. We ask ourselves how we can continue to do justice ourselves when the world as a whole is so unjust. We ask ourselves what is the point of explaining the world to us theoretically, where we cannot give any meaning to suffering and terror. "

Evil - from God's judgment to many "banal"

Two prominent historical events form the fixed points, which are almost 200 years apart in modern history, around which and between which Neiman's path of reflection on evil is located: on the one hand, the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 as a turning point of enlightenment thought and the "birthplace of modernity"; on the other hand, the Holocaust , for which Auschwitz specifically stands, as the "collapse of modernity". “Lisbon like Auschwitz,” writes Neiman, “took place in an atmosphere of the greatest intellectual ferment. In both cases, the catastrophe threw a bundle of assumptions overboard that were already on the brink. But in both cases the events drew the line between what could be thought and what could not be thought. "

The symbol of the punishing God in the monotheistic premodern was the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah , in which a prosperous city is turned into a heap of rubble because of the vicious and sinful activity of its inhabitants with fire and brimstone. Enlightenment thinking had moved away from such an image of God. The biblical God now seemed too cruel, too vain and too petty; a religion of righteousness could not go hand in hand with bloodshed and cruelty. Instead, Enlightenment philosophers favored a deism that found proof of God in the order and usefulness of nature itself, encouraged primarily by Newton's discoveries. "Science," said Neiman, "was not considered a rival, but a servant of faith [...] Every advance in science was further evidence of the order of the world."

The widespread horror news of the devastating earthquake in Lisbon made it increasingly clear that deist notions of a benevolent providence in natural events were untenable. For Neiman, the caesura associated with Lisbon consists in the following delimitation of nature and morality in relation to evil: "Since Lisbon, natural evil no longer has a suitable relationship to moral evil, and consequently it no longer makes any sense." deal only with man-made evil.

Neiman reflects on a change of concept of comparable scope, like the one following the Lisbon earthquake, in relation to Auschwitz: “Can the change be summed up by the thesis that humanity in Lisbon believes in the world and in Auschwitz belief in it has lost himself? "Auschwitz turns our concepts so horribly upside down" because it shows a possibility of human nature that one would rather not have wanted to discover. Neiman agrees with Hannah Arendt's view of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem that Eichmann was guilty and deserved the death penalty, even though, according to his own credible testimony, he acted without malicious intent. “Arendt's account provides the decisive explanation for why Auschwitz became a symbol of contemporary evil, because it makes it clear that crimes so monstrous that the earth itself cries out for retaliation are committed today by people whose motives are simple are just banal. [...] Criminals like Eichmann do not show any of the subjective characteristics with which we identify culprits, and yet their crimes were objectively so horrific that subjective factors are irrelevant. "

Neiman calls the lack of a general interpretation or correlation of intention and evil disturbing: “The problem of evil began with the fact that God's intentions should be seen through. Now it seems as if we cannot even make sense of our own intentions. "Arendt's point of view, according to which evil has no depth and no demonia, but can devastate the whole world," precisely because it grows like a mushroom on the surface " , makes evil understandable for Neiman: "Evil, Arendt was convinced, can only be overcome if we realize that it overwhelms us in tiny steps." What threatens us today is trivial and insidious. But if crimes as monstrous as the Holocaust could have such minor causes, "we may perhaps hope to overcome them."

Susan Neiman considers it inadmissible to divide forms of evil into greater and lesser ones; It's not about comparing, but about differentiating. Familiar forms of evil could help to sharpen the eye for new and different manifestations. Anyone who wants to fight evil must be able to recognize it “in any form”. "A creeping ecological catastrophe is not intended by any of the industrialized countries that fail to regulate the consumption that is certain to lead to it - our responsibility to avert such a catastrophe is by no means less."

Theodicy and human condition

To relate human suffering to the evil and the evils of the world to a divine order and providence, "the need to get by in the world without despairing", is the basis for Neiman's urge to theodicy . She sees the biblical starting point for this in the Book of Job .

As Neiman explains, modern philosophy has taken up the problem of evil as an elementary subject and worked on it from a changing perspective. Particularly important impulses came from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant ; both are at the center of Neiman's socio-philosophical reflections across all works . Rousseau admittedly cling to the belief in providence because the misery in another world cannot be endured without reward and punishment, but in his case the fall of man and possible redemption would become rational turning points in human history. “Rousseau puts history in place of theology, and in place of grace, pedagogical psychology. In doing so, he takes responsibility for evil from God and clearly shifts it to us. ”He perceives human nature as historically changeable and influenced by human decisions. "By exploring evil as a historical phenomenon," Neiman concludes, "it becomes part of our efforts to make the world more theoretically understandable and practically changeable."

For Susan Neiman, Rousseau's design for a better, decrepit world can be seen mainly in his work Émile or on education . The opening sentence already contains the entire structure of the author's thoughts: “Everything that comes out of the hands of the Creator is good; everything degenerates in the hands of humans. ”Therefore, as far as this is safe for him, Émile should grow up according to his natural urges and learn from his own experiences. The main task of his educator remains to protect him from serious missteps. "A child," says Neiman, "who grew up according to the intentions of nature, would not be susceptible to the evils of civilization and would be up to the task of creating a better one." For Kant, the relationships that Rousseau between aspects of raising children are and created political lifeworlds, was no less illuminating than Newton's insights into natural laws, so that he saw in him the "Newton of the spirit".

Neiman describes the decisive discovery of Kant as "that we are necessarily ignorant", which he came to in the course of his later studies. While earlier philosophy had seen the limitation of human knowledge as a problem, for Kant it was simply a fact . This also applies to behavioral morality: “ To act freely means to act without extensive knowledge or absolute power, that is, without omniscience and omnipotence. Not knowing whether our good intentions are rewarded is the condition for having them. ”On the other hand, the legitimate desire to overcome human limitations determines the formulation of Kant's categorical imperative :“ Act as if the maxim of your action were to be taken can become a general law of nature through your will. "With this, a godlike perspective was adopted:" What decisions would we make if we had the chance to create the best of all possible worlds? "

According to Neiman, Kant is the only great philosopher who "insisted on the complete difference between reason and reality - and allows both the same amount of space." Two schools of thought in Kant's successor - Neiman calls them the analytical and the continental - are more different Concept of whether or not human striving for transcendence is meaningless. “Is our drive to transcend experience a piece of obsolete psychology or is it part of the human condition ?” Asks Neiman and states: “Kant was convinced of the second because he was completely divided. The desire to exceed our limits is just as essential for humans as the knowledge of its impossibility. "

Enlightenment and common sense

According to Neiman , thinkers such as Kant, Hegel and Marx were fully aware of the continued effect of theological concepts in their philosophizing . Certain questions were simply formulated and answered differently from different ages. "The idea of ​​progress and the idea of ​​providence are just different ways of presenting versions of the same problem." This does not happen by chance, but rather says something about human nature itself.

There were important representatives of Enlightenment thinking not only on the part of those who strived for a better one from a world experienced as ominous, but also among those who drew the conclusion from a relentless assessment of empirical facts that there was nothing to be changed, but that there was It is important to settle in the reality that is there, as good or with pleasure as possible. Neiman includes Pierre Bayle with his Dictionnaire historique et critique , Voltaire with his Candide , David Hume with the dialogues on natural religion and the Marquis de Sade with his proverbial excesses, as well as Arthur Schopenhauer , who came to the conclusion that the world in their desolate constitution is even the last judgment .

For Neiman, two influential thinkers at the transition from the 19th to the 20th century are on neither of the sides she refers to: Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud . Nietzsche, according to Neiman, tries to overcome theodicy by outbidding. “Kant allowed us to imagine that we were creating laws of nature. Nietzsche wants us to be the creators of the whole world, not just what is good about it; the past as well as the future. ”In contrast, for Freud, our persistent attempts to find meaning in misery are fed by childhood fantasies and experiences of loss. “Only when the belief in providence as a function of the drive economy was seen through, we were able to break away from it. Because nothing brings someone to vacate a position as surely as making him feel ashamed of it. "For people influenced by Freud, according to Neiman, reason and nature are so opposed to one another that the expectation of somehow bringing them together would result in a category error. “The old Freud was at the same time the keenest naturalist and the author of a pessimistic anthropology. No wonder, then, that the systematic division of evil melts away with him. The various kinds of evil become but examples of the innumerable ways in which life overwhelms us. "

According to Neiman, what is characteristic of Kant is that he did not avoid "the irrevocable rift in the world". “The gap between the way things are and the way they should be is too great to be bridged with good intentions. [...] Ideas are like horizons - goals that you approach, but which you never really achieve. Human dignity demands to love ideals for their own sake, but nothing guarantees that love will be rewarded. ”So it is also Kant's concept of reason that Neiman considers suitable to mediate in the tension between what is and what should be, between reality and what is desirable . This concept of reason includes Kant's epistemological skepticism and thus the limitation of human access to reality.

According to Neiman, Voltaire attested that reason had a double weakness: as an instrument of truth, it paid too little attention to empirical evidence ; As an instrument of action, it generally lacks a motivating effect and consequently a steering function. For Kant, however, it remains the drive through which reality can be changed for the better. Although it is only a requirement of reason and is hardly based on experience to reconcile what is desirable with reality, for Neiman, on the other hand, it is true that experience can be thought as little without reason as without ideas about causes and effects. "The belief that reason is in the world is the condition of the possibility to continue in it."

Reason in the sense of Kant sets purposes and creates meaning. For striving for knowledge according to the principle of sufficient reason - according to which the reason needs to be sought and found for everything that happens, why it happens this way and not otherwise - there is, according to Neiman, “no natural point of rest”. Meaning is something that people have to achieve. “A life that was meaningful from the start would not have been life.” The meaningful striving of human reason to feel at home in the world goes hand in hand with the refusal to leave the world to itself. "As long as we believe with good reasons," Neiman John Rawls quotes , "that a just political and social order is possible, we can hope for its realization and contribute to it."

Moral Policy Guidelines

Neiman believes that anyone who wants to remedy social grievances “is left empty-handed without a language of morality.” She considers it wrong to forego terms such as morality, honor, personal responsibility or heroism and leave them to political opponents for often abusive purposes . It should not be allowed that those who have perverted the language of morality - namely the tea party movement in the USA - determine the rules of the game.

For Susan Neiman, enlightenment in the sense of Kant is not a fixed state of mind, but a process of continuous self-examination connected with vigilance, "which deals directly with the way in which the human need for truth and freedom has remained unsatisfied in Western culture." Enlightened values ​​that are robust enough to stand up to fundamentalism are now the time.

Confession and Articulation

It is no coincidence that the avoidance behavior she observed that left-wing liberals displayed in relation to high-profile moral concepts, explains Neiman. The crimes against humanity committed under Soviet rule had a disturbing effect, since they were committed in the name of principles “that are dear to most of us. […] The bravest citizens were killed in the Stalinist terror, and a joyless, bitter culture, marked by cynicism and envy, survived in the East. If that came out of the fight for the ideals of freedom and justice, wouldn't it be better to put your hands on your lap? "

Meanwhile, due to uncertainty, there is a reluctance to make a moral judgment on historical and political events. “The pact of non-interference, which keeps philosophers from talking about history and historians from talking about morality, keeps few people with the competence in the fray - unless it is about issues that are so specific are that only other specialists are interested in it. ”It is true that there is no lack of philosophical investigations into moral concepts; In doing so, one often uses incomprehensible language that is detached from everyday matters.

Neiman considers a return to the language of good and bad to be necessary, for example with a view to the torture incidents of Abu Ghraib and its aftermath, in order to stop “further erosion of shame”. Because shame reveals one's own awareness of injustice in front of a community whose values ​​one respects. "Guilt is often mistaken for the deeper feeling, but shame leaves marks that are both public and private."

Humanitarian progress

When asked whether the means of enlightened reason in the sense of Kant's progress can be achieved, Neiman only partially affirms. Since we did not have the results of our actions and so many things could go wrong, it is quite possible that one day one will be gripped by deepest doubts: “None of the hopes has so far borne fruit; Reality is just as stubbornly blocking reason as before. Science may advance, but humanity seems to move in a circle of distraction and suffering. "

Neiman sees signs that it is worth fighting for an improvement in human living conditions, among other things, in the end of the intra-European wars and in the European Union with its facility for freedom of movement within the internal space and for community. "The institutions that guarantee this may be flawed and cumbersome, but they are democratic and self-governing."

Susan Neiman also derives signs of legitimate hope for progress from her own commitment: “When we sang › We shall overcome ‹, we imagined overcoming the current reality and creating a world that did not yet exist: a world in the black could attend the same schools, swim in the same lakes and live in the same neighborhoods as the whites. It was not long ago that the Red Cross separated blood donations from whites and blacks during World War II and black war returnees were lynched with impunity. ”Similar significant progress had also been made with regard to women's equality :“ That sexism is still in Asserting many forms - and in some parts of the world they can be fatal - does not detract from the importance of the ways in which women's lives have changed. They are not nearly perfect, but they are all the more important because they touch the biggest niche: how we shape our private life. "

Neiman argues that we should be aware of these astonishing changes, even if such advances always run the risk of being temporary. “I argue for hopes that are not irrational, because their signs are concrete - as concrete as the indications of climate change . Both are real, and we cannot be sure whether humanity is advancing to better condition or running to ruin. What to do with is a matter of decision, but that decision doesn't have to be arbitrary. Anyone who believes that progress is possible can do something about climate change. If you don't believe it, all you can do is change the TV program. "

Individual heroism

Humanitarian progress in social life comes from actors who initiate and drive it forward, also from thought leaders and role models who offer orientation. For Neiman, anyone who opposes unlawful acts in an environment characterized by collective or authoritarian malice can also become a moral hero. In this regard, however, there were no psychological studies that could have been used to make predictions. “Some family structures, some types of upbringing are more conducive to resilience than others, but just as often a moral hero appears, even without having been able to enjoy them.” But the same applies to predictions of collective reactions: “You let decent people into indecent ones Circumstances are advisable and most will behave indecently. "

In almost every respect unpredictable and only clear with regard to the motives of the participants and the effect of their actions is a manifestation of heroism that Neiman emphasizes in the events of September 11, 2001 . "Nothing horrifies 9/11 as the fact that the passengers of the planes hitting the World Trade Center were not only wrenched from their lives to their deaths, but were part of the explosions that killed thousands of others." Some passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 were alerted by cell phone about the terrorist attacks by the planes in the towers of the World Trade Center and in the picture that their plane was hijacked and headed for Washington with an uncertain destination . By ultimately causing the machine to crash in the open field by attacking the cockpit, they prevented even worse, says Neiman. "They proved that people are free and can use their freedom to influence a world that is beyond their control."

In order to use examples of heroism based on moral reflections and guiding principles, Neiman has portrayed four personalities elsewhere who particularly impressed her in this regard. These are people who could illustrate how the values ​​of the Enlightenment prove themselves in action. The four portrayed are David Shulman, who works in the Israeli peace movement for a fair reconciliation of interests with the Palestinians , Sarah Chayes, who despite all adversities is unswervingly committed as an organizational and reconstruction aid in Afghanistan , and Daniel Ellsberg , who ultimately becomes a member of the government apparatus against the Vietnam War of the USA and made the publication of the Pentagon papers possible, as well as Bob Moses, whose sustained commitment against racism and discrimination was not exhausted in the American civil rights movement . All four of her chosen personalities, Neiman emphasizes, have also written books in which they trace their search for moral clarity and the reasons for their commitment.

Of human maturity and self-determination

A self-determined and fulfilling individual existence within the framework of human possibilities, as laid out in human rights , does not come about automatically, emphasizes Neiman, but can only be achieved and asserted by dealing with considerable resistance. In Kant's sense, growing up is linked to an individual process of enlightenment that enables them to come of age. The philosophical reflection that is helpful for this is at the core of Kant - “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? ”- held to be generally accessible. But it also takes courage to cope with a rift that runs through life: “Ideals of reason tell us how the world should be; experience tells us that it is seldom like that. Growing up requires facing the gap between the two without giving up either. "

Becoming mature against resistance

Where the structural problem of coming of age lies, according to Neiman, Kant has already clearly shown: Thinking for yourself is less convenient than letting others think for you. But the means by which one is kept underage today are “far more subtle and invasive.” Direct repression, as in Kant's time, sooner or later leads to the rebellion of the oppressed. The modern consumer society, on the other hand, creates a dependency through indirect repression with the many "toys" that it forces on people. It is true that neither cars nor smartphones are given out as toys, but are viewed as important tools in adult life. Ideas of a more just and humane world, on the other hand, would be dismissed as childish dreams - for Neiman a perfidious perversion and conceptual confusion. “Even the best governments may find it easier to govern underage and passive subjects rather than active citizens. One could speak of institutional laziness here. "

With the establishment of cyberspace , the individual possibilities of distraction seem almost limitless. Upgrades and new acquisitions alone already ensured dubious long-term employment: “If you add up all the hours that we have wasted with the cheerfully described upgrades - how do I set the new alarm clock? How do I grill with the new oven? How do I save the messages on the new smartphone or the pictures on the new camera? - Wouldn't that be enough hours to produce food for all the hungry children in the world or at least a cure for cancer? ”Asks Neiman. Following Kant, who spoke of the courage to use one's own understanding, for them growing up is more a question of courage than knowledge. Courage is necessary “to withstand the forces that will continue to work against the coming of age, because really mature adults don't let themselves be distracted for long with bread and games.” Growing up means recognizing the uncertainties that pervade our lives, combined with insight that we will inevitably keep searching for certainty.

All in all, says Neiman, one should be content with small advances and not disregard them: “It is impossible to educate fully responsible citizens in a society that undermines adulthood, and at the same time it is impossible without a large number of responsible adults to create a different society. ”After all, even an only partially successful emancipation will help the next generation get off to a better start.

Life as a rewarding way of getting around

For Neiman, what stands in the way of coming of age and living as an adult has to do with a widespread, but from their point of view unjustified fear of getting older, brought to the concept of The Who in My Generation in the recent past : "Hope I die before I get old". Neiman refers to recent studies by psychologists and economists who agree that in relation to age, regardless of country and one's own standard of living, happiness and satisfaction tend not to decrease but rather to increase. These studies confirmed the so-called U-curve, which describes a decline in mood to a low point in the middle years of life, in order to then indicate a steadily increased experience of happiness. Neither employment, income nor children played a role on average. "From the United States to Zimbabwe , the empirical evidence is the same."

A rising curve under the human dispositions shows with increasing age otherwise only the power of judgment, states Neiman. With Kant, she traces the intellectual expansion that forms the basis for this back to experience of empathy , to the individual examination of the diverse perspectives of fellow human beings, which add up in the course of life. "In many areas - philosophy, ideology, politics - the old person is capable of a synthetic view of how it is denied to the young," says Simone de Beauvoir in The Age .

Improved judgment, in turn, favors the ability to learn, work and travel in this way, writes Neiman, that one is better armed against the indirect repression of consumption and distraction offers. Not only time, but also space for experiences is helpful. Because if you travel properly, you will find access to the judgment of many people and thereby also improve your own.

Reception aspects

Across all works, Neiman's well-understandable, vivid language is appreciated beyond philosophical circles and a stylistic lightness in which analytical considerations are combined with occasional aphorisms . The problem of evil is nowhere explicitly dealt with, writes Neiman in summary of the philosophy of the 20th century: “What was once the starting point for most philosophical speculations about appearance and reality, reason and law, has become an embarrassing anachronistic appendix. We are writing the story that we want to continue. "

"Think evil"

In her study, Neiman presents a new, original reading of the history of philosophy with the problem of evil as an organizational principle, judges David Krause and considers the results to be interesting and informative. On the other hand, some of the exciting questions raised - such as those on the subject of free will - remained open. Krause misses a clear statement on this.

For Rolf Löchel, three theses form the pillars of Neiman's historical-philosophical draft “of rare originality”: 1. The problem of evil is better suited as an organizational principle for understanding the history of philosophy than any alternative. 2. It forms the link between ethics and metaphysics. 3. The distinction between natural and moral evil emerged historically and was developed in the course of the enlightenment debate about the 1755 Lisbon earthquake . According to Löchel, when translating into German it would have made sense to distinguish between natural evil and moral evil . Magnus Schlette attests to Christiana Goldmann an overall brilliant transmission. In the way that Neiman puts himself in the shoes of the greats of the history of philosophy, the book can be imagined "like a properly written record of a conversation to which Neiman invited some philosophers to a country house."

"Moral Clarity"

A deconstruction of morality, supposedly brought about by “the anti-imperialist turn” of the 1970s, through “Gender Studies” and “Identity Politics”, is what Alan Posener sees as a motivation for Susan Neiman's opposing reconstruction efforts. To the intellectual left, according to Posener, the universal values ​​appeared “as pure justifications for the white man for his dominance.” Under the influence of post-structuralism , the distinction between ideal and ideology is becoming blurred; Subversion becomes the only remaining value. Posener calls Neiman's treatment of the topic not only learned, but also enjoyable. He appreciates it as a considerable achievement that she succeeds in taking up episodes of the Old Testament , Homer's Odyssey , Plato's Banquet and the writings of Immanuel Kant in such a way "that it awakens the desire to rediscover these works for oneself."

Simon Vaut of the Progressive Center sees Susan Neiman advocating moral clarity in enemy territory. At the height of the Bush era, his advisor William J. Bennett published the book Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism in order to give American foreign policy a moral justification. “Moral clarity” was the recipe for success of the American right from Reagan to Bush. This strategy reached its climax after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 with Bush's infamous speech on the "axis of evil". As in Orwell's “Newspeak” , the facts were boldly inverted: “A phase of the moral decline in American politics, in which reasons for war were faked, civil rights curtailed and torture methods legalized, was dressed in a language of moral purity.” For New York Times was Susan Neiman's writing Moral Clarity in the original English version of 2008 one of the most important books of the year. The Guardian made it on the list of major non-fiction books the following year.

"Why grow up?"

Brand-fixated contemporaries who stand in line for hours for the latest smartphone, of course, have something childish about them, according to the review by Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann . Entrepreneurs and politicians did indeed seem to support such hedonism , because infantile consumers are easier to influence than responsible citizens. But attack Neiman, by taking action against such consumers, "rather the unleashed neoliberalism than the refusal to be an adult." The bottom line is that the book, despite some interesting thoughts, "the bottom line is not much new" and is also often instructive .

Meike Feßmann sees the historical part of the treatise as "a highly sympathetic ride through the 'Critique of Pure Reason' and the 'Critique of Judgment'". Neiman celebrates Rousseau's Emile as the only comprehensive philosophical-historical attempt to write a handbook for growing up. With regard to the positioning of her topic in the present, however, the author jumps somewhat unhappily between empiricism and morality, for example with the dubious claim that young adults present the age between the ages of 18 and 30 as the best time in life will - after that everything will only get worse. The increasing power of judgment in old age is a wonderful thing from Feßmann's point of view, but the objects to which this power of judgment relates have changed since the 18th century in a way that Neiman had far too little included in her study.

Anja Hirsch reads Neiman's book as a journey to selected philosophers, economists and sociologists. There is also a problem in this “hodgepodge” and the volatility of the argumentation: It is not always clear what the author is trying to get at. It is to be welcomed when a philosopher can formulate demanding material in an easily understandable manner and illustrate it with examples from the present. In many places, however, the text appears arbitrary and striking. Peter Praschl, on the other hand, sums up: “As Susan Neiman describes the Kantian growing up, a path that never ends, there is something subversive about it that almost makes you young again. You could try it once. "

Publications (selection)

Books

  • Slow Fire: Jewish Notes From Berlin , Schocken Books, New York 1992
  • The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant , Oxford University Press, New York 1994
  • Fortunately by Susan Neiman and Matthias Kroß, Oldenbourg Akademieverlag 2004, ISBN 3-05-004057-2
  • Thinking Evil: Another History of Philosophy , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-45753-5
  • Strangers see differently. On the situation of the Federal Republic , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-41735-5
  • Moral clarity. Guide for adult idealists , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86854-223-3
  • Why grow up? A philosophical encouragement , Hanser, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-446-24776-5
  • Learn from the Germans. How societies can deal with evil in their history (translated from English by Christiana Goldmann). Hanser, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-446-26598-1 .

Essays and articles

Interviews

Awards

  • International Spinoza Prize, The Netherlands, 2014
  • Honorary Doctorate, University of Sankt Gallen, 2014
  • Tanner Lecturer, University of Michigan, 2010

Web links

Commons : Susan Neiman  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ “Anyone who brazenly speaks of morality, honor, personal responsibility or heroes is classified as conservative, if not right-wing. Those who mumble around when asked about ideals or progress are more on the left today. [...] But the book doesn't just want to analyze; readers are also encouraged to have the courage to use terms they previously found embarrassing. Because without the language of morals we are not even able to describe the world - let alone change it. "(Neiman, Moralische Klarheit , 2010, p. 10.)
  2. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 19 f.
  3. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 21.
  4. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 392.
  5. ↑ Neiman: The Evil Thinking 2004, p. 374. "If the earthquake in Lisbon and the mass murder of Auschwitz are in the foreground, it is because that marks the beginning and the other marks the end of modernity." (Ibid., P. 18)
  6. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 352.
  7. ^ Neiman, Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 253.
  8. ↑ Neiman refers to Pope's burial motto for Newton: “Nature and her law, they were deep in the dark; God said: Leave Newton! And it started to sparkle. ”( Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said“ Let Newton be! ”And all was light. ) Quoted from: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 61.
  9. ↑ “What is commanded is a religion that is freed from all doctrinal content and, as a common denominator, is based only on such truths, which everyone from Königsberg to Constantinople understands who is ready to reflect. There is no need for revelation to believe in a benevolent, wise Creator and in a creation that reflects a natural and moral order. "(Neiman, Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 258)
  10. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 367.
  11. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 367.
  12. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 373.
  13. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 388.
  14. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 402.
  15. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 399.
  16. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 410.
  17. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 439 f. "The insight that each of us can become involved in evil is only the other side of the insight that each of us can also resist it." (Neiman, Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 375)
  18. ↑ Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 418. “What happened on September 11, 2001, was one kind of evil, what happened in Auschwitz, another. Obtaining clarity about the differences will not remove evil from the world, but it may help us to react less irrationally. "(Ibid., P. 34)
  19. ↑ Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 419. Bernd Ulrich represents a similar idea of ​​evil in the present : “This society produces extreme wealth; it creates massive side effects in the rest of the world; she consumes sixty kilos of meat per person per year (including vegetarians, vegans and babies) and sacrifices the homeland that we know; it leaves 40 billion plastic straws behind every year; it is increasing the density of cars more and more ; it leaves those who work hardest with the lowest wages; it consumes more and more space; it is wiping out more and more bird species. And so on. There is obviously an extremism of normality. The public should see it as their greatest task to lift this veil of normality, to put it simply: to enlighten. But we have only learned to expose power, but not evil: the normal. "(Bernd Ulrich: How radical is realistic? In: Die Zeit , June 14, 2018, p. 2 f.)
  20. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 425.
  21. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, pp. 78 and 81.
  22. ↑ Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 84. "History creates a space between necessity and chance, it makes actions understandable without determining them." (Ibid., P. 83)
  23. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 92.
  24. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 96 f. “Kant compared Rousseau to Newton because both would have revealed the fame and greatness of creation. If Newton had revealed the physical order in a universe which until then had been thought to be determined by patched-up epicycles, Rousseau laid out the moral order in a world which until then had been thought to be governed by sin and Sorrow. "(Neiman, Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 168)
  25. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 108.
  26. ↑ Neiman: The Evil Thinking 2004, p. 116. "A morally transparent world would destroy the possibility of morality." (Ibid.)
  27. ↑ Quoted from Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 128.
  28. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 181.
  29. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 133.
  30. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 460.
  31. ↑ "To be sincere as a thinker meant for her to see the world without make-up: experience as the ultimate." (Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 305)
  32. ↑ Neiman describes the work as “breathtakingly biting, often irrefutable and filled with the excitement that is the salt of any intellectual debate. […] Bayle's Dictionnaire is considered the most widely read book of the 18th century and the Enlightenment arsenal. ”(Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 185)
  33. ↑ "If Hume was out to humiliate reason, Sade set out to torture it." (Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 292)
  34. ↑ “How could life not be criminal when it always runs towards the death penalty?” Neiman Schopenhauer summarizes and comments: “Schopenhauer's position refutes itself as little as that of Sade. The categorical imperative has nothing to offer against a determined nihilism. […] For Schopenhauer as for Sade, destruction is the only desirable goal. ”(Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 299 f.)
  35. ↑ “Is there any other, better, fairer order than the one we see, or are the facts that provide our senses all there is? Is reality nothing other than what is, or is there still room for what could be? "(Neiman: Das Böse Think 2004, p. 37)
  36. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 337.
  37. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 348 f.
  38. ↑ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 177. "Keeping ideals alive takes more strength than saying goodbye to them," says Neiman, "because it is a guarantee of lifelong dissatisfaction." (Ibid.)
  39. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 227.
  40. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 470. "The urge to find reason in the world is as deep as anyone." (Ibid., P. 467)
  41. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 465.
  42. ↑ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 476.
  43. ↑ Neiman: Evil think 2004, p 469. "No creative company that did not follow the urge His and Shall unite." (Ibid, p 468)
  44. ^ John Rawls: The Law of the Peoples. Cambridge Massachusetts 1999, p. 162. Quoted from Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 456.
  45. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 9 f. and 466.
  46. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 135.
  47. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 21 f.
  48. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 22 f. “Fine distinctions show concern, awareness of the possible complexity of moral judgments. However, complexity can be crippling. [...] From relativism, to which all moral values ​​are equal, it is only a small step to nihilism, for which all talk about values ​​is superfluous. "(Ibid., P. 23)
  49. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, pp. 407-409 (quotation p. 408).
  50. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 313.
  51. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 314.
  52. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 316.
  53. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 317.
  54. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 321.
  55. ↑ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 397. "We don't know why people have such different moral thresholds, why some scruples melt under heat, while others are hardened." For Hannah Arendt it was unpredictable and often surprising who was in collaborated with the regime during the Nazi era and who did not. (Ibid.)
  56. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, p. 398.
  57. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 420 f.
  58. ^ Neiman: Moralische Klarheit 2010, pp. 412–454.
  59. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 208 f.
  60. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 18.
  61. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 193.
  62. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 44 f.
  63. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 17.
  64. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 230.
  65. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 12.
  66. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 194 f.
  67. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 218 f.
  68. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 198.
  69. ↑ Quoted from Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 211.
  70. ^ Neimen: Why grow up? 2015, p. 210. Neiman, however, thinks little of the common travel offers in the tourism industry, in the school education and scientific advanced training area. “In 2012 the World Tourist Organization counted a total of 1.035 billion foreign tourists. Most of them traveled in groups with their compatriots, guarded by guides who hastily worked through lists of sights that served more as a background for photographs. Then they are sold at stores whose goods they could have bought at home. Such an experience actively excludes a real encounter with the country being visited, because the sight of such tour groups causes the locals to leave […] ”(ibid., P. 163 f.)
  71. ↑ Rolf Löchel quotes as examples: "To come to terms with finiteness is not that difficult - provided it is kept within limits." And: "Good intentions without consequences are empty, lawful behavior without intention is blind." ( Rolf Löchel: Die The most unprecedented crimes are committed by the most common people (Susan Neiman's history of philosophy of evil. ) In: literaturkritik.de , July 1, 2004. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
  72. ^ Neiman: Thinking Evil 2004, p. 423.
  73. ↑ In: Totalitarismus und Demokratie 3 (2006) 2, pp. 383-385 . Retrieved June 20, 2018.
  74. ↑ Rolf Löchel: The most unprecedented crimes are committed by the most common people. Susan Neiman's Philosophical History of Evil. In: literaturkritik.de , July 1, 2004. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
  75. ↑ Magnus Schlette : Swimming exercises in the cauldron. In: Friday , August 13, 2014. Retrieved on June 20, 2018.
  76. ↑ Alan Posener: A Guide for the Adult Idealist. In: Die Welt , September 25, 2010. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
  77. ↑ Simon Vaut: Compass for enlightened idealists . In: Berliner Republik Nr. 5, 2010. Retrieved on June 20, 2018.
  78. ↑ Simon Vaut: Compass for enlightened idealists . In: Berliner Republik Nr. 5, 2010. Retrieved on June 20, 2018.
  79. ↑ Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann: Staying convulsively young . In: Spectrum of Science , March 27, 2015. Accessed June 20, 2018.
  80. ↑ Meike Fessmann: Peter Pan can pack up. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 3, 2015. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
  81. ↑ Anja Hirsch: Warning call and philosophical encouragement at the same time In: Deutschlandfunk , February 15, 2016. Retrieved on June 20, 2018.
  82. ↑ Peter Praschl: Wanting to be forever young makes you unhappy. In: Die Welt , February 24, 2015. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Neiman, Susan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Atlanta , Georgia, United States