Susan Neiman (; born March 27, 1955) is an American
moral philosopher
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...
, cultural commentator, and essayist. She has written extensively on the juncture between
Enlightenment
Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to:
Age of Enlightenment
* Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public. She currently lives in Germany, where she is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam.
Biography and career
Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman dropped out of high school to join the anti-Vietnam War movement. Later she studied philosophy at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, earning her Ph.D. under the direction of
John Rawls and
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, an ...
. During graduate school, she spent several years of study at the
Free University of Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
. ''Slow Fire'', a memoir about her life as a Jewish woman in 1980s Berlin, appeared in 1992. From 1989 to 1996 she was an assistant and associate professor of philosophy at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, and from 1996 to 2000 she was an associate professor of philosophy at
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...
. In 2000 she assumed her current position at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. She is the mother of three grown children.
Neiman has been a Member of the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
in
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...
, a Research Fellow at the
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
Study Center in
Bellagio Bellagio may refer to:
* Bellagio, Lombardy, an Italian town
* Bellagio (resort), a luxury resort and casino in Las Vegas
* Bellagio (Hong Kong), a private housing building
* Bellagio declaration, an intellectual copyright resolution
* 79271 Bellag ...
, and a Senior Fellow of the
American Council of Learned Societies
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
. She is now a member of the
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the States of Germany, German ...
. Her books have won prizes from
PEN, the
Association of American Publishers, and the
American Academy of Religion
The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is the world's largest association of scholarly method, scholars in the List of academic disciplines, field of religious studies and related topics. It is a nonprofit member association,
serving as a profes ...
. Her shorter pieces have appeared in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'', ''
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'', and ''
Dissent''. In Germany, she has written for ''
Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The ...
'', ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'', and ''
Freitag'', among other publications. Neiman belongs to a small number of women who have risen to public prominence in the male-dominated field of philosophy.
Major works
''Evil in Modern Thought''
''Evil in Modern Thought'' writes the history of
modern philosophy
Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity. It is not a specific doctrine or school (and thus should not be confused with ''Modernism''), although there are certain assumptions common to much of it ...
as a series of responses to the existence of
evil – that which, whether in the form of innocent suffering or human action intentionally causing it, "threatens our sense of the sense of the world." Neiman argues that the problem of evil provides a better framework than
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
for understanding the history of philosophy because it includes a wider range of texts, forms a link between
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
and
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
, and is more faithful to philosophers' stated concerns. Indeed, Neiman believes that evil, by challenging the
intelligibility of the world as a whole, lies at the root of all philosophical inquiry.
The book explores the period from the early
Enlightenment
Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to:
Age of Enlightenment
* Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
to the late 20th century through discussions of philosophers who often figure in traditional histories of philosophy, such as
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
,
Kant,
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
,
Nietzsche, and
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
, as well ones who do not, such as
Pierre Bayle,
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
,
Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
,
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to me ...
, and
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
. Neiman groups thinkers around two basic distinctions: one between those who believe in a guiding order beyond appearances and those who think that sensory experience is all we have for orientation; and another between those who believe we must try to understand evil and those who maintain that doing so would be immoral on the grounds that any explanation of evil would be tantamount to its justification.
''Moral Clarity''
In ''Moral Clarity'', Neiman argues that all human beings have moral needs but that secular culture, particularly on the
political left, is reluctant or unable to satisfy them, and as a consequence has ceded the moral domain to religion and traditional conservatives. She attributes this failing not to a lack of values but to a lack of a "standpoint from which those values make sense." The book explores the reasons why this is so and offers a new framework for moral thinking based on Enlightenment ideas, particularly those of Kant and Rousseau, which rely neither on divine authority nor on authoritarian ideology.
''Why Grow Up?''
In ''Why Grow Up'', Neiman challenges the infantilism that she believes is widespread in modern society. She suggests that the "forces that shape our world" encourage
consumerism, apathy,
cynicism
Cynic or Cynicism may refer to:
Modes of thought
* Cynicism (philosophy), a school of ancient Greek philosophy
* Cynicism (contemporary), modern use of the word for distrust of others' motives
Books
* ''The Cynic'', James Gordon Stuart Grant 1 ...
, and the fetishization of beauty and youth in order to keep citizens passive and compliant. These, she thinks, are propped up by a conception of adulthood in which being an adult is synonymous with drudgery, resignation, and inevitable decline.
Neiman makes the case for an ideal of adulthood that involves exercising judgement, understanding one's own culture through immersion in others, actively shaping society, and seeking orientation in the face of uncertainty. As in ''Moral Clarity'', Neiman draws on the work of Kant, Rousseau, Arendt, and other philosophers to argue for a concept of maturity in which thinking critically does not mean abandoning one's ideals.
''Learning from the Germans''
''
Learning from the Germans'' examines German efforts to atone for Nazi atrocities and identifies lessons for how the U.S. might come to terms with its legacy of
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
. The book brings together historical and philosophical analysis; interviews with politicians, activists, and contemporary witnesses in Germany and the United States; and Neiman's own first-person observations as a white woman growing up in the South and a Jewish woman who has lived for almost three decades in Berlin.
Awards and honors
In 2014 Neiman was the recipient of the International
Spinoza Prize
The Spinoza Prize ( nl, Spinozapremie) is an annual award of 2.5 million euro, to be spent on new research given by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The award is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is named after the philosopher ...
and an honorary doctorate from the University of Sankt Gallen. She delivered the
Tanner Lectures on Human Values at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
in 2010.
In 2018, she was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
, and received the Lucius D. Clay Medal for her contributions to German-American relations.
Selected bibliography
Books
*''
Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
*''Widerstand der Vernunft: Ein Manifest in postfaktischen Zeiten,'' Ecowin, 2017.
*''Why Grow Up?'', Penguin, 2014 (part of the series ''Philosophy in Transit'').
eprinted as ''Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age'', Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015.*''Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists'', Harcourt, 2008.
*''Fremde sehen anders: Zur Lage der Bundesrepublik'', Suhrkamp, 2005.
*''Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy'', Princeton University Press, 2002.
*''The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant'', Oxford University Press, 1994.
*''Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin'', Schocken, 1992.
Articles and book chapters
*"Understanding the Problem of Evil" in Chignell, ed., ''Evil: Oxford Philosophical Concepts'', Oxford University Press, 2019.
*"A Dialogue Between Business and Philosophy" (with Bertrand Collomb) in Rangan, ed., ''Capitalism Beyond Mutuality? Perspectives Integrating Philosophy and Social Science'', Oxford University Press, 2018.
*"Amerikanische Träume," in Honneth, Kemper, and Klein, ed., ''Bob Dylan'', Suhrkamp, 2017.
*"Ideas of Reason," in Rangan, ed., ''Performance and Progress: Essays on Capitalism, Business, and Society,'' Oxford University Press, 2015.
*"Forgetting Hiroshima, Remembering Auschwitz: Tales of Two Exhibits," ''Thesis Eleven'', 129(1), 2015: 7–26.
*"Victims and Heroes," in Matheson, ed., ''The Tanner Lectures on Human Values'', University of Utah Press, 2012.
*"Subversive Einstein," in Galison, Holton and Schweber, ed., ''Einstein for the 21st Century'', Princeton University Press, 2008.
Newspaper and magazine articles
"There Are No Nostalgic Nazi Memorials,"''The Atlantic'', 2019.
"Working Off the Past, from Atlanta to Berlin,"''The New York Review of Books'', 2019.
*"Germany paid Holocaust Reparations. Will the U.S. Do the Same for Slavery?" ''Los Angeles Times'', 2019.
*"The President of Our Country is Evil," ''Salon'', 2017.
*"In Germany, Monuments Reflect the Nation's Values," ''Miami Herald'', 2017.
*"Die Deutschen sollten keine Angst haben," ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,'' 2016.
*"What Americans Abroad Know about Bernie Sanders," ''Los Angeles Times'', 2016.
*"An Enlightenment for Grownups," ''Spiked Review'', 2016.
*"Antimodernismus: Die Quelle allen Unglücks?" ''Die Zeit,'' 2016.
*"Deutschland hat sich positiv verändert. Das beglückt mich," ''Die Zeit'', 2016.
*"Aufklärung heißt nicht, nur nach mehr Toleranz zu rufen!" ''Der Tagesspiegel'', 2016.
*"The Rationality of the World: A Philosophical Reading of the Book of Job," ''ABC Religion and Ethics,'' 2016.
*"Hört auf, Antisemiten zu zählen!" ''Die Zeit'', 2014.
*"History and Guilt," ''Aeon'', 2013.
*"Was ist Religion?" ''Die Zeit'', 2013.
*"What It All Means," ''The New York Times'', 2011.
*"Is Morality Driven by Faith?" ''The Washington Post/Newsweek'', 2008.
References
External links
Official WebsiteProvides biography along with publications and appearances.
Einstein Forum ProfileInterviewabout ''Learning from the Germans'' with Christiane Amanpour, ''CNN'' (September 19, 2019).
Discussionof ''Learning from the Germans'', ''The Guardian'' (September 13, 2019).
Discussionof ''Learning from the Germans'' with Robert Siegel, ''Moment'' (August 27, 2019).
Reviewof ''Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists''
Prabuddha Bharata October, 2017 by Subhasis Chattopadhyay.
Reviewof ''Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy'',
Prabuddha BharataSpecial Tantra Issue, January, 2016by Subhasis Chattopadhyay.
of ''Why Grow Up?'', ''The New York Times Sunday Book Review'' (June 21, 2015).
Reviewof ''Why Grow Up'', ''Harvard Magazine'' (May–June 2015).
Reviewof Why Grow Up?, ''The Guardian'' (January 2, 2015).
Interviewin ''The New Statesman'' (February 1, 2010).
Reviewof ''Moral Clarity'' in ''Slate Magazine''.
Guardian.co.uk Reviewof ''Moral Clarity'' in ''The Guardian'' (July 25, 2009).
Making Progress: Rethinking EnlightenmentLecture, RSA (July 1, 2009).
Roundtable DiscussionProgressive Book Club (July 2008).
On Religion and ReasonVideo for ''Big Think'' (Uploaded June 5, 2008).
Tavis Smiley Show, ''PBS'' (May 13, 2008).
Lectureat "Beyond Belief," Conference at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA (November 6, 2006).
for ''NOW'' with Bill Moyers, PBS (January 2, 2004).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neiman, Susan
1955 births
Living people
Harvard University alumni
Yale University faculty
Tel Aviv University faculty
Jewish American writers
21st-century American philosophers
Moral philosophers
American women philosophers
Jewish women writers
Members of the American Philosophical Society
American essayists
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American women