Susan Neiman — The Philosopher of Enlightenment, Moral Clarity, and the Meaning of Evil (1955– )

Susan Neiman is one of the most forceful contemporary defenders of moral reason. Against cynicism, relativism, and fashionable despair, she argues that philosophy’s task is not merely to describe the world, but to judge it. Drawing deeply from Kant and the Enlightenment tradition, Neiman insists that reason, hope, and moral responsibility remain indispensable — especially in a broken world.

From America to Berlin — Philosophy as Public Responsibility

Born in Atlanta and educated at Harvard, Susan Neiman came of age intellectually during a period of widespread disillusionment with grand moral narratives. Yet rather than retreat into irony or academic detachment, she turned outward.

Her move to Berlin — a city marked by both Enlightenment ambition and twentieth-century catastrophe — symbolized her philosophical orientation. She became director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, positioning herself as a public intellectual committed to philosophy beyond the university.

“Philosophy begins in outrage.”

Evil as a Philosophical Problem

Neiman’s most influential work, Evil in Modern Thought, reframes the history of philosophy through humanity’s attempts to understand radical wrongdoing. Rather than treating evil as a theological puzzle alone, she shows how it shaped modern ideas of reason, justice, and responsibility.

From the Lisbon earthquake to Auschwitz, Neiman traces how events that “should not have happened” force us to confront the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. Philosophy, she argues, exists precisely because that gap offends us.

“Evil is something that should not exist.”

Kant, the Enlightenment, and Moral Judgment

Neiman is a leading contemporary interpreter of Kant, but she rejects caricatures of Enlightenment rationalism as cold, authoritarian, or naïvely optimistic. For her, Enlightenment thinking is not about certainty, but about moral courage.

Reason, in her view, does not eliminate emotion — it disciplines it. It allows us to say not only what is the case, but what ought to be the case, even when the world resists.

To abandon judgment, Neiman warns, is not humility but abdication.

“Reason is the capacity to think beyond the way things are.”

Against Cynicism and Moral Minimalism

Much of Neiman’s work confronts contemporary moral exhaustion. She criticizes both postmodern relativism and narrow forms of pragmatism that reduce ethics to damage control.

In books like Why Grow Up? and Moral Clarity, she argues that maturity involves commitment to ideals, not ironic distance from them. The refusal to judge, she suggests, often masks fear rather than wisdom.

Moral clarity is not moral purity — it is the willingness to say that some things are wrong, even when solutions are imperfect.

“Cynicism is the refusal of responsibility disguised as sophistication.”

History, Memory, and Justice

Living and working in Germany, Neiman has written extensively about historical responsibility, memory, and reconciliation. She argues that confronting past injustice is not about inherited guilt, but about inherited obligation.

A society shows moral maturity not by forgetting its crimes, but by integrating them into a commitment to a more just future. Memory, in this sense, becomes an ethical act.

Legacy — Reason with a Moral Spine

Susan Neiman stands as a rare contemporary voice willing to defend Enlightenment ideals without nostalgia or naïveté. She reminds philosophy that its deepest task is normative — to articulate standards by which the world can be judged and changed.

In an era saturated with irony, Neiman insists on seriousness without dogmatism, hope without illusion, and reason without surrender. Her work affirms that moral thought remains not only possible, but necessary.

“The task of philosophy is to keep alive the difference between what is and what ought to be.”