Moral Clarity

A powerful wake-up call for the progressive left to have some faith in its Enligtenment project

Observer

Forget the Man Booker long list. Susan Neiman's superb new book should be at the top of beach reads this summer. For what Neiman beautifully chronicles is how in all sorts of policy areas the left has let slip its Enlightenment bearings and is no longer able to act on moral impulses.... Now is the time to turn to Neiman and re-inject some morality into progressive politics - for the good of everyone

Tristram Hunt, Guardian

Neiman asks people to reject the false choice between Utopia and degeneracy. Moral progress, she writes, is neither guaranteed nor hopeless. Instead, it is up to us

Economist

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 ideas that currently escape us

New York Times

A subtle and energetic guide to the unjustly maligned Western canon... Neiman writes with verve and a sometimes epigrammatic wit

Wall Street Journal

In Moral Clarity Susan Neilman criticises the philosophical ideas that dominate contemporary culture and politics on a grand scale... By the end of the 20th century, scepticism about reason and agnosticism about morality pervaded political life and popular culture. Neiman skewers this well-worn genealogy with splendid directness

Onora O’Neill, Financial Times

Fresh and exhilarating, inspiring optimism rather than recrimination...a rallying cry to return to Enlightenment values - not as heritage kitsch but as a process we are still undergoing, a demand we have yet to answer

Jane O’Grady, The Guardian

A lucid new tome on why politics is a moral pursuit, and why we need a second Enlightenment. Where was the voice of academia in our political and financial crisis? This firebrand turned head of the Einstein Forum brings a refreshing conviction of the possibility of a deliberative public life

Hugh Roberts, Guardian online

A tour de force: a witty, profound, and powerful successor to her breakthrough book, Evil in Modern Thought

Tom Getlin

With passion, wit, and high intelligence, Susan Neiman invites us to be moral grown-ups. Morally and politically compelling - and a delight to read

Michael Walzer

Susan Neiman's profound wisdom and courage give us a public conception of goodness and a reinvigorated progressive vision....She is a beacon of light and hope in our morally debased times

Cornel West

The Enlightenment project of constructing a rational morality--pronounced dead by commentators on the left and right--has found a champion determined to resurrect it for the twenty-first century

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