Evil in modern thought : an alternative history of philosophy / Susan Neiman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Neiman, Susan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Good and evil--History.

Good and evil.

History.

Philosophy, Modern.

Physical Description:

xii, 358 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2002]

Summary:

Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.

Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts -- combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade -- eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.

Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Fire from Heaven 14

God's Advocates: Leibniz and Pope 18

Newton of the Mind: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 36

Divided Wisdom: Immanuel Kant 57

Real and Rational: Hegel and Marx 84

Chapter 2 Condemning the Architect 113

Raw Material: Bayle's Dictionary 116

Voltaire's Destinies 128

The Impotence of Reason: David Hume 148

End of the Tunnel: The Marquis de Sade 170

Schopenhauer: The World as Tribunal 196

Chapter 3 Ends of an Illusion 203

Eternal Choices: Nietzsche on Redemption 206

On Consolation: Freud vs. Providence 227

Chapter 4 Homeless 238

Earthquakes: Why Lisbon? 240

Mass Murders: Why Auschwitz? 250

Losses: Ending Modern Theodicies 258

Intentions: Meaning and Malice 267

Terror: After September 11 281

Remains: Camus, Arendt, Critical Theory, Rawls 288

Origins: Sufficient Reason 314.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [337]-343) and index.

ISBN:

0691096082

OCLC:

49719348