Susan Neiman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1955-03-27)March 27, 1955 (age 70) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-/21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
| Main interests | Morality · History of philosophy · Political philosophy · Philosophy of religion |
| Notable ideas | "Left is not woke" |
Susan Neiman (/ˈnaɪmən/; born March 27, 1955) is an Americanmoral philosopher, cultural commentator, and essayist. She has written extensively on the juncture betweenEnlightenment moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public. She lives in Germany, where she is the Director of theEinstein Forum inPotsdam.[1]
Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman dropped out of high school to join the anti-Vietnam War movement. Later she studied philosophy atHarvard University, earning her Ph.D. under the direction ofJohn Rawls andStanley Cavell. During graduate school, she spent several years of study at theFree University of Berlin between 1982 and 1988.[2]Slow Fire, a memoir about her life as a Jewish woman in 1980s Berlin, was published in 1992. From 1989 to 1996, she was an assistant and associate professor of philosophy atYale University, and from 1996 to 2000 she was an associate professor of philosophy atTel Aviv University. In 2000 she assumed her current position at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. She is the mother of three adult children.
Neiman has been a Member of theInstitute for Advanced Study inPrinceton, New Jersey, a Research Fellow at theRockefeller Foundation Study Center inBellagio, and a Senior Fellow of theAmerican Council of Learned Societies. She is currently a member of theBerlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and theAmerican Philosophical Society. Her books have won prizes fromPEN, theAssociation of American Publishers, and theAmerican Academy of Religion. Her shorter pieces have appeared inThe New York Review of Books,The New York Times,The Boston Globe,The Globe and Mail, andDissent. In Germany, she has written forDie Zeit,Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, andFreitag, among other publications.[3][4][5]
Evil in Modern Thought writes the history ofmodern philosophy as a series of responses to the existence ofevil – that which, whether in the form of innocent suffering or human action intentionally causing it, "threatens our sense of the sense of the world".[6] Neiman argues that the problem of evil provides a better framework thanepistemology for understanding the history of philosophy because it includes a wider range of texts, forms a link betweenmetaphysics andethics, and is more faithful to philosophers' stated concerns. Indeed, Neiman believes that evil, by challenging theintelligibility of the world as a whole, lies at the root of all philosophical inquiry.
The book explores the period from the earlyEnlightenment to the late 20th century through discussions of philosophers who often figure in traditional histories of philosophy, such asLeibniz,Kant,Hegel,Nietzsche, andSchopenhauer, as well ones who do not, such asPierre Bayle,Sigmund Freud,Albert Camus,Emmanuel Levinas, andHannah Arendt. 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.
InMoral Clarity, Neiman argues that all human beings have moral needs but that secular culture, particularly on thepolitical 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."[7] The book explores the reasons why this is so and offers a framework for moral thinking based on Enlightenment ideas, particularly those of Kant and Rousseau, which rely neither on divine authority nor on authoritarian ideology.
InWhy Grow Up, Neiman challenges the infantilism that she believes is widespread in modern society. She suggests that the "forces that shape our world" encourageconsumerism, apathy,cynicism, and the fetishization of beauty and youth in order to keep citizens passive and compliant.[8] She thinks these 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 inMoral 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.
Her 2019 bookLearning 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 ofslavery andracism. 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. After the book appeared, developments in Germany led Neiman to change some of her views.[9][10]
InLeft Is Not Woke, Neiman examines the assumptions behind "woke" politics and argues that they are at odds with what the left has always stood for: "universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress".[11] She is particularly concerned that "tribalism" will undermine the left's political goals and leave it without the tools to oppose the far right, whose outlook has always been tribalist.[12] Neiman traces woke thinking back toMichel Foucault,Carl Schmitt, and the thinkers they influenced, although she also finds similar views articulated by the character ofThrasymachus in Plato'sRepublic.
Neiman also describes a major mid-20th-century shift in historical thinking:heroes stopped being the central subjects of history, and victims became the focus. This change began as amoral correction—giving voice to those previously erased from historical memory and granting them recognition and justice. But over time, the new emphasis onvictimhood was distorted. Thenarrative shifted from honoring real suffering to treating victim status itself as a form ofsocial prestige. The extreme example isBinjamin Wilkomirski, who fabricated a childhood in aconcentration camp. Whereas people once invented noble origins, some now seek status through claiming greater suffering than they actually endured.[13]
In a review for theLos Angeles Review of Books, the historianSamuel Clowes Huneke characterizedLeft Is Not Woke as a "cringe-inducing screed against a group she terms 'the woke'—without ever telling us whom, exactly, she is talking about", and that is "chock full of ad hominem attacks and ungenerous readings".[14] The book has also received positive reviews, including inDissent,The Chronicle of Higher Education, andThe Political Quarterly.[15][16][17] In his review forThe New York Review of Books, the Irish journalist and essayistFintan O'Toole writes, "Neiman’s short, punchy, and brilliantly articulated argument is essentially a call for those who regard themselves as being on the left to remember the distinction between skepticism and cynicism. The first is crucial to a progressive critique of untamed capitalism. It demands a constant critical awareness of how power and self-interest wrap themselves in virtue, 'common sense', and high ideals."[18] The book has been published in 14 languages.
In 2014, Neiman was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from theUniversity of St. Gallen.[19] She delivered theTanner Lectures on Human Values at theUniversity of Michigan in 2010.[20] In 2018, she was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society,[21] and received theLucius D. Clay Medal for her contributions to German-American relations.[22] She served as theGifford Lecturer for 2021–2022 at the University of Edinburgh.[23] In 2021, she was awarded theAugust Bebel Prize of the GermanSocial Democratic Party,[24] and in 2023 she received theOrder of Merit of Brandenburg.[25] She is also a 2025 Thomas Mann Fellow.
