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.

The American philosopher Susan Neiman has written the book for this world-political hour.

?Radical evil is the nightmare that recurs during the sleep of reason. It is not the violation of modern life, but its underside. It is not to be erased by declaring ?war on terror.? Todd Gitlinn, The Globe and Mail

Even--or especially--to a nonphilosopher like myself, Susan Neiman's offers intellectual adventure of a high order. The audacity of her recasting of Western philosophy is matched by its profundity--and frequent wit. Its challenges are as bracing as they are essential. Her intellectual fearlessness deserves the closest and widest attention.

Neiman's book is written with considerable flair, as many critics have already noted, but it possesses a far rarer and more valuable quality: moral seriousness. Her argument builds a powerful emotional force, a sense of deep inevitability. . . . It is not often that a work of such dark conclusions has felt so hopeful and brave.

This is an accessible work of philosophy in the best sense, sharply focused on matters of vital human concern and free of the domain tics that mar even allegedly popular works by Anglo-American philosophers.

Scintillating and self-disciplined - a very rare thing in a philosopher.

Provocative and profound.

A brilliant new book. . . . No summary can convey the intellectual firepower of Neiman's book. Within her field of interest, she seems not only to have read everything but to have understood it at the deepest level.

This great work....looks into these abysses with astonishing fearlessness.

An erudite and compelling intellectual treatise that is profoundly interesting, often witty, and constructed without resorting to jargon or obfuscation. . . . In reorienting the history of philosophy, she has made it come alive. . . . This is a fine, even elegant book.

Clear, elegant and inviting...suddenly, (philosophy) is again a matter of life and death.

We badly need alternative histories of philosophy. The story told (by me, among others) cries out for supplementation. . . . Neiman's snazzy prose makes this book a pleasure to read, as well as an immensely welcome change from the sort of history of philosophy to which we have become accustomed.

A deeply moving and scholarly book that will interest many general readers.

Neiman's book is a welcome contribution to a philosophical conversation too long neglected.

Superb... Neiman's claim to have written an alternative history is not an empty boast.

Neiman's audacity and occasionally morbid wit are a welcome addition to contemporary philosophy. If there is any hope after Auschwitz, we may find it in the fact that human minds will not stop trying to make some kind of meaning out of it.

Neiman's narrative . . . sheds light not just on the writings of particular thinkers, but also on their relation to one another. And it helps us begin to understand certain facts about the modern period that current philosophers find baffling.

Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, 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.

Acknowledgments xi

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE: FIRE FROM HEAVEN 14

God's Advocates: Leibniz and Pope 18

Newton of the Mind: Jean-Jacques Rousse u 36

Divided Wisdom: Immanuel Kant 57

Real and Rational: Hegel and Marx 84

In Conclusion 109

CHAPTER TWO: 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 Tribun l 196

CHAPTER THREE: ENDS OF AN ILLUSION 203

Eternal Choices: Nietzsche on Redemption 206

On Consolation: Freud vs. Providence 227

CHAPTER FOUR: 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 329

Bibliography 337

Index 345