shopping cart
Save up to 30% on our Staff Picks
Call us:  800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.
Interviews | December 1, 2009

Megan: IMG A Meaty Tale: The Powells.com Interview with Julie Powell



juliepowellJulie Powell charmed readers with Julie and Julia, in which she chronicled her quest to cook, in one year, every recipe out of Julia Child's... Continue »
  1. $17.49 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$18.50
List price: $27.00
Used Hardcover
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
Qty Store Section
1 Burnside Philosophy- Ethics
1 Hawthorne Philosophy- General

This title in other formats:

Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists

by Susan Neiman

Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists Cover

ISBN13: 9780151011971
ISBN10: 0151011974
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
All Product Details

Only 2 left in stock at $18.50!

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher committed to making the tools of her trade relevant to real life. In Moral Clarity, she shows how resurrecting a moral vocabulary — good and evil, heroism and nobility — can steer us clear of the dogmas of the right and the helpless pragmatism of the left. In search of a framework for forming clear opinions and taking responsible action on today's urgent political and social questions, Neiman reaches back to the eighteenth century, retrieving a set of virtues — happiness, reason, reverence, and hope — that were held high by every Enlightenment thinker. She shows that the pursuit of moral clarity is not a matter of religious faith but is open to all who are committed to these ideals, believers and nonbelievers alike. And she draws on literature, evolutionary theory, and other contemporary research to show why, by keeping before us the distinction between the real and the possible, these ideals continue to guide and inspire.

Review:

"Neiman wrestles with Hannah Arendt's problem of the banality of evil, and in particular the banality of evil in modern America: the betrayal of decency by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and their underlings in the institutions they helped to poison. They are easy enough targets, but in taking them on Neiman again makes deep and important points." New York Times

Review:

"Moral Clarity is a plea for renewal, an argument for re-engaging with the moral vocabulary of the country. But the book's lessons should not be lost on those of other ideological persuasions." Wall Street Journal

Review:

"Susan Neiman's profound wisdom and courage give us a public conception of goodness and a reinvigorated progressive vision that will resonate with the religious while remaining thoroughly secular and democratic. She is a beacon of light and hope in our morally debased times." Cornel West, University Professor at Princeton University and author of Democracy Matters and Race Matters

Review:

"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." Booklist

About the Author

Susam Neiman is an American philosopher who has taught at Yale University, Tel Aviv University, and the Humboldt University of Berlin, and is currently director of the Einstein Forum. She is the author of three previous books, most recently Evil in Modern Thought. She lives with her three children in Berlin.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction    1 PART ONE     Ideal and Real 1. American Dreams    25 2. Ideals and Ideology    48 3. Facing Gallows    79 PART TWO   Enlightenment Values 4. Myths or Monsters    107 5. Heaven and Earth    124 6. Happiness    150 7. Reason    177 8. Reverence    215 9. Hope    242 PART THREE    Good and Evil 10. The Odyssey: An Excursion    289 11. What about Evil?    325 12. Enlightenment Heroes    372 13. Moral Clarity    415 Acknowledgments    431 Bibliographical Notes    433 Bibliography    441 Permissions Acknowledgments    451 Index    453

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Trip McCrossin, July 26, 2008 (view all comments by Trip McCrossin)
Moral Clarity is absolutely and utterly wonderful. I couldn't put it down, in every sense that matters. Lots of writing makes us want to be smarter, but it's the rare and precious writing that makes us want to be wiser, more interesting and more worthy, to pay better attention, to rise more often to the occasion, as we surely must in this day and age.

Wherever we may be on the political spectrum, we not only owe it to ourselves, but to those around us who live with our choices, to act with all the moral clarity we can muster. The perspective Susan Neiman offers us in Moral Clarity, with breathtaking depth and style, helps us immeasurably in the process: to size up the moral task at hand, and the surprising wealth of tools at our disposal, and to move forward together to meet it.

Everyone, in other words, bar none, should read and reread this book!
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)

Product Details

ISBN:
9780151011971
Subtitle:
A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists
Author:
Neiman, Susan
Publisher:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)
Subject:
Ethics
Subject:
Ethics & Moral Philosophy
Edition Description:
Trade Cloth
Publication Date:
May 2008
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
467
Dimensions:
9.00 x 6.00 in

Other books you might like

  1. $13.95 Used Hardcover add to wish list
  2. $8.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  3. $11.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  4. $16.50 Used Hardcover add to wish list

    How Fiction Works

    James Wood
  5. $16.50 Used Hardcover add to wish list
  6. $20.25 New Trade Paper add to wish list

Related Aisles

  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.