Susan Neiman, Moral Clarity *** 1/2

In this Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, Neiman suggests that the modern left in the United States has ceded talk of ideals to the right.

They've seen too many frameworks abused. Rules conceived as universal values have too often been used as sugarcoated ways of forcing one people's will on another. ... The resolve not to impose your moral worldview by force often ends with the resolve to make no judgments at all.

Conservatives base their worldview on Hobbes and his raw power struggle of all against all, and liberals have largely accepted this base view of human nature as well. Neiman believes that this situation drives people to fundamentalism, because fundamentalism provides a vision of transcendence missing from everyday lives: "if our need for transcendence isn't satisfied by the right kind of ideals, we may turn to the wrong ones."

And so she recommends a return to the key Enlightenment values of happiness, reason, reverence, and hope. I was inspired by the section where she discusses these ideals, mostly because of how her tone embodied the ideals. Her portrait of Kant is quite different and more joyful than any I've seen before. Unfortunately, though, when she comes to apply her principles in contemporary scenarios, she comes across as naive and judgmental in a way she promised we would not.