Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of PhilosophyEvil 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. |
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User Review - ShaneTierney - LibraryThingTo judge the author by her work, Nieman seems well-read and well-studied. Too much seemed filtered through Kant. Generally a pretty big lean toward German philosophy, which isn’t bad in itself but it ... Read full review
A very informative read. Her presentation of Kant was very curious and interesting. However, her appeal to what Hume has/had really done is a bit dated and does not apply... IMHO. Well worth the read. Read full review