“If you’re committed to the Enlightenment, you’re committed to understanding the world in order to improve it.” – Neiman
“Two things fill the mind with awe and wonder the more often and more steadily we look upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” – Kant
Consider a man who cannot resist temptation: every time he passes a brothel, for example, he succumbs, risking his marriage, his dignity, and his health. What if that man knew he would be hanged if he entered? We all conclude he would resist: the desire for life is a preeminent human motivation, and all else pales before it, no matter how tempting.
What if, however, an unjust ruler seeks to kill someone, and orders the man to give false testimony to condemn the other to death? If the man refuses, he will himself be put to death. Now we hesitate: we aren’t sure what the man would do, or indeed what we would do in those circumstances. Kant (from whom the thought experiment is taken), says this shows there are limits to knowledge; it is difficult to know in advance what we would do. Many would agree we should refuse to testify, and we all agree we could: we are simply not sure if we will. There, Kant argues, lies freedom: it is not pleasure but justice that can move humans to overcome the love of life itself.
Moral Clarity is an attempt to understand the foundations of reason and idealism in the Enlightenment, and to use those ideas to clarify our own often muddy conceptions of politics and morality. The 18th century left, she points out, believed in universal ideals to which reality should be compared (Kant, Rousseau): the right believed that such ideals were dangerous and deceptive, and gained value only from their similarity to reality (Hume, Burke). From modern terrorism to traditional religion, she uses Enlightenment ideas to help understand the modern world, and argues that the Enlightenment belief in the power of ideas is an essential tool for progressive movements everywhere.
Neiman is an expert on Kant, and her philosophy is excellent; clear and insightful, she quotes widely and deeply and is extremely impressive. Unfortunately, at least for me her applications to policy are far weaker: it reads as a series of jabs at Republicans with no particularly new insights or understandings to provide. If you can get to the meat of the book, however, it provides a clear and compelling argument for morality and ideals in the public sphere, concepts that we are today too often uncomfortable or even unfamiliar with.