Idealism and pragmatism are two threads that continually interweave through American presidential campaigns. In 2008, widely considered a "change" election, idealism has come to the fore in ways not often seen. In Moral Clarity -- A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, moral philosopher Susan Neiman argues that this idealism is "far more than abstraction or stump-speech rhetoric. It is a potent driving force with a long history of effecting change that has undiminished potential for grappling with the most controversial and pressing issues of our time, including the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq."
In a brief Q&A, Neiman talked about the subjects raised by her book:
Q. Do you think that the issue of morality, ethics and values is in jeopardy of being hijacked by politics?
A. When politics doesn't involve morality it becomes nothing but negotiation of competing interests: your clan (or tribe, or party, or country) can have this if mine can have that. Many clever people -- since ancient Athens, by the way -- have argued that moral language is just a way of rationalizing that sort of negotiation. If you don't believe that, and most Americans don't, then the task is not to disentangle morality from politics but to ask hard questions about what morality and values are."
Q. How can the philosophy of the Enlightenment help answer today's political and social problems?
A. We've been stuck between various forms of postmodern thinking, which may take up exciting questions but are often simply what Neitzsche called 'muddying the waters in order to make them seem deep.' And while it may sound vaguely liberating, postmodernism has no political leg to stand on. People have largely turned to it because academic philosophy has remained so remote from the rest of the world. With those alternatives, it's no surprise that many people turn to populist and even fundamentalist messages because they seem at least to take ordinary concerns about values seriously."
