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Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Biography

Philosopher

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“It’s an embarrassing fact that we are more afraid of embarrassment than a host of other discomforts, but it isn’t less true for all that. How often have you refrained from voicing hope or indignation for fear of being dismissed as childish? Oddly enough, that fear is adolescent, born of a time when few things feel worse than being regarded as a less grown-up than your peers.”

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Book:Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
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“When education is overwhelmed by hypermedia, travel facile or ruinous, and work a blurred mixture of more dependence and less meaning, it’s harder than ever to use those experiences to grow. But growing up, I have argued, has been dogged by dilemma ever since it was a real option. As Enlightenment philosophers knew, it’s a process that is as socially determined as it is profoundly individual.”

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Book:Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
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“Given all the forces arrayed against it, no wonder Kant thought growing up to be more a matter of courage than knowledge: all the information in the world is no substitute for the guts to use your own judgement. And judgement can be learned — principally through the experience of watching others use it well —but it cannot be taught.”

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Book:Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
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“There are pragmatic as well as moral grounds for the United States to follow Germany's lead [in dealing with it's past human rights crimes]. American media may have largely ignored the reasons we decided to destroy Hiroshima or oust the democratically elected governments in Iran or the Congo. Other nations' media has not. Few Americans are quite aware of how little credibility we retain in other parts of the world.”

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Book:Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil
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“Van de geschiedenis van de filosofie leren betekent niet haar zonder bedenkingen accepteren. Met behulp van haar inzichten kunnen we enig licht werpen op de onze. We kunnen niet op dezelfde stellingen terugvallen die eerder door de denkers van de Verlichting werden verdedigd, zelfs niet op die van haar modernste vertegenwoordigers. Misschien ligt de hoop niet in het beantwoorden van de vraag naar de zin van het leven, maar juist in het verwerpen van die vraag.”

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Author:Susan Neiman
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