Why Grow Up?
Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A wry and witty meditation on modernity's obsession with youth and its denigration of maturity
In Why Grow Up? the philosopher Susan Neiman asks not just why one should grow up but how. In making her case she draws chiefly from the thought of Kant and Rousseau, who articulated very different theories on the proper way to "come of age." But these thinkers complement each other in seeking a "path between mindlessly accepting everything you're told and mindlessly rejecting it," and in learning to live without despair in a world marked by painful realities and uncertainties.
Neiman challenges both those who dogmatically privilege innocence and those who see youth as weakness. Her chief opponents are those who equate maturity with cynicism. "In our day it is more common to meet people who are stuck in the mire of adolescence. The world turns out not to reflect the idea and ideals they had for it? So much the worse for ideals."
To move beyond these immature positions, Neiman writes, is not simply to lapse into quiet resignation but to learn to take joy and satisfaction in what can be done and known, and to face rather than feel defeated by our inevitable limits.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Accessible philosophy doesn't get much better than this insightful review of what Enlightenmentthinkers such as Kant and Rousseau have to offer people today. from Neiman (Moral Clarity), director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, tackles questions that are widely relevant: How do different kinds of experience help and hinder "our understanding of the way the world is, and the way it should be?" And "how do we prepare a child for a world that is not the way it should be?" Along the way, she offers piercing critiques of consumerist culture, illustrating how luxury creates "false needs that make us dependent," and of American society, in which citizens are distracted from the real issues by a bewildering array of choices about relative trivialities. Neiman's sense of humor ("Yes, even Kant could write straightforward sentences") is a plus, but her greatest strength is her ability to distill centuries of thought to their essence, provoking her readers along the way. Neiman convincingly makes the case that growing up is not tantamount to "inevitable decline," and that the hard work to make maturity fulfilling is worth the effort.
