Jonathan Lear is John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor on the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. His works include Wisdom Won from Illness, Radical Hope, A Case for Irony, and Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life.
A leading philosopher explores the ethics and psychology of flourishing during times of personal and collective crisis.
Imagine the end of the world. Now think about the end-the purpose-of life.... (more)
Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, told his story - up to a certain point. "When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground," he... (more)
In this fully revised and updated second edition, Jonathan Lear clearly introduces and assesses all of Freud's thought, focusing on those areas of philosophy on which Freud is acknowledged to have... (more)
Wisdom Won from Illness brings into conversation two fields of humane inquiry - psychoanalysis and moral philosophy - that seem to have little to say to one another but which, taken together, form a... (more)
"Freud is discredited, so we do not have to think about the darker strains of unconcious motivation anymore. We know what moves our political leaders, so we don't have to look closely at their... (more)
Separated by millennia, Aristotle and Sigmund Freud both offered disparate pictures of the human condition. This book analyzes these thinkers' theories of human behaviour in terms of a higher... (more)
This book argues that properly understood, irony plays a crucial role in therapeutic action. It is written as an invitation to clinicians to renew their own engagement with the fundamental concepts... (more)