| Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life Revised Edition Contributor(s): Lear, Jonathan (Author) |
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ISBN: 0674006747 ISBN-13: 9780674006744 Publisher: Harvard University Press OUR PRICE: $31.68 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2002 Annotation: SEPARATED BY MILLENNIA. Aristotle and Sigmund Freud gave us disparate but compelling pictures of the human condition. But if, with Jonathan Lear, we scrutinize these thinkers' attempts to explain human behavior in terms of a higher principle -- whether happiness or death -- the pictures fall apart. Aristotle attempted to ground ethical life in human striving for happiness, yet he didn't understand what happiness is any better than we do. Happiness became an enigmatic, always unattainable, means of seducing humankind into living an ethical life. Freud fared no better when he tried to ground human striving, aggression, and destructiveness in the death drive, like Aristotle attributing purpose where none exists. Neither overarching principle can guide or govern "the remainder of life", in which our inherently disruptive unconscious moves in breaks and swerves to affect who and how we are. Lear exposes this tendency to self-disruption for what it is: an opening, an opportunity for new possibilities. His insights have profound consequences not only for analysis but also for our understanding of civilization and its discontent. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | History & Surveys - General - Psychology | Movements - Psychoanalysis |
| Dewey: 150.195 |
| Series: Tanner Lectures on Human Values |
| Physical Information: 0.53" H x 6.04" W x 8.18" (0.61 lbs) 204 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Separated by millennia, Aristotle and Sigmund Freud gave us disparate but compelling pictures of the human condition. But if, with Jonathan Lear, we scrutinize these thinkers' attempts to explain human behavior in terms of a higher principle--whether happiness or death--the pictures fall apart. Aristotle attempted to ground ethical life in human striving for happiness, yet he didn't understand what happiness is any better than we do. Happiness became an enigmatic, always unattainable, means of seducing humankind into living an ethical life. Freud fared no better when he tried to ground human striving, aggression, and destructiveness in the death drive, like Aristotle attributing purpose where none exists. Neither overarching principle can guide or govern "the remainder of life," in which our inherently disruptive unconscious moves in breaks and swerves to affect who and how we are. Lear exposes this tendency to self-disruption for what it is: an opening, an opportunity for new possibilities. His insights have profound consequences not only for analysis but for our understanding of civilization and its discontent. |
Contributor Bio(s): Lear, Jonathan: - Jonathan Lear is John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is also the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. |