Jonathan Lear delves into the philosophical understanding of the human psyche and the ethical implications that arise from our nature as creatures. His work primarily focuses on philosophical conceptions of the human mind, spanning from Socratic times to the present day. Lear integrates philosophy with psychoanalysis, offering profound insights into the human condition. His writings explore how our internal motivations and character shape our ethical conduct.
Exploring the intersection of mortality and purpose, the book delves into how individuals can endure amidst global crises and cultural decline. Jonathan Lear emphasizes mourning as a pathway to resilience and growth, drawing inspiration from moral exemplars to illuminate the potential for goodness in challenging times. Through this reflective journey, the narrative encourages readers to confront despair while seeking meaningful existence.
Jonathan Lear's insightful meditation joins the end of the world to the end- that is, the purpose-of living. How to persist in the face of planetary catastrophe and the realization that even cultures can die? Lear sees in mourning an avenue of thriving and turns to a handful of moral exemplars to refine our sense of the good we can yet achieve.
Written by Jonathan Lear, The Monkey-Proof Box: Curriculum design for building knowledge, developing creative thinking and promoting independence is a manifesto on how to dismantle the curriculum we're told to deliver and construct in its place the curriculum we need to deliver.
Exploring the intersection of psychoanalysis and moral philosophy, the book examines whether reason can integrate the nonrational aspects of the psyche into a comprehensive understanding of humanity. Jonathan Lear argues that without addressing this integration, philosophy loses its connection to real human experiences. The work serves as a foundation for ethical considerations on how to live, emphasizing the importance of understanding both rational and nonrational elements of the human condition.
Guerrilla Teaching is a revolution. Not a flag-waving, drum-beating revolution, but an underground revolution, a classroom revolution.
Vanity Fair has declared the Age of Irony over. Joan Didion has lamented that Obama s United States is an irony-free zone. Here Jonathan Lear argues that irony is one of the tools we use to live seriously, to get the hang of becoming human. It forces us to experience disruptions in our habitual ways of tuning out of life, but comes with a cost.
Presents the story of Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation. This title contains a philosophical and ethical inquiry into a people faced with the end of their way of life.
In this fully revised and updated second edition, the author clearly introduces and assesses all of Freud's thought, focusing on those areas of philosophy on which Freud is acknowledged to have had a lasting impact. Essential reading for anyone in the humanities, social sciences and beyond.
"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. Freud fared no better when he tried to ground human striving, aggression, and destructiveness in the death drive."--Jacket
