Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Tanner Lectures of Human Values (Harvard University)) [Paperback]

Jonathan Lear (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0674006747 | ISBN-13: 978-0674006744

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. (20001208)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally presented at Harvard as a three-part Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Lear's (Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul) latest book meditates on life's meaning. "What difference does psychoanalysis make," Lear asks at the outset, "to our understanding of human existence?" Drawing on both psychoanalytic theory and the history of philosophyAby way of Aristotle and FreudAhe teases out a usable answer to this question. Treating, one by one, the subjects of happiness, death and everything elseAthe "remainder" of lifeALear, a philosopher at the University of Chicago as well as a practicing psychoanalyst, reconsiders along the way Freud's theory of the unconscious, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and a host of the classic philosophical notions. Freud's idea of the unconscious, Lear argues, offered a radically new idea of human characterAone that could finally compete with that described by Aristotle. But because of the teleological weak spots (which he considers at length) in both theories, neither thinker alone provides a sufficient guide to living or to thinking about life. Aristotle, he argues, skirts around the explicit idea of happiness; Freud, he incisively suggests (turning Freudian critiques back on their inventor), repressed his own insights into the death urge. In the end, Lear ties the ideas of these two rather different thinkers together in a cogent, if not necessarily revelatory, way. Complex in theory and filled with dense language ("enigmatic signifiers," "the metaphysics of aggression"), this text is more suited to an academic than a popular audience. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Today, the domain of psychology is hopelessly split between the "high" theory, caught in its expert language, and the popular self-help manuals addressing people's actual crises and dilemmas. The miracle of Lear's book is that he effortlessly unites these two seemingly incompatible dimensions. Through the most stringent conceptual analysis of the basic notions of the Freudian edifice, he asks the simple crucial questions that gnaw us all: What is happiness? How does psychoanalysis enable us to orient ourselves in today's reality? With envy and admiration, I still wonder how Lear was able to do it!
--Slavoj Zizek, author of The Sublime Object of Ideology

Jonathan Lear has done it again! Bringing sophisticated psychoanalytic understanding to a close textual analysis of the Nichomachean Ethics, he demonstrates how both Aristotle's contemplative life and Freud's death instinct were designed to defend against a fundamental problem in constructing a unified view of man, and suggests the outline of a new and original approach--one that will allow us to think of self-disrupting minds in creative but non-principled ways. Lear has continued the rich dialogue that he began in Open Minded, and that spans centuries, cultures, and great minds--from Plato's and Aristotle's Athens, to Freud's Vienna, and finally to Lear's America. This book is essential reading for students of philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, and Western civilization.
--Robert Michels, M.D., former Dean, Cornell Medical School

These deeply thoughtful and provocative lectures present, dissect, and critique the attempts of both ancient Greek ethics and modern psychoanalytic theory to come to grips with purposefulness in human life. Lear's elegant interweaving of textual exegesis, philosophical reflection, and psychoanalytic theorizing is at once a welcome contribution to scholarship and a highly accessible exploration of the sense that something is missing in life.
--Alan Code, Nicholas C. Petris Professor of Greek Studies, University of California at Berkeley

In this book Jonathan Lear provides an invaluable and necessary link between psychoanalysis and philosophy. He describes the break that was introduced into earlier world views by Freud's discovery of the unavoidably irrational and chaotic unconscious part of our mind, and the way the mind internally attacks itself (Freud's death instinct). Lear shows how such a "break" can be a breakdown or a breakthrough, opening new possibilities and enlarging our horizons.
--Hanna Segal, Training Analyst, British Institute of Psychoanalysis and author of Dream, Phantasy and Art

Not many people are equally appreciative of Plato and Freud, and fewer still are able to move back and forth between contemporary discussions among philosophers and the highly technical literature of psychoanalysis as easily as Lear does...Daring and provocative.
--Richard Rorty (New York Times Book Review )

Here's an intricate, heavyweight treatment of Aristotle's eudaimonia, Freud's Thanatos, and the role of the unconscious in ethical life that demands a lot of intellectual effort. Yet there's no jargon or obfuscation in it. Lear is doing real philosophical work--engaging both with ideas and with us.
--Norah Vincent (Village Voice )

An extended meditation on Aristotle's conception of happiness and Freud's approach to death, the book argues that both thinkers fell prey to a similar illusion...[the thought] that our desires can ever come to an end...There is great depth to Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life.
--Andrew Stark (Times Literary Supplement )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (February 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674006747
• ISBN-13: 978-0674006744
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Satisfying consideration of Aristotle and Freud, January 21, 2001

By 

Michael Guttentag (Santa Monica, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Hardcover)

Lear is both a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. The pleasure in this short book comes as he keenly applies the skills of each discipline to thinkers, Aristotle and Freud, who are not usually tested by both disciplines. It is a pleasure to read a psychoanalytic critique of Aristotle and a philosophical critique of Freud. Unfortunately, Lear, while a capable critic, does not, in this book anyway, succeed in providing a robust alternative view. In any case, this book is quite accessible to the reader not deeply versed in either Aristotle or Freud's writings.

Lear first elucidates a critical, unresolved tension in Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle spends most of the Nichomachean Ethics focusing on the satisfaction to be gained from living an active life of "the traditional ethical virtues informed by practical wisdom." But at the end of the Nichomachean Ethics, according to Lear, Aristotle switches course and now posits the contemplative life as the exemplary, though ultimately never fully achievable, life. It is this sudden switch that Lear focuses on. Lear argues that this switch occurs because Aristotle realizes that there is something incomplete in the premise on which he built the majority of the Nichomachean Ethics. Lear explains from a psychoanalytic perspective this was the bubbling up of Aristotle's anxiety about the unanswered questions in his ethical analysis.

As for Freud, Lear focuses first on the weakness of Freud's evidence for the death instinct. This is nothing new, as the death instinct is clearly a broad step beyond Freud's earlier, more nuanced theorizing. But then Lear goes on to argue that Freud's need to provide a comprehensive explanation of aggression is what drove Freud to posit the death instinct. According to Lear, it was Freud's avoidance of ambiguity that motivated the death instinct reasoning. Lear is compelling here, and is probably pointing out an implicit desire in most people's thinking for "an answer." But Lear's alternative hypothesis of the "open minded" solution left me feeling a little empty. Lear would probably argue that that is because I have an irrational need for a complete story; still, the absence of real meat around Lear's conception makes the essay less than brilliant.

Lear provides a wonderful teasing out of weaknesses in Aristotle and Freud's thinking about ultimate goals. As for Lear's own resolution of the issues that he feels are unresolved by Aristotle and Freud, they are less than complete and satisfying. Lear finds fault with any complete, teleological resolution of what it means to "live a good life." The result is a disappointing "non-answer" which Lear would probably argue is the best we can do. Worth buying, worth reading, but not a book that will change your life.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing look into Aristotle and Freud, February 5, 2001

By 

Jeffrey Wolf "postgraduate" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Hardcover)

First, to appreciate this book you have to be intimately acquainted with the later Freud and Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Lear's book is a copy of the Tanner Lectures that he gave to an audience at Cambridge University, so it is, unlike some of Lear's other works, quite academic.

If this doesn't bother you, then you're in for a real treat. Lear uses the tools of psychoanalysis (in a reasonable fashion, thankfully) to pick apart Freud's postulation of the death instinct, and Aristotle's decree that happiness is the highest good.

I was particularly impressed with his analysis of how guilt may have been a factor in both Freud and Aristotle's shaky attempts to base their theories on a single, all encompassing principle that gives life a teleological meaning.

24 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I hoped it would be better, November 1, 2000

By 

Diane Johnson (Denver) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Hardcover)

Jonathan Lear promises to treat one of the greatest subjects around; the relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy. As a psychoanalyst who has also studied a lot of philosophy, this book seemed to have been written for me. If only! Lear has the maddening habit of never saying what he means, and instead couching all his thoughts in the most obscure prose. Reading this book is like wading through fog, or trying to follow a conversation on a crackling long-distance line. If only the apparent complexity was in line with the contents. But having just read the book twice from cover to cover, I can honestly say that Lear's conclusions are strikingly banal - and that he just expends vast amount of footnotes and bluster to reach them. Someone needs to write the book that this might have been. My choice is probably Adam Phillips, a wonderful British psychoanalyst, who I'd recommend everyone check out.