Imagining the End by Jonathan Lear
Jonathan Lears insightful meditation joins the end of the world to the endthat is, the purposeof 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.
Lear is a lovely and subtle writer, someone who has a rare capacity to introduce ways of seeing and interrogating the world that dignify our confusion and pain while also opening up new possibilities for moving forward…There are no answers in Imagining the End, or in most of Lear’s workThere are no recipes for maturity. Or plans for a stable peace in Ukraine. What his work does give us is an example of how to engage in the world with extraordinary care. -- Daniel Oppenheimer * Washington Post *
Lear moves agilely among the ideas of such philosophers as Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein while using the insights of psychoanalysis to explore the human drive to create meaning…[A] wondrous and humanizing book. -- Paul Baumann * National Review *
Offers provocative reflections on flourishing in the face of existential and civilizational challenges. * Publishers Weekly *
Imagining the End suggests, in a sober yet hopeful spirit, how mourning, rightly understood, can give meaning to our lives in the disenchanted times in which we find ourselves. In exploring the hopes that have failed us, the projects that have run into the sand, the loves we have lost, the attachments that have come to an end—a work of what amounts to creative mourning—we can develop a stance in the here and how from which the psyche can look outward and flourish. As he did earlier in his explorations of what it can mean to hope, Jonathan Lear here expands and deepens our understanding of what it can mean to mourn. -- J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate
A deeply insightful and thought-enriching work by one of the most original philosophers writing today. Imagining the End is acutely aware of the danger we stand in of finding ourselves on an uninhabitable planet. But Lear is also aware of how the consciousness of impending loss can bring out the illumination inherent in meaningful life, often occluded in day-to-day living. -- Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age
A greatly original treatment of central issues of human life—issues which have taken on new importance as we have become sharply aware of the vulnerability of life on this planet. Lear’s writing reshapes our understanding of where philosophy can take us. -- Cora Diamond, author of Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics
Mourning, as Jonathan Lear shows, has always been a way of remembering that can add something new to the world. Imagining the End takes a hard look at the contemporary grounds of despair—for a person, a group, or a species—but it conveys hope by the accuracy of its imaginings. Lear’s treatment here of a great subject of moral psychology is characteristically subtle and inventive. -- David Bromwich, author of American Breakdown
In a world buffeted by multiple catastrophes, from gun violence to the destructive effects of climate change, psychoanalyst and philosopher Lear offers a hopeful path through grief and confusion. * Washington Post *
An utterly distinctive work of moral philosophy, less an analysis of the threat climate change poses to our environment than to our estimation of ourselves…Lear’s writing [is] alive with the pleasure, inquisitiveness, and openness to surprise that it recommends. -- Jon Baskin * Chronicle of Higher Education *
Anyone interested in mourning—and since we are all mourners, that leaves no one out—should read this book. -- Paul J. Griffiths * Commonweal *
An elegant set of essays…[Each] is a lapidary exercise in precisely ordered, original, and aesthetically pleasing writing. The emphasis on ethical exemplars drawing on Aristotle’s virtue ethics is also a refreshing departure from the abstract principle-based approach to ethics which dominates, for example, American bioethics. -- Arthur Kleinman * Journal of Medical Humanities *
The humanities, says Lear, are dedicated to conserving our best accounts of what it is to be human, ‘human’ in the normative, Aristotelian sense. They are an especially productive form of mourning. They mourn because they look on a glory that is past, they are productive because, if practiced well, they ‘conserve’ that past glory…[A] valuable book. -- Julian Young * Society *
Lear moves agilely among the ideas of such philosophers as Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein while using the insights of psychoanalysis to explore the human drive to create meaning…[A] wondrous and humanizing book. -- Paul Baumann * National Review *
Offers provocative reflections on flourishing in the face of existential and civilizational challenges. * Publishers Weekly *
Imagining the End suggests, in a sober yet hopeful spirit, how mourning, rightly understood, can give meaning to our lives in the disenchanted times in which we find ourselves. In exploring the hopes that have failed us, the projects that have run into the sand, the loves we have lost, the attachments that have come to an end—a work of what amounts to creative mourning—we can develop a stance in the here and how from which the psyche can look outward and flourish. As he did earlier in his explorations of what it can mean to hope, Jonathan Lear here expands and deepens our understanding of what it can mean to mourn. -- J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate
A deeply insightful and thought-enriching work by one of the most original philosophers writing today. Imagining the End is acutely aware of the danger we stand in of finding ourselves on an uninhabitable planet. But Lear is also aware of how the consciousness of impending loss can bring out the illumination inherent in meaningful life, often occluded in day-to-day living. -- Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age
A greatly original treatment of central issues of human life—issues which have taken on new importance as we have become sharply aware of the vulnerability of life on this planet. Lear’s writing reshapes our understanding of where philosophy can take us. -- Cora Diamond, author of Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics
Mourning, as Jonathan Lear shows, has always been a way of remembering that can add something new to the world. Imagining the End takes a hard look at the contemporary grounds of despair—for a person, a group, or a species—but it conveys hope by the accuracy of its imaginings. Lear’s treatment here of a great subject of moral psychology is characteristically subtle and inventive. -- David Bromwich, author of American Breakdown
In a world buffeted by multiple catastrophes, from gun violence to the destructive effects of climate change, psychoanalyst and philosopher Lear offers a hopeful path through grief and confusion. * Washington Post *
An utterly distinctive work of moral philosophy, less an analysis of the threat climate change poses to our environment than to our estimation of ourselves…Lear’s writing [is] alive with the pleasure, inquisitiveness, and openness to surprise that it recommends. -- Jon Baskin * Chronicle of Higher Education *
Anyone interested in mourning—and since we are all mourners, that leaves no one out—should read this book. -- Paul J. Griffiths * Commonweal *
An elegant set of essays…[Each] is a lapidary exercise in precisely ordered, original, and aesthetically pleasing writing. The emphasis on ethical exemplars drawing on Aristotle’s virtue ethics is also a refreshing departure from the abstract principle-based approach to ethics which dominates, for example, American bioethics. -- Arthur Kleinman * Journal of Medical Humanities *
The humanities, says Lear, are dedicated to conserving our best accounts of what it is to be human, ‘human’ in the normative, Aristotelian sense. They are an especially productive form of mourning. They mourn because they look on a glory that is past, they are productive because, if practiced well, they ‘conserve’ that past glory…[A] valuable book. -- Julian Young * Society *
Jonathan Lear was John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor on the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He held positions at Cambridge University and Yale University, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780674297333 |
| ISBN 10 | 0674297334 |
| Title | Imagining the End |
| Author | Jonathan Lear |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
| Year published | 2024-09-03 |
| Number of pages | 176 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |