Jonathan Lear

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 said, “and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” It is precisely this point—that of a people faced with the end of their way of life—that prompts the philosophical and ethical inquiry pursued in Radical Hope. In Jonathan Lear’s view, Plenty Coups’s story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one’s culture might collapse?This is a vulnerability that affects us all—insofar as we are all inhabitants of a civilization, and civilizations are themselves vulnerable to historical forces. How should we live with this vulnerability? Can we make any sense of facing up to such a challenge courageously? Using the available anthropology and history of the Indian tribes during their confinement to reservations, and drawing on philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, Lear explores the story of the Crow Nation at an impasse as it bears upon these questions—and these questions as they bear upon our own place in the world. His book is a deeply revealing, and deeply moving, philosophical inquiry into a peculiar vulnerability that goes to the heart of the human condition.

Jonathan Lear 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. These include the philosophy of mind, free will and determinism, rationality, the nature of the self and subjectivity, and ethics and religion. He also considers some of the deeper issues and problems Freud engaged with, brilliantly illustrating their philosophical significance: human sexuality, the unconscious, dreams, and the theory of transference.Freud is one of the most important introductions and contributions to understanding this great thinker to have been published for many years, and will be essential reading for anyone in the humanities, social sciences and beyond with an interest in Freud or philosophy.

This is a philosophical introduction to Aristotle, and Professor Lear starts where Aristotle himself started. He introduces us to the essence of Aristotle's philosophy and guides us through all the central Aristotelian texts--selected from the Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics and the biological and logical works. The book is written in a direct, lucid style that engages the reader with the themes in an active and participatory manner. It will prove a stimulating introduction for all students of Greek philosophy and for a wide range of others interested in Aristotle as a giant figure in Western intellectual history.

"Jonathan Lear has shown us both Freud`s texts and his subject matter from a new angle of vision, one that renders much recent controversy about psychoanalytic theory irrelevant. For any student of those texts this book is indispensable."―Alasdair MacIntyre"Lear makes one understand how psychoanalysis works not only on the therapist`s couch but also as a condition of being alive. . . . Love and Its Place in Nature not only offers a form of spiritual nutriment for the self, it also defines that self with a clear profundity that few readers will have encountered before."―Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times"A brief and engaging philosophical perspective on Freudian psychoanalysis. The book is simply written, but important themes are profoundly investigated. . . . An important philosophic reading of Freud."―Don Browning, Christian CenturyIn this brilliant book, Jonathan Lear argues that Freud posits love as a basic force in nature, one that makes individuation―the condition for psychological health and development―possible. Love is active not just in the development of the individual but also in individual analysis and indeed in the development of psychoanalysis itself, says Lear. Expanding on philosophical conceptions of love, nature, and mind, Lear shows that love can cure because it is the force that makes us human.

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.

A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction"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 LaureateA 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. They're different exercises, but in Jonathan Lear's profound reflection on mourning and meaning, these two kinds of thinking are also connected: related ways of exploring some of our deepest questions about individual and collective values and the enigmatic nature of the good.Lear is one of the most distinctive intellectual voices in America, a philosopher and psychoanalyst who draws from ancient and modern thought, personal history, and everyday experience to help us think about how we can flourish, or fail to, in a world of flux and finitude that we only weakly control. His range is on full display in Imagining the End as he explores seemingly disparate concerns to challenge how we respond to loss, crisis, and hope.He considers our bewilderment in the face of planetary catastrophe. He examines the role of the humanities in expanding our imaginative and emotional repertoire. He asks how we might live with the realization that cultures, to which we traditionally turn for solace, are themselves vulnerable. He explores how mourning can help us thrive, the role of moral exemplars in shaping our sense of the good, and the place of gratitude in human life. Along the way, he touches on figures as diverse as Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, and the British royals Harry and Meghan.Written with Lear's characteristic elegance, philosophical depth, and psychological perceptiveness, Imagining the End is a powerful meditation on persistence in an age of turbulence and anxiety.

Freud is discredited, so we don’t have to think about the darker strains of unconscious motivation anymore. We know what moves our political leaders, so we don’t have to look too closely at their thinking either. In fact, everywhere we look in contemporary culture, knowingness has taken the place of thought. This book is a spirited assault on that deadening trend, especially as it affects our deepest attempts to understand the human psyche―in philosophy and psychoanalysis. It explodes the widespread notion that we already know the problems and proper methods in these fields and so no longer need to ask crucial questions about the structure of human subjectivity. “What is psychology?” Open Minded is not so much an answer to this question as an attempt to understand what is being asked. The inquiry leads Jonathan Lear , a philosopher and psychoanalyst, back to Plato and Aristotle, to Freud and psychoanalysis, and to Wittgenstein. Lear argues that Freud and, more generally, psychoanalysis are the worthy inheritors of the Greek attempt to put our mindedness on display. There are also, he contends, deep affinities running through the works of Freud and Wittgenstein, despite their obvious differences. Both are concerned with how fantasy shapes our self-understanding; both reveal how life’s activities show more than we are able to say. The philosophical tradition has portrayed the mind as more rational than it is, even when trying to account for irrationality. Psychoanalysis shows us the mind as inherently restless, tending to disrupt its own functioning. And empirical psychology, for its part, ignores those aspects of human subjectivity that elude objective description. By triangulating between the Greeks, Freud, and Wittgenstein, Lear helps us recover a sense of what it is to be open-minded in our inquiries into the human soul.

Written by Jonathan Lear, 'The Monkey-Proof 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. A group of monkeys. A box full of nuts. A lever. A chute. The monkeys excitedly poke at the box with rocks ... nothing happens. Meanwhile, one monkey sits to the side, observing. Then, when the others wander off, he gets up and with a curious push of his palm presses the lever and the nuts tumble down the chute! Not believing his luck, he eats the nuts, presses the lever again and is rewarded with yet more nuts. He's cracked the challenge of the monkey-proof box. In their early years, children experience a world full of monkey-proof boxes it's a time of discovery, observation and experimentation, as they engage in the frustration and joy of learning how to release life's nuts. Then, as they progress through school, learning becomes more formal, easier in many ways. The nuts are handed to them on a plate and something important is lost. But it doesn't have to be that way. In this absorbing book, Jonathan sets out how primary school teachers can resist the nuts on a plate approach and deliver a curriculum rich in authentic learning experiences that help children learn from one another and grow into empowered, knowledgeable and creative thinkers who are driven by insatiable curiosity. In doing so, he inspires educators to unclutter their classrooms of the latest shiny initiatives and to foster a more refined pedagogical approach incorporating elements of facilitated and concept-based learning that simply improves pupils learning. Suitable for teachers, middle leaders and head teachers in primary school settings.

In 2001, Vanity Fair declared that the Age of Irony was over. Joan Didion has lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama has become an "irony-free zone." Jonathan Lear in his 2006 book Radical Hope looked into America’s heart to ask how might we dispose ourselves if we came to feel our way of life was coming to an end. Here, he mobilizes a squad of philosophers and a psychoanalyst to once again forge a radical way forward, by arguing that no genuinely human life is possible without irony. Becoming human should not be taken for granted, Lear writes. It is something we accomplish, something we get the hang of, and like Kierkegaard and Plato, Lear claims that irony is one of the essential tools we use to do this. For Lear and the participants in his Socratic dialogue, irony is not about being cool and detached like a player in a Woody Allen film. That, as Johannes Climacus, one of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors, puts it, “is something only assistant professors assume.” Instead, it is a renewed commitment to living seriously, to experiencing every disruption that shakes us out of our habitual ways of tuning out of life, with all its vicissitudes. While many over the centuries have argued differently, Lear claims that our feelings and desires tend toward order, a structure that irony shakes us into seeing. Lear’s exchanges with his interlocutors strengthen his claims, while his experiences as a practicing psychoanalyst bring an emotionally gripping dimension to what is at stake―the psychic costs and benefits of living with irony.

Guerrilla Teaching is a revolution. Not a flag-waving, drum-beating revolution, but an underground revolution, a classroom revolution. It's not about changing policy or influencing government; it's about doing what you know to be right, regardless of what you're told. It's sound advice for people on the people in real classrooms, working with real children, trying to make a real difference. Jonathan Lear's new book, Guerrilla Teaching, is packed with ideas to refresh teaching practice - combining direct teaching with creative child-led learning - and forge cross-curricular links to create engaging, motivating and fun learning experiences. Ultimately, Guerrilla Teaching is about making a difference. It's a book Jonathan Lear never meant to write, but it was just too important not to. to be a member of an unofficial group of combatants using the element of surprise to harass a larger less mobile target. Guerrilla To put children, and their learning, at the heart of lessons. To embrace problem-solving and risk-taking in the classroom. To be adaptable and creative. To think about the skills and knowledge children will need in the future. To stand up and make sure children get the education they deserve (even if it means subverting the system!). Filled with thoughts, ideas and strategies that will help to develop creativity and creative thinking in the primary classroom, Guerrilla Teaching is for trainee teachers, new teachers, teaching assistants, experienced teachers and head teachers - there's something for everyone!

This is a 1988 philosophical introduction to Aristotle, and Professor Lear starts where Aristotle himself starts. The first sentence of the Metaphysics states that all human beings by their nature desire to know. But what is it for us to be animated by this desire in this world? What is it for a creature to have a nature; what is our human nature; what must the world be like to be intelligible; and what must we be like to understand it systematically? Through a consideration of these questions Professor Lear introduces us to the essence of Aristotle's philosophy and guides us through the central Aristotelian texts - selected from the Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics and from the biological and logical works. The book is written in a direct, lucid style which engages the reader with the themes in an active, participatory manner.

"Therapeutic Action is many a passionate philosophical communication from one practicing analyst to other members of the psychoanalytic community; a commentary on the under-appreciated contribution of the psychoanalyst (and former student of Heidegger) Hans Loewald, and a profound yet succinct and non-technical discussion of the most important philosophical issues associated with psychoanalysis....The book is distinctive and original, and Jonathan Lear fuses its several dimensions into a whole that is more than the sum of its parts with prose that is effortless, humorous, and consistently engaging."--Sebastian Gardner, Professor of Philosophy, University College London"Jonathan Lear's Therapeutic Action vindicates its Oscar Wildean subtitle-- An Earnest Plea for Irony --by giving us a Kierkegaardian reading, not so much of Hans Loewald, but of the transferences between Loewald and Lear. Just as the surviving traces of Plato in Freud were to identify reality-testing with a cognition freed of its sexual past, even so Lear attempts his own version of Kierkegaard's "The Case of the Contemporary Disciple." Lear is Plato to Loewald's Socrates, which is an audacious venture. Therapeutic Action has the high merit of helping me to rethink some of my own transferences."--Harold Bloom"With this ultimately personal 'how-not-to' book, Lear engages the difficult how to write about the process of psychic change without betraying either love or science. Therapeutic Action will enliven the thinking of anyone involved in analyzing the psyche."--Carol Gilligan, New York University, author of In a Different Voice and The Birth of PleasureProminent professor and highly regarded author Jonathan Lear argues that, properly understood, irony plays a crucial role in therapeutic action. He asserts that irony itself has been regularly confused with sarcasm; it is often mistakenly assumed that irony and earnestness cannot go together.This book, then, is not merely about the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis--it is an enactment of conceptual therapy. Lear invites psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists to renew their own engagement with the fundamental concepts of their practice.To that end, the book investigates the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity that are appropriate for psychoanalysts, the concepts of internalization and of transference. Lear also offers an extended discussion of the theories of Hans Loewald and Paul Gray--and how they do and do not fit together. The very idea that love, or Eros, could be a drive--as Freud postulated--is given a new interpretation.

Wisdom Won from Illness brings into conversation two fields of humane inquiry―psychoanalysis and moral philosophy―that seem to have little to say to each other but which, taken together, form a basis for engaged ethical thought about how to live.Jonathan Lear begins by looking to the ancient Greek philosophers for insight into what constitutes the life well lived. Socrates said the human psyche should be ruled by reason, and much philosophy as well as psychology hangs on what he meant. For Aristotle, reason organized and presided over the harmonious soul; a wise person is someone capable of a full, happy, and healthy existence. Freud, plumbing the depths of unconscious desires and pre-linguistic thoughts, revealed just how unharmonious the psyche could be. Attuned to the stresses of modern existence, he investigated the myriad ways people fall ill and fail to thrive. Yet he inherited from Plato and Aristotle a key that the irrational part of the soul is not simply opposed to reason. It is a different manner of a creative intelligence that distorts what it seeks to understand.Can reason absorb the psyche’s nonrational elements into a whole conception of the flourishing, fully realized human being? Without a good answer to that question, Lear says, philosophy is cut from its moorings in human life. Wisdom Won from Illness illuminates the role of literature in shaping ethical thought about nonrational aspects of the mind, offering rich readings of Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, J. M. Coetzee, Marilynne Robinson, and others.

Auf Grundlage der Anthropologie und Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Ureinwohner sowie mittels Philosophie und psychoanalytischer Theorie erforscht Jonathan Lear die Geschichte des Volkes der Crow im Angesicht der kulturellen Zerstörung. Sein Buch ist eine tiefschürfende und höchst originelle philosophische Studie über eine eigentümliche Verletzlichkeit, die den Kern der conditio humana betrifft. Wie sollen wir mit der Möglichkeit umgehen, dass unsere eigene Kultur zusammenbrechen könnte, wie mit dieser Verwundbarkeit leben? Ist es sinnvoll, sich einer solchen Herausforderung mutig zu stellen?

Aristotle was the first and one of the greatest logicians. He not only devised the first system of formal logic, but also raised many fundamental problems in the philosophy of logic. In this book, Dr Lear shows how Aristotle's discussion of logical consequence, validity and proof can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of logic. No background knowledge of Aristotle is assumed.

A Washington Post Notable Work of NonfictionA Chronicle of Higher Education Best Scholarly Book“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“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.”–Daniel Oppenheimer, Washington PostThe range of Jonathan Lear’s abilities—as a philosopher and psychoanalyst who draws from ancient and modern thought, personal history, and everyday experience to help us think about how we can flourish in a world of flux and finitude—is on full display in Imagining the End. Lear masterfully explores how we respond to loss, crisis, and hope, considering our bewilderment in the face of planetary catastrophe. He examines the role of the humanities in expanding our imaginative and emotional repertoire.How might we live, he asks, when we realize just how vulnerable the cultures to which we traditionally turn for solace might be? He addresses how mourning can help us thrive, the role of moral exemplars in shaping our sense of the good, and the place of gratitude in human life. Along the way, he touches on figures as diverse as Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, and the British royals Harry and Meghan. Written with Lear’s characteristic elegance, philosophical depth, and psychological perceptiveness, Imagining the End is a powerful meditation on persistence in an age of turbulence and anxiety.

We are creatures for whom difficulty in understanding who we are constitutes who we are. This is not the difficulty of hard-to-discover facts. Nor is it the difficulty of a ‘pure’ conceptual investigation. It is a weird difficulty internal to our attempts to understand ourselves as having lives. And, in trying to face the difficulty – or in avoiding it – we shape our lives.In his Spinoza Lectures, collectively titled ‘The Idea of a Philosophical Anthropology’, Jonathan Lear combines insights from philosophy and psychoanalysis in an exciting fashion to analyze this difficulty that both constitutes who we are and makes us question who we are.

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.A group of monkeys. A box full of nuts. A lever. A chute. The monkeys excitedly poke at the box with rocks ... nothing happens. Meanwhile, one monkey sits to the side, observing. Then, when the others wander off, he gets up and - with a curious push of his palm - presses the lever and the nuts tumble down the chute! Not believing his luck, he eats the nuts, presses the lever again and is rewarded with yet more nuts. He's cracked the challenge of the monkey-proof box.In their early years, children experience a world full of monkey-proof boxes - it's a time of discovery, observation and experimentation, as they engage in the frustration and joy of learning how to release life's nuts. Then, as they progress through school, learning becomes more formal, easier in many ways. The nuts are handed to them on a plate and something important is lost.But it doesn't have to be that way.In this absorbing book, Jonathan sets out how primary school teachers can resist the 'nuts on a plate' approach and deliver a curriculum rich in authentic learning experiences that help children learn from one another and grow into empowered, knowledgeable and creative thinkers who are driven by insatiable curiosity.In doing so, he inspires educators to unclutter their classrooms of the latest shiny initiatives and to foster a more refined pedagogical approach - incorporating elements of facilitated and concept-based learning - that simply improves pupils' learning.Suitable for teachers, middle leaders and head teachers in primary school settings.Contents include: Part I: Curriculum. 1 - Slippers; 2 - Less is more; 3 - Skills; 4 - Tightrope walking; 5 - Planning; 6 - 'Love and hugs, Dave C.'; 7 - Softly, softly, catchee monkey; 8 - Hitches and hiccups. Part II: Pedagogy. 9 - Monkey sex; 10 - Rapid and sustained nonsense; 11 - Nuts on a plate; 12 - Nuts scattered in a clearing; 13 - Across the curriculum; 14 - The awkward banana; 15 - Caveman Dave and the TARDIS; 16 - Mastery and independence; 17 - The monkey-proof box; 18 - A spanner in the works; 19 - Freedom.

This book discusses how to write about the process of psychic change without betraying either love or science. It investigates the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity that are appropriate for psychoanalysts, the concepts of internalization and of transference.

Notre époque est dominée par le mythe de la transparence : de la sociologie aux neurosciences en passant par l'économie, tout concourt à réduire nos comportements à des explications rationnelles. Pourtant, à trop vouloir rationaliser, ne perdons-nous pas de vue l'humain ? Au-delà des schémas de la raison, demeure pour nous une question essentielle : "Comment vivre ?", ainsi que la nécessité d'y répondre. C'est justement l'objet de la psychanalyse : en renonçant à la rationalité, Freud a relevé le pari de nous aider à mieux vivre. Loin d'être invalidées, ses intuitions sur l'inconscient sont aujourd'hui en passe d'être confirmées par les découvertes de la neurobiologie. C'est pourquoi nous ne pouvons pas ignorer Freud. Par son approche transversale, parfois iconoclaste, ce livre s'applique à nous montrer comment les concepts de la psychanalyse gardent toute leur actualité. À travers cette introduction philosophique, Jonathan Lear nous ramène à l'essentiel de nos préoccupations sur le bonheur, la liberté et les valeurs.

The book is about Freuds instructive philosophy. Jonathan Lear combined with some major works, thoroughly discussing main ideas of Freud and making the detailed analysis and thinking on key concepts like the unconscious, love, empathy and so on, and shows how Freuds thinking responded to Socrates in some sense.

ARISTOTELES

This book discusses how to write about the process of psychic change without betraying either love or science. It investigates the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity that are appropriate for psychoanalysts, the concepts of internalization and of transference.