Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul

by Jonathan Lear

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Sociology

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Jonathan Lear is an American philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and served as the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society from 2014 to 2022.

Reviews

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

On one level this book is about Freudian psychoanalysis - in those respects I did not understand some of the book, much less am I qualified to comment on it - but the topic spills over into interpretation of life and literature. Fabulous discussions include what Oedipus did wrong, the definition of relativism, Wittgensteinian language-games, the illusions we project on the wall of the cave, how pity makes fear possible, and why an author should be able to write both comedy and tragedy.

Lear explains in the Preface: "Plato, one might say, is working out the very idea of what it is to be minded as we are. And he does this in the light of Socrates' exemplification--a life spent showing--that one of the most important truths about us is that we have the capacity to be open minded: the capacity to live nondefensively with the question of how to live." (p. 8)

Aside from some conclusions that I disagreed with (or, um, thought I understood well enough to disagree with), my only complaint is that the writing in many places was too thick and frustrating. It may be only that I lack the requisite background in psychology.

There is a particularity interesting section on irrationality (Chapter 5: Restlessness, Phantasy, and the Concept of Mind) which I was compelled to read a second time, my comprehension having been dampened by an extra tablespoon of Grand Marnier on my chocolate sorbet, thus illustrating the feeling of a certain pleasant kind of irrationality but not yielding the satisfaction of having understood the statements about irrationality. Upon re-reading the chapter I was rewarded. Socrates said akrasia (weakness of will) is impossible, since no one intentionally commits acts that they believe to be wrong; Aristotle agreed with him in the strictest sense, but since there are commonsense examples of weakness of will, Aristotle explained them as instances of ignorance or lapses of judgment; Lear points out another explanation, which is that seemingly irrational acts are motivated by unconscious thoughts and feelings that, when made explicit, seem perfectly rational. Lear says the problem with this theory is that it divides the mind in two--the conscious and the unconscious--and it fails to explain how rational unconscious thoughts somehow become irrational when transferred to the conscious mind. (pp. 81-82)

I recommend this book together with Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. Not that I'm a fan of the latter, but I happened to pick it up simultaneously and it was an interesting fit.

Jonathan Lear. Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter 10 (I think?), Inside and Outside the Republic, is a good review of the City-Soul analogy in Plato's Republic. Lear's response to its criticisms relies too heavily on psychology, though, and lets Plato off too easily.

[Robert Monk · Rating 4 out of 5]

* Emotion results from belief, not the other way around. *

... and other fascinating philosophical re-readings of Freud, etc.

[m · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essays collected in this book are good but sometimes rather recondite.

[saml · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful tone and clarity from lear, as always. this collection is a little more of a jumble than the other things of his i've read, but he's personally consistent enough to smooth out the gaps. my favourites were actually the last two essays on wittgenstein and transcendental arguments, just because they condensed lots of things i've been worried about. however, i do wonder how much this book actually justifies its broad project: it is not much a defence of freud to implicitly treat him in the same way the author treats contemporaries as untimely as those old greeks. modern scientists of the soul are unlikely to be impressed

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great essays that explore relationships between thinkers such as Freud and Plato, Freud and Aristotle, Freud and Freudians… ok mostly it’s just Freud, but there are at least two essays that compare Wittgenstein with Kant.

Definitely requires basic familiarity with each thinker’s ideas and terms. Thought provoking and well reasoned.

[Grace T · Rating 1 out of 5]

Long-winded, recondite