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Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life
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 Laureate
A 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.
"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 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.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
14 people are currently reading
484 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Lear
46 books72 followersJonathan 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.
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March 2, 2023The thoughts about mourning vs. melancholy, Aristotle and Freud are intriguing and will truly change my way of thinking and living. The chapter on Harry and Meghan was also surprising and of interest. I loved the ending and the discussion of gratitude and Wittgenstein's Ethics!
October 4, 2023
Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life, is a (somewhat) connected series of essays by Jonathan Lear which focus on grief, mourning, human flourishing, and the end of the Anthropocene.
In chapter one, Lear recounts a joke told in the question-and-answer section of a conference presentation on human-caused climate change and the end of the Anthropocene. The
joke, told by a young academic, was the proclamation that, “We will not be missed!” (1). On
Lear’s account, the joke states both that we don’t deserve to be missed because we caused the catastrophe and that we won’t be missed because there will be nobody to miss us. One could say
that by engaging in dark humor, the young academic is refusing to mourn. From here, Lear connects the Freudian notion that the ability to mourn is integral to our health and well-being with the idea that mourning is connected to human flourishing. For Aristotle, our capability to act in a manner which is kalon—something like fine, noble, or beautiful—separates our flourishing from the flourishing of animals.
Lear wrote the second chapter during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, back when the presumption that our future would be normal, let alone better, was shattered. In this chapter, Lear discusses Sigmund Freud’s essay, “On Transience,” in which Freud describes a walk he took with a friend and a young poet through a beautiful meadow. The poet expressed that he refuses to feel joy from the beauty of the nature around them since it will disappear in the winter. Freud, the character in the essay, states that the transience of beauty increases its value. Both the poet and the character of Freud are revolting against mourning. The poet fears the loss of joy and thus refuses to feel joy at all. Freud characterizes the transience of beauty as good simply because he doesn’t want to deal with the tragedy of the loss of beauty. The essay ends a
year later, in the midst of the First World War. Lear characterizes “On Transience” as an inside
look into the real Freud’s fragmented psyche with the poet and Freud representing two opposing views. Freud states that once we have mourned, we can hope to rebuild our conception of a stable foundation and a better future. Lear points out that this notion of hoping to rebuild what was shattered relies on some sort of healthy repetition which needs to be clarified further.
It is important to acknowledge that quite a bit has changed since Lear wrote chapter two. It is three years past the first wave of the pandemic. On the surface, the world appears to be back to normal. We can remember what it was like to live in the pandemic; but the cultural context in which we are reading this essay is not the context in which Lear had intended. So, is there a value to reading this essay now? I believe so. If mourning truly is a process in which hope for the future and a sense of societal stability is rebuilt, then I think that we need to consider whether we—as a public—ever mourned in the sense which Lear describes. As of now, it doesn’t seem like the American public perceives society as stable and it doesn’t seem like we have much hope. Mere talk of the pandemic is still divisive, so our ability to mourn in a social setting has been limited. I think that in large when we talk about the pandemic, we mainly refer to the closed shops and restaurants rather than the one-million Americans who died. Perhaps we haven’t—as a society—mourned in a way that rebuilds hope and a sense of stability. Perhaps we are refusing to mourn.
In chapter three, Lear connects back to the notion that mourning is connected to human flourishing. He then expands upon his notion of virtue ethics by describing how we can look to moral exemplars and how we can achieve the healthy repetition he discussed in chapter two. The chapter begins with a description of part of the Nichomachean Ethics where Aristotle uses Priam—the last king of Troy—as a moral exemplar for his students who already have some ethical education. Although the circumstances that Priam was in destroyed his eudaimonia, Priam was still able to hold onto the kalon. Lear suggests that by looking at Priam we can
imagine the end and in doing so engage in a healthy sense of participatory mourning. However,
Lear emphasizes that in order to be virtuous one needs local exemplars to look to. Lear sees mourning as a practice of healthy repetition. For example, when we lose a loved one, we continuously think of the memories we shared and in doing so we come to a better understanding
of what made our relationship with that person so special.
I believe that Lear is unsuccessful in showing how we can practically look to moral exemplars in the coming climate crisis. This chapter is framed as a lesson in practical ethics. However, the examples of local exemplars which Lear gives fail to give us any clue as to what a virtuous agent would do given the circumstances of the incoming climate crisis.
In chapter four, Lear uses a surprising topic—the Oprah interview in which Meghan Markle revealed that she secretly married Prince Harry days before their public ceremony—as a way of discussing the connection between the humanities, kalon, and mourning. In Lear’s view, when Meghan said, “[our public marriage] is for the world, but we want our union between us,” she was representing that her conception of a real wedding does not align with the official event (66-7). In other words, Meghan wanted to have a wedding that is kalon. Lear then connects this to the humanities which are a way of exploring the kalon. Furthermore, the humanities—
supposedly—are a form of mourning. In mourning we practice our capacity to love, we make human meaning, and we attempt to gain from what we have lost. Lear gives the example of the benefits we gain from studying Aristotle after he is dead.
I’m afraid that Lear’s conception of mourning is far too vague to draw to the connection that he was hoping for. It may be the case that there are similarities between practicing the humanities and mourning; however, Lear gives no reason to believe that any quality inherent to the humanities is sufficient for mourning.
In chapter five, Lear discusses the Battle of Gettysburg and the asymmetry between the treatment of the dead union soldiers and the dead confederate soldiers. After the Civil War, the bodies of the union soldiers were buried and memorialized while the bodies of the confederate soldiers were treated with very minimal respect (at least at first). The reason why the bodies were treated with minimal respect, according to Lear, is that we do not currently have a way of mourning the dead without memorializing and honoring them. The lack of mourning is tied to judgement while mourning is tied to honor. Of course, the confederates fought for a cause which was morally reprehensible; however, it is important to acknowledge that the confederates were still humans engaging in what they believed to be kalon. It thus seems that we should form some way in which we can mourn wrongdoers without commending their choices. Although Lear does not say it explicitly, I believe that Lear is drawing a parallel between the judgement of humanity by the young academic and the judgement of the confederates by us.
Chapter six begins with an account of Ted Hughes’ poem “Six Young Men.” The poem describes viewing an old photograph of six lively men who have since died. Lear discusses the difficulty in this case of comprehending concepts like life and death or past and present. Lear refers to this as the difficulty of reality. This isn’t a difficulty to cognitively explain reality; rather, it seems like the difficulty is located within reality. Lear compares this difficulty described by Ted Hughes with the experience of the poet in Freud’s essay. Chapter six, in my opinion, is
largely redundant. Although this chapter is written in an artistically pleasing manner, any unique content in this chapter could have easily been put into the second chapter.
In chapter seven, Lear discusses gratitude and its relation to human well-being and flourishing. Emotions generally achieve some social purpose; however, a person never owes another gratitude. By repeatedly internalizing gratitude, one improves their ability to be virtuous. Chapter seven offers an interesting account of virtue and emotion, and it expands upon and clarifies Lear’s conception of healthy repetition. However, I am left disappointed in the fact that Lear does not explicitly connect his conception of gratitude to the question of how we should mourn in times of catastrophe.
Overall, Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life is an artistically enjoyable book which prompts many interesting philosophical questions. However, these questions are connected so loosely that the reader is often left without closure. Furthermore, this project is so reliant on virtue ethics that a non-virtue ethicist would likely find little substance. Meanwhile, Lear gives such a vague and hollow account of virtue ethics that I’m not sure that a virtue ethicist would find much substance in this book either.
Levi Smith,
Western Michigan University.
In chapter one, Lear recounts a joke told in the question-and-answer section of a conference presentation on human-caused climate change and the end of the Anthropocene. The
joke, told by a young academic, was the proclamation that, “We will not be missed!” (1). On
Lear’s account, the joke states both that we don’t deserve to be missed because we caused the catastrophe and that we won’t be missed because there will be nobody to miss us. One could say
that by engaging in dark humor, the young academic is refusing to mourn. From here, Lear connects the Freudian notion that the ability to mourn is integral to our health and well-being with the idea that mourning is connected to human flourishing. For Aristotle, our capability to act in a manner which is kalon—something like fine, noble, or beautiful—separates our flourishing from the flourishing of animals.
Lear wrote the second chapter during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, back when the presumption that our future would be normal, let alone better, was shattered. In this chapter, Lear discusses Sigmund Freud’s essay, “On Transience,” in which Freud describes a walk he took with a friend and a young poet through a beautiful meadow. The poet expressed that he refuses to feel joy from the beauty of the nature around them since it will disappear in the winter. Freud, the character in the essay, states that the transience of beauty increases its value. Both the poet and the character of Freud are revolting against mourning. The poet fears the loss of joy and thus refuses to feel joy at all. Freud characterizes the transience of beauty as good simply because he doesn’t want to deal with the tragedy of the loss of beauty. The essay ends a
year later, in the midst of the First World War. Lear characterizes “On Transience” as an inside
look into the real Freud’s fragmented psyche with the poet and Freud representing two opposing views. Freud states that once we have mourned, we can hope to rebuild our conception of a stable foundation and a better future. Lear points out that this notion of hoping to rebuild what was shattered relies on some sort of healthy repetition which needs to be clarified further.
It is important to acknowledge that quite a bit has changed since Lear wrote chapter two. It is three years past the first wave of the pandemic. On the surface, the world appears to be back to normal. We can remember what it was like to live in the pandemic; but the cultural context in which we are reading this essay is not the context in which Lear had intended. So, is there a value to reading this essay now? I believe so. If mourning truly is a process in which hope for the future and a sense of societal stability is rebuilt, then I think that we need to consider whether we—as a public—ever mourned in the sense which Lear describes. As of now, it doesn’t seem like the American public perceives society as stable and it doesn’t seem like we have much hope. Mere talk of the pandemic is still divisive, so our ability to mourn in a social setting has been limited. I think that in large when we talk about the pandemic, we mainly refer to the closed shops and restaurants rather than the one-million Americans who died. Perhaps we haven’t—as a society—mourned in a way that rebuilds hope and a sense of stability. Perhaps we are refusing to mourn.
In chapter three, Lear connects back to the notion that mourning is connected to human flourishing. He then expands upon his notion of virtue ethics by describing how we can look to moral exemplars and how we can achieve the healthy repetition he discussed in chapter two. The chapter begins with a description of part of the Nichomachean Ethics where Aristotle uses Priam—the last king of Troy—as a moral exemplar for his students who already have some ethical education. Although the circumstances that Priam was in destroyed his eudaimonia, Priam was still able to hold onto the kalon. Lear suggests that by looking at Priam we can
imagine the end and in doing so engage in a healthy sense of participatory mourning. However,
Lear emphasizes that in order to be virtuous one needs local exemplars to look to. Lear sees mourning as a practice of healthy repetition. For example, when we lose a loved one, we continuously think of the memories we shared and in doing so we come to a better understanding
of what made our relationship with that person so special.
I believe that Lear is unsuccessful in showing how we can practically look to moral exemplars in the coming climate crisis. This chapter is framed as a lesson in practical ethics. However, the examples of local exemplars which Lear gives fail to give us any clue as to what a virtuous agent would do given the circumstances of the incoming climate crisis.
In chapter four, Lear uses a surprising topic—the Oprah interview in which Meghan Markle revealed that she secretly married Prince Harry days before their public ceremony—as a way of discussing the connection between the humanities, kalon, and mourning. In Lear’s view, when Meghan said, “[our public marriage] is for the world, but we want our union between us,” she was representing that her conception of a real wedding does not align with the official event (66-7). In other words, Meghan wanted to have a wedding that is kalon. Lear then connects this to the humanities which are a way of exploring the kalon. Furthermore, the humanities—
supposedly—are a form of mourning. In mourning we practice our capacity to love, we make human meaning, and we attempt to gain from what we have lost. Lear gives the example of the benefits we gain from studying Aristotle after he is dead.
I’m afraid that Lear’s conception of mourning is far too vague to draw to the connection that he was hoping for. It may be the case that there are similarities between practicing the humanities and mourning; however, Lear gives no reason to believe that any quality inherent to the humanities is sufficient for mourning.
In chapter five, Lear discusses the Battle of Gettysburg and the asymmetry between the treatment of the dead union soldiers and the dead confederate soldiers. After the Civil War, the bodies of the union soldiers were buried and memorialized while the bodies of the confederate soldiers were treated with very minimal respect (at least at first). The reason why the bodies were treated with minimal respect, according to Lear, is that we do not currently have a way of mourning the dead without memorializing and honoring them. The lack of mourning is tied to judgement while mourning is tied to honor. Of course, the confederates fought for a cause which was morally reprehensible; however, it is important to acknowledge that the confederates were still humans engaging in what they believed to be kalon. It thus seems that we should form some way in which we can mourn wrongdoers without commending their choices. Although Lear does not say it explicitly, I believe that Lear is drawing a parallel between the judgement of humanity by the young academic and the judgement of the confederates by us.
Chapter six begins with an account of Ted Hughes’ poem “Six Young Men.” The poem describes viewing an old photograph of six lively men who have since died. Lear discusses the difficulty in this case of comprehending concepts like life and death or past and present. Lear refers to this as the difficulty of reality. This isn’t a difficulty to cognitively explain reality; rather, it seems like the difficulty is located within reality. Lear compares this difficulty described by Ted Hughes with the experience of the poet in Freud’s essay. Chapter six, in my opinion, is
largely redundant. Although this chapter is written in an artistically pleasing manner, any unique content in this chapter could have easily been put into the second chapter.
In chapter seven, Lear discusses gratitude and its relation to human well-being and flourishing. Emotions generally achieve some social purpose; however, a person never owes another gratitude. By repeatedly internalizing gratitude, one improves their ability to be virtuous. Chapter seven offers an interesting account of virtue and emotion, and it expands upon and clarifies Lear’s conception of healthy repetition. However, I am left disappointed in the fact that Lear does not explicitly connect his conception of gratitude to the question of how we should mourn in times of catastrophe.
Overall, Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life is an artistically enjoyable book which prompts many interesting philosophical questions. However, these questions are connected so loosely that the reader is often left without closure. Furthermore, this project is so reliant on virtue ethics that a non-virtue ethicist would likely find little substance. Meanwhile, Lear gives such a vague and hollow account of virtue ethics that I’m not sure that a virtue ethicist would find much substance in this book either.
Levi Smith,
Western Michigan University.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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April 15, 2023If you're looking for a book about mourning climate change and impending doom, don't read this.. not what I expected haha
March 4, 2023
A very thoughtful (and not exactly easy to read, for me anyway) meditation on ethical life and gratitude as basic attunement. Lots of cool stuff here, including references to Megan Markle that go deeper and smarter than social media, but I felt I wasn't quite smart enough to get it all. Might try again someday. The Aristotelian idea of the kaolin intrigued me.
August 13, 2023
Philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear begins his discussion about how to live Aristotle’s kalon, or a joyful and ethical life, by addressing the possible end of life on Earth due to the climate crisis. He argues that we can avoid the pitfalls of “melancholia” and instead choose “mourning” as the best response. He rightly points out early in his treatise that we live in a time in which humans are having devastating impacts on our planet Earth. When people realize how devastating the impacts are, and where these impacts are inevitably leading, they/we often fall into a state of endless despair. Mourning is his answer. He says, “Mourning, properly understood, is for the sake of bidding adieu and returning to life.”
This despair or melancholia is an important issue, and how to deal with it is being written about a lot these days. Note that I am writing this review in summer of 2023, a summer noted for excessive heat, violent storms, and fires (Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii being the worst - so far), all exacerbated by climate change.
Unfortunately, Lear’s commentary is often rambling and obtuse, and almost immediately deviates away from the climate problem at hand to wander around in abstract contemplation of mourning as the best solution for how to live a meaningful life. I regret this abandonment of the climate crisis problem because how to achieve kalon in the face of the Anthropocene disaster is desperately needed. There’s far too little discussion on the topic that he began with and then immediately manages to downplay, if not almost completely abandon.
For example, he devotes one entire chapter to Meghan marriage to Harry, deciding that she attempts to live the ethical life regarding her marriage ceremony, but she ultimately falls short. Rather than choosing someone who didn’t succeed (that would be most of us), how about looking instead at someone who perhaps did, or will, achieve that state of happiness and the ethical life, and become an exemplar for us all. How about Greta Thunberg? When she first learned about the climate crisis, she went into a state of very serious depression (melancholia) for a lengthy time, came out of it, and eventually devoted her life to addressing the climate crisis. Did she choose mourning over melancholia, and if so, how? We don’t know. The chapter on how the Battle of Gettysburg was ultimately dealt with was more conceptually useful. But how to ethically deal with the battlefield dead is not our contemporary problem.
Eventually, Lear seems to move into a state of talking to other philosophers and responding to their ideas about these and other issues. I regret that he didn’t adhere to the climate problem and give us some substantive ideas about how to mourn, rather than fall into melancholia. And once we’ve mourned, what comes next?
This despair or melancholia is an important issue, and how to deal with it is being written about a lot these days. Note that I am writing this review in summer of 2023, a summer noted for excessive heat, violent storms, and fires (Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii being the worst - so far), all exacerbated by climate change.
Unfortunately, Lear’s commentary is often rambling and obtuse, and almost immediately deviates away from the climate problem at hand to wander around in abstract contemplation of mourning as the best solution for how to live a meaningful life. I regret this abandonment of the climate crisis problem because how to achieve kalon in the face of the Anthropocene disaster is desperately needed. There’s far too little discussion on the topic that he began with and then immediately manages to downplay, if not almost completely abandon.
For example, he devotes one entire chapter to Meghan marriage to Harry, deciding that she attempts to live the ethical life regarding her marriage ceremony, but she ultimately falls short. Rather than choosing someone who didn’t succeed (that would be most of us), how about looking instead at someone who perhaps did, or will, achieve that state of happiness and the ethical life, and become an exemplar for us all. How about Greta Thunberg? When she first learned about the climate crisis, she went into a state of very serious depression (melancholia) for a lengthy time, came out of it, and eventually devoted her life to addressing the climate crisis. Did she choose mourning over melancholia, and if so, how? We don’t know. The chapter on how the Battle of Gettysburg was ultimately dealt with was more conceptually useful. But how to ethically deal with the battlefield dead is not our contemporary problem.
Eventually, Lear seems to move into a state of talking to other philosophers and responding to their ideas about these and other issues. I regret that he didn’t adhere to the climate problem and give us some substantive ideas about how to mourn, rather than fall into melancholia. And once we’ve mourned, what comes next?
December 10, 2025
Imagining the End: Mourning and the Ethical Life by Jonathan Lear is a profound philosophical and psychoanalytic meditation on how to find purpose and thrive during a period of pervasive worry about personal and societal loss. Lear examines the idea of "the end" in two senses: telos (the goal, purpose, or good of life) and termination (such as a planetary catastrophe or cultural collapse), drawing on his training as a philosopher and psychoanalyst. He contends that our confusion in the face of the former is closely linked to our inability to understand or agree upon the latter.
Lear's main contention is that, when properly understood and practiced, mourning is an ethical, creative, and active act that can create meaning and support our well-being rather than just a passive response to loss. By supporting a type of mourning that acknowledges the anguish of loss but transforms it into a capacity for hope and forward-looking renewal, he sets this apart from melancholia, which Freud defined as a pathological reaction where the lost object is incorporated into the ego.
In order to create a position from which the psyche can look outward and thrive, this "creative mourning" entails investigating dashed hopes, abandoned endeavors, and broken attachments. Expanding upon his previous book, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Lear explores the fragility of the institutions and cultures that provide us with comfort. He investigates how we might live when we acknowledge the frailty of the conventional framework of meaning.
Lear links the qualities of thankfulness and hope to a healthy grieving process. Gratitude is presented as a basic "attunement" to the world, emphasizing the benefits gained from what is now lost, rather than merely as an emotion. Moral exemplars, drawn from sources like Homer's Priam and personal history, serve as models for how to embody virtues and navigate life's inevitable setbacks, offering a kind of practical instruction in ethical living.
Lear suggests that the humanities serve as a special form of mourning. They conserve our best accounts of what it is to be human—what he terms the kalon (the fine, noble, or beautiful)—by preserving and presenting images of the past as models for creative "repetition" and ethical action in the present.
In essence, Imagining the End challenges readers to confront loss—personal, cultural, and even planetary—not with despair or melancholia, but by transforming the work of mourning into a powerful and ethical process of meaning-making that sustains the good life.
Lear's main contention is that, when properly understood and practiced, mourning is an ethical, creative, and active act that can create meaning and support our well-being rather than just a passive response to loss. By supporting a type of mourning that acknowledges the anguish of loss but transforms it into a capacity for hope and forward-looking renewal, he sets this apart from melancholia, which Freud defined as a pathological reaction where the lost object is incorporated into the ego.
In order to create a position from which the psyche can look outward and thrive, this "creative mourning" entails investigating dashed hopes, abandoned endeavors, and broken attachments. Expanding upon his previous book, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Lear explores the fragility of the institutions and cultures that provide us with comfort. He investigates how we might live when we acknowledge the frailty of the conventional framework of meaning.
Lear links the qualities of thankfulness and hope to a healthy grieving process. Gratitude is presented as a basic "attunement" to the world, emphasizing the benefits gained from what is now lost, rather than merely as an emotion. Moral exemplars, drawn from sources like Homer's Priam and personal history, serve as models for how to embody virtues and navigate life's inevitable setbacks, offering a kind of practical instruction in ethical living.
Lear suggests that the humanities serve as a special form of mourning. They conserve our best accounts of what it is to be human—what he terms the kalon (the fine, noble, or beautiful)—by preserving and presenting images of the past as models for creative "repetition" and ethical action in the present.
In essence, Imagining the End challenges readers to confront loss—personal, cultural, and even planetary—not with despair or melancholia, but by transforming the work of mourning into a powerful and ethical process of meaning-making that sustains the good life.
November 11, 2024
Have always admired Lear's ambition, bridging traditions and thinkers ordinarily held at arm's length from the other. Not sure of many other active philosophers trying in earnest to thread together the likes of, e.g., Freud, Wittgenstein, Aristotle. With such an approach, however, it's near impossible to cover all your bases. Appropriation and comparison lend themselves to the decontextualization and underdevelopment of positions. For example, I didn't think there was enough connective tissue, so to speak, to motivate the connection between Freud and Aristotelian virtue ethics. The opening essays on Freud start out strong, but the thread is lost somewhere along the way; all of the sudden, we find ourselves in a discussion of kalon in Aristotle. This collection, then, can be disjoint and disorganized at times, but there are several wonderful insights that make it worthwhile. The closing meditations on Wittgenstein's ethics lecture were lovely, and the essay on the civil war will long linger with me. The following resounds in light of current affairs: "I do, however, have sympathy for people who are trying to live a kalon life but who, for historical and cultural reasons, along with character flaws of their own, get caught in a vision that is wildly wrong and profoundly unjust due to misunderstandings and misperceptions and social pressures—and then waste their lives, sometimes doing terrible harm, in a cloud of misapprehension and falsity." So much creative tension lies in sustaining this recognition, that we can be so bad at trying to do good. The alternative—to explain away such moral failings as the result of evil alone—feels less true to the tragedy of the situation.
March 22, 2024
I started the book because the cold spring rains were persisting, and I was in the mood to do a bit more of our ongoing work of mourning for the world.
For the most part, Lear doesn't address mourning in this wider sense, as he pretty much follows Freud's work on mourning. He does end up indirectly affirming goodness and meaning in the world. Instead, I ended up being deeply engaged (as in pasting quotes and challenging them with my own questions throughout every chapter.) I found myself wrestling with his psychoanalytic, Freudian/philosophical framework vs. my own philosophical/theological one. The style of the writing made this possible: it was conversational, posed questions and contrasts, and expressed concepts with enough clarity for me to move on to an inner dialog with the author.
The Freudian framework is not entirely new to me, so the value in the book and my reason for rating it with four stars is due its engaging invitation to re-examine my own philosophical framework from the outside perspective of Freudian analysis.
My own long-term philosophical agenda is to explore the interstices between contemporary atheistic "prove it" rationalism vs. humanity's not-quite-resistible inner impulses towards faith and belief.
For the most part, Lear doesn't address mourning in this wider sense, as he pretty much follows Freud's work on mourning. He does end up indirectly affirming goodness and meaning in the world. Instead, I ended up being deeply engaged (as in pasting quotes and challenging them with my own questions throughout every chapter.) I found myself wrestling with his psychoanalytic, Freudian/philosophical framework vs. my own philosophical/theological one. The style of the writing made this possible: it was conversational, posed questions and contrasts, and expressed concepts with enough clarity for me to move on to an inner dialog with the author.
The Freudian framework is not entirely new to me, so the value in the book and my reason for rating it with four stars is due its engaging invitation to re-examine my own philosophical framework from the outside perspective of Freudian analysis.
My own long-term philosophical agenda is to explore the interstices between contemporary atheistic "prove it" rationalism vs. humanity's not-quite-resistible inner impulses towards faith and belief.
July 2, 2023
An odd book that I wanted to like more than I did. By the title and the back cover it seems like Lear will address the attempt to come to terms with human catastrophe. And he does...a bit. But not a lot. The book is in fact a group of separate papers that didn't feel like they went together all that much. There are points at which the topics and thoughts are deep and interesting. Others not so much. And other points where I was not sure I really understood what he was getting at. And there is a good bit of psychoanalytic talk, which I often didn't follow. So...a disappointment to me.
January 31, 2023
Beautiful book. Kalon has been grasped. (conveniently in 150 pages.) My only criticism is that the relationship between psychoanalytic thought and justice surveyed in the Lincoln chapter seems elusive. Does his argument against Lincoln's ability to lead the country in mourning only hold after the fact, in which we can say the mourning was unsuccessful (that is, when the US' actions after the Gettysburg address made Lincoln's words mean something different, that is, effective in mourning only for the North, not the South), or is there a criticism about Lincoln's choice of words? I assume, based on my reading, it's the former; and if so, that's an excessive demand to place on Lincoln.
April 16, 2024
Both good and bad, somewhat less profound than radical hope due to lack of overall anthropological and philosophical focus
+ Aristotle, Kalon and Emotions
+ gratitude as attunement and meaning
- any Freud I read or hear about is against my consent
- Meghan and Harry on Oprah's
+ Aristotle, Kalon and Emotions
+ gratitude as attunement and meaning
- any Freud I read or hear about is against my consent
- Meghan and Harry on Oprah's
May 4, 2023
wonderful
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