- 202 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life
About this book
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.
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Information
Publisher
Harvard University PressYear
2009Print ISBN
9780674006744
9780674003293
eBook ISBN
9780674040038
Topic
PhilosophySubtopic
Philosophy History & TheoryTable of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Chapter 1. Happiness
- Chapter 2. Death
- Chapter 3. The Remainder of Life
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
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Yes, you can access Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life by Jonathan Lear in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Philosophy History & Theory. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.