Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (The Tanner

Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values)
- Used Book in Good Condition
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 thinkersâ‚¬ attempts to explain human behavior in terms of a higher principleâ‚¬â€¢whether happiness or deathâ‚¬â€¢the pictures fall apart.
Aristotle attempted to ground ethical life in human striving for happiness, yet he didnâ‚¬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 â‚¬Å“the remainder of life,â‚¬Â 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.
Country USA
Brand Harvard University Press
Manufacturer Harvard University Press
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2001-10-02
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780674006744

Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values)