Jonathan Lear
{{short description|American philosopher}}
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Cambridge University (BA)
Rockefeller University (PhD)
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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.{{Cite web|url=https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2014/10/06/jonathan-lear-named-roman-family-director-neubauer-collegium|title=Jonathan Lear named Roman Family Director of Neubauer Collegium|date=6 October 2014 }}
Education and career
Lear earned his B.A. (cum laude) in History at Yale in 1970 and his B.A. in Philosophy at Cambridge in 1973. He then received his Ph.D. in philosophy at Rockefeller University with a dissertation on Aristotle's logic directed by Saul Kripke. He also trained at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1995. He subsequently won the Gradiva Award from the National Association for Psychoanalysis three times for work that advances psychoanalysis.
Before moving to Chicago permanently in 1996, Lear taught philosophy at Cambridge University (1979-1985), where he was a Fellow and the Director of Studies in Philosophy of Clare College. He also taught philosophy at Yale University and was Chair of the Department of Philosophy (1978–79, 1985-1996). He is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. In 2009, he received the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities.{{Cite web|url=https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2010/03/26/mellon-foundation-award-fund-lear-s-ongoing-work-human-imagination|title=Mellon Foundation award to fund Lear's ongoing work on human imagination|date=26 March 2010 }}
During his time as the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society was able to work with the Apsáalooke Nation and the Field Museum of Natural History to sponsor the exhibit Apsáalooke Women and Warriors.{{Cite web |title=The Neubauer Collegium |url=https://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/aps%C3%A1alooke-women-and-warriors |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=The Neubauer Collegium |language=en-US}}
In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.{{cite web |url=https://www.amacad.org/content/members/newFellows.aspx?s=c |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424093934/http://www.amacad.org/content/members/newFellows.aspx?s=c |archive-date=2016-04-24 |title=Newly Elected Fellows}}
He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.{{Cite web |title=Jonathan Lear Elected to the American Philosophical Society {{!}} Division of the Humanities |url=https://humanities.uchicago.edu/articles/2019/05/jonathan-lear-elected-american-philosophical-society |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=humanities.uchicago.edu}}
Philosophical work
Lear's early work focused on formal logic and ancient Greek philosophy. Much of his work involves the intersection of psychoanalysis and philosophy. In addition to work involving Sigmund Freud, he has also written widely on Aristotle, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing on ideas of the human psyche. This most recent work explores the ethical task of managing to live with the fears and anxieties of world-catastrophe.
His books include:
- Aristotle and Logical Theory (1980)
- Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (1988)
- Love and Its Place in Nature (1990)
- Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul (1998)
- Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (2000)
- Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony (2003)
- Freud (2005)
- Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006)
- A Case for Irony (2011)
- Wisdom Won From Illness: Essays in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (2017)
- The Idea of a Philosophical Anthropology: The Spinoza Lectures (2017)
- Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life (2022)Reviewed at: {{cite journal |author=Griffiths, Paul J. |author-link=Paul J. Griffiths |date=January 2023 |title=Mourned or lamented? |journal=Commonweal |volume=150 |issue=1 |pages=54–56 |url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/mourning-lament-jonathan-lear-paul-griffiths |url-access=limited }}
Awards and honors
- American Philosophical Society, Member (2019){{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=lear&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2024-03-20 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}
- American Academy of Arts and Science, Fellow (2017){{Cite web |date=2024-03-20 |title=Jonathan Lear {{!}} American Academy of Arts and Sciences |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/jonathan-lear |access-date=2024-03-20 |website=www.amacad.org |language=en}}
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities (2011-2014){{Cite web |title=Mellon Foundation |url=https://www.mellon.org/grant-details/distinguished-achievement-award-lear-8358 |access-date=2024-03-20 |website=www.mellon.org |language=en}}
- Gradiva Award, National Association for Psychoanalysis
- Best Article on the Subject of Psychoanalysis (1995), "The shrink is in", The New Republic
- Best Psychoanalytic Book (1998), Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul
- Best Psychoanalytic Book (2000), Happiness, Death and the Remainder of Life
- John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, (1987-88){{Cite web |title=Jonathan D. Lear |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/jonathan-d-lear/ |access-date=2024-03-20 |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... |language=en}}
- National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, (1984-85)
- The Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
- Harvard University (November, 2010){{Cite web |title=Harvard University Press |url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674063143}}
- Cambridge University (November, 1999)
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Sources
- http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/001116/lear.shtml
- http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/lear.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20050829075330/http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/04-05/event_lear.html
External links
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- Jonathan Lear's lecture, [http://depts.washington.edu/schkatz/podcasts/katz0506_lear.mp3 "Shame and Courage at the Collapse of Civilization"]{{dead link|date=April 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} at Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities in 2006
- [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2460541.htm#transcript Transcript and audio of ABC Radio (Australia) interview with Jonathan Lear, January 31, 2009]
- [http://www.berfrois.com/2012/01/jonathan-lear-lost-conception-irony/ "A Lost Conception of Irony"], Jonathan Lear, [http://www.berfrois.com/ Berfrois], 4 January 2011
- [https://news.uchicago.edu/why-mourning-essential-our-well-being-jonathan-lear "Why Mourning Is Essential to Our Well-Being with Jonathan Lear"], University of Chicago, (Ep. 108), 2 March 2023
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Category:21st-century American philosophers
Category:American psychoanalysts
Category:Philosophers of psychology
Category:University of Chicago faculty