Wisdom won from illness : essays in philosophy and psychoanalysis / Jonathan Lear.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lear, Jonathan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Reason.

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Philosophical anthropology.

Philosophy and social sciences.

Physical Description:

328 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017.

Summary:

What is the appropriate relation of human reason to the human psyche--indeed, to human life--taken as a whole? The essays in this volume range over literature and ethics, psychoanalysis, social theory, and ancient Greek philosophy. But, from different angles, they all address this question. Wisdom Won from Illness probes deep into the heart of psychoanalysis to understand how it illuminates the human condition. At the same time it goes back to the origins of psychological thinking in ancient Greece--and the effort to understand the ethical life of human beings. It examines the continuing travails of the Crow Nation in its efforts to find ways to live after cultural catastrophe. It probes the deep meaning of Kierkegaard's irony. It also considers two of the great writers of our time--John Coetzee and Marilynne Robinson--and their use of literature to change the human mind. Socrates thought reason should rule over the whole psyche; but much hangs on what we might mean by this claim. We humans have inflicted unimaginable suffering on each other, justified by arrogant conceptions of reason, and of ruling. The same is true of our treatment of other animals. False images of reason regularly blind us to the claims and reality of others. One way to react to all this pain and destruction is to denounce the very idea of reason as nothing more than an ideological tool of power. This book argues that is the wrong way to go. We should not be too quick to dismiss our real human capacities just because they have so often been put to such poor uses. The essays in this book aim to offer a philosophical anthropology and psychology that is adequate to who we are--and who we might legitimately hope to become.-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Wisdom won from illness

Integrating the non-rational soul

What is a crisis of intelligibility?

A lost conception of irony

Waiting for the barbarians

The ironic creativity of Socratic doubt

Rosalind's pregnancy

Technique and final cause in psychoanalysis

Jumping from the couch

Eros and development

Mourning and moral psychology

Allegory and myth in Plato's Republic

The psychic efficacy of Plato's Cave

The ethical thought of J. M. Coetzee

Not at home in Gilead.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674967847

0674967844

OCLC:

946907315