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

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. (20001208)

If this doesn't bother you, then you're in for a real treat. Lear uses the tools of psychoanalysis (in a reasonable fashion, thankfully) to pick apart Freud's postulation of the death instinct, and Aristotle's decree that happiness is the highest good.

I was particularly impressed with his analysis of how guilt may have been a factor in both Freud and Aristotle's shaky attempts to base their theories on a single, all encompassing principle that gives life a teleological meaning.


Satisfying consideration of Aristotle and Freud   January 22, 2001
 21 out of 23 found this review helpful

Lear is both a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. The pleasure in this short book comes as he keenly applies the skills of each discipline to thinkers, Aristotle and Freud, who are not usually tested by both disciplines. It is a pleasure to read a psychoanalytic critique of Aristotle and a philosophical critique of Freud. Unfortunately, Lear, while a capable critic, does not, in this book anyway, succeed in providing a robust alternative view. In any case, this book is quite accessible to the reader not deeply versed in either Aristotle or Freud's writings.

Lear first elucidates a critical, unresolved tension in Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle spends most of the Nichomachean Ethics focusing on the satisfaction to be gained from living an active life of "the traditional ethical virtues informed by practical wisdom." But at the end of the Nichomachean Ethics, according to Lear, Aristotle switches course and now posits the contemplative life as the exemplary, though ultimately never fully achievable, life. It is this sudden switch that Lear focuses on. Lear argues that this switch occurs because Aristotle realizes that there is something incomplete in the premise on which he built the majority of the Nichomachean Ethics. Lear explains from a psychoanalytic perspective this was the bubbling up of Aristotle's anxiety about the unanswered questions in his ethical analysis.

As for Freud, Lear focuses first on the weakness of Freud's evidence for the death instinct. This is nothing new, as the death instinct is clearly a broad step beyond Freud's earlier, more nuanced theorizing. But then Lear goes on to argue that Freud's need to provide a comprehensive explanation of aggression is what drove Freud to posit the death instinct. According to Lear, it was Freud's avoidance of ambiguity that motivated the death instinct reasoning. Lear is compelling here, and is probably pointing out an implicit desire in most people's thinking for "an answer." But Lear's alternative hypothesis of the "open minded" solution left me feeling a little empty. Lear would probably argue that that is because I have an irrational need for a complete story; still, the absence of real meat around Lear's conception makes the essay less than brilliant.

Lear provides a wonderful teasing out of weaknesses in Aristotle and Freud's thinking about ultimate goals. As for Lear's own resolution of the issues that he feels are unresolved by Aristotle and Freud, they are less than complete and satisfying. Lear finds fault with any complete, teleological resolution of what it means to "live a good life." The result is a disappointing "non-answer" which Lear would probably argue is the best we can do. Worth buying, worth reading, but not a book that will change your life.


Happiness, Death and the Remainder of Life   December 27, 2000
 10 out of 26 found this review helpful

Lear's book had three chapters. The first chapter, Happiness, was depressing. In the second, Death, about all that happens is Lear attempts to replaces Aristotle's "the good," with Freud's "death." It is the first time I have read about death without words like remorse, regret, sorrow, victory, or resignation being used once. Yes, I found the word guilt. The NY Times Book Review (Freud KO's Plato, by Richard Rory, Oct. 22, 2000) waxed on about the brilliant last chapter, so I read on. The last chapter, Remainder of Life, will have no consequences, impact or add new ways of thinking to my future, or anyone elses. Lear seems to know this stuff, but quoting others and referencing multiple sources does not make a good book, it is how you use the source material. The three chapters of the book can be summed up in three words, nothing new here.


Great Book   December 7, 2000
 7 out of 25 found this review helpful

I thought this was an excellent book. It was highly informative and written for the layman. It mixed philosophy and psychoanalysis beautifully, and I would recommend it to anyone. In addition, as John's brother, I can tell you he know's what he's talking about!


elephantiasis of acknowledgements   December 6, 2000
 13 out of 18 found this review helpful

You know a book is not going to be any good when the chummy acknowledgements run two pages, from copy editor to department head, but the problem is that Lear doesn't acknowledge his real debt, which is to Lacan, who wrote this book in 2 pages in the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, seminar VII. Lear attempts a Lacanian reading of the Nicomachean ethics, and uses Lacan to solve the problem of book X, or the philosophic life--is it inside or outside Aristotle's ethics? The philosophic life serves the same function as the death drive for Freud--as an "imaginary signifier" that stands in for a release from all care or worry--or, in the case of the death drive, the desire to live like a rock. Like the Lacanian objet a, it is either the fullness of being or the emptiness of a hole, which shimmers because it is unattainable. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is Lear's attempt to apply a kind of psychoanalysis to the potential reader of the ethics, who reads to learn how to live his life, and is seduced by the image of the philosophic life, but which is Aristotle's way of letting us down easy: that life, and its happiness, is impossible. (But doesn't Aristotle say that no one really wants happiness, but wants the "serious life," the life of "spoude"?) As an interpretation of Aristotle, Lear is interesting but wrong: the philosophic life is not an elaborate seduction to sugarcoat the sad truth of an impossible happiness, but instead fits neatly the model that guides Aristotle throughout the Ethics, that of sight, the pleasant, constant, receptive activity of just looking around (see the beginning of the metaphysics). Recommended only for those who have read both Aristotle and Lacan, precisely the people who do not need this book (I read it in the bookstore).