Jonathan Lear is an American philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the

Committee on Social Thought The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and Univers ...

and Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

Education and career

Lear was educated at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a Private university, private Medical research, biomedical Research university, research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York (state), New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medica ...

with a dissertation on Aristotle's logic directed by

Saul Kripke Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and eme ...

. He also trained at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis. 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 of Clare College and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

(1978–79, 1985-1996). He was previously married to the political scientist Cynthia Farrar, of the Farrar publishing dynasty, and is currently married to Gabriel Richardson Lear, a fellow member of the philosophy department at Chicago who also works on ancient philosophy. He is a member of the

International Psychoanalytical Association The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is an association including 12,000 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations. It was founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud, from an idea proposed by Sándor Ferenczi. His ...

. He is the nephew of

Norman Lear Norman Milton Lear (born July 27, 1922) is an American producer and screenwriter, who has produced, written, created, or developed over 100 shows. Lear is known for many popular 1970s sitcoms, including the multi-award winning ''All in the Famil ...

, and the father of

New Girl ''New Girl'' is an American television sitcom created by Elizabeth Meriwether and produced by 20th Television for Fox that originally aired from September 20, 2011, to May 15, 2018. The series revolves around a kooky teacher, Jessica Day (Zooey ...

writer Sophia Lear. In 2009, he received the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

. He was elected a Member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communi ...

in 2019.

Philosophical work

Much of his work involves the intersection of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

and philosophy. In addition to work involving

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

, he has also written widely on

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...

, Søren Kierkegaard and

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is cons ...

, focusing on ideas of the human psyche. 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)

References

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

*Jonathan Lear's lecture
"Shame and Courage at the Collapse of Civilization"
at Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities in 2006
Transcript and audio of ABC Radio (Australia) interview with Jonathan Lear, January 31, 2009"A Lost Conception of Irony"
Jonathan Lear,
Berfrois
', 4 January 2011 {{DEFAULTSORT:Lear, Jonathan 21st-century American philosophers American logicians American psychoanalysts Living people Philosophers of psychology University of Chicago faculty Yale University alumni 1948 births Members of the American Philosophical Society

Education and career

Philosophical work

See also

References

Sources

External links