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 thinkers' attempts to
explain human behavior in terms of a higher principle -- whether
happiness or death -- the pictures fall apart.
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 also
for our understanding of civilization and its discontent.
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