Jonathan Lear, Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, has died.
Professor Lear was well-known for bringing moral and social philosophy and psychoanalysis to bear on various aspects of the human condition. He is the author of Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life (2022), Wisdom Won From Illness: Essays in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (2017), The Idea of a Philosophical Anthropology: The Spinoza Lectures (2017), A Case for Irony: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (2011), Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006), Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony (2003), Happiness, Death and the Remainder of Life (2000), Open Minded: Working Out The Logic of the Soul (1998), Love and its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis (1990), Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (1988), and Aristotle and Logical Theory (1980), among other works, which you can learn more about here.
Professor Lear joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1996. Prior to that, he taught at Yale University and the University of Cambridge. He earned his PhD in philosophy from The Rockefeller University, an MA and a BA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a BA in history from Yale.
In an essay at The Point (that was developed into his Imagining the End), Professor Lear, discussing a joke about the end of the human species, turns to mourning and the Aristotelian idea of kalon, or the beautiful or noble:
I would like to close by suggesting that mourning is itself kalon. It is not only good, but wondrous and marvelous that there should be mourning. As we have seen, mourning is a distinctively human way of responding to loss. It is a special manner of expressing grief: an insistence that what happened was no mere change. The loss is testament to our previous attachments—love and hate, care and entanglements—and constitutes us as beings with a history, a history that continues to matter. In response to loss we get busy making meaning, recreating what we have lost and reanimating forms of life that might otherwise disappear. This seems to me a wondrous response to love and loss, a wondrous response to caring and finitude in general.
Jonathan Lear died on September 22, 2025.
Obituaries elsewhere:
I teach Radical Hope as much as course descriptions allow. That book is a wonderful way to introduce students to the idea that many of the most important concepts through which we make sense of our lives are historically, socially, and materially grounded.
I remember one time I taught it, a veteran of the Iraqi and Afghan wars shyly approached to tell me that thinking along with the book helped him understand why he was so lost and disoriented after coming home. With what I know of Lear’s philosophy, there are few, if any, greater compliments to be paid his work.
He will be missed. I will miss him.
Oh no, it makes me so very sad to read this. I have been wanting to send him a message expressing my gratitude to him. He was such a wonderful philosopher, and one of a kind. I am in his footsteps as he showed me that you can be a professor and a psychoanalyst at the same time. I went back to school to ultimately train as an analyst thanks to his encouragement. I think of him and his impact on me often, although I’ve only spoken with him a couple of times. I know he will be greatly missed (unlike in his anecdote of an academic meeting in which a person in the audience declared that, should we go extinct, “we will not be missed.”
Our department (Regis University) hosted Dr. Lear for a speaker’s engagement in 2013 or 2014. I remember him as kind, generous in his engagement with students and colleagues, and compelling as a presenter and thinker. I appreciate his kindness and collegial example, even as someone who was so accomplished and engaged in the field.
Thanks for this remembrance also, Justin. Much appreciated.
Jonathan Lear supervised my undergraduate thesis on Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. He always cut a fine figure in his J. Press suits.
Oh no! I can hardly believe it. When I was a graduate student, I took 2 classes under him and I sat in on many more. The vitality of his mind is part of what makes this loss so hard to absorb and comprehend. My sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.
Even when I found his work lacking in some ways (Radical Hope was quite disconnected from the lived realities he was abstracting away on in the name of) I appreciated his willingness to address the issues. And he was very open to reader responses which is always appreciated.
What a terrible loss! I took Lear’s Freud class as an undergraduate and he always came with the best anecdotes from his analysands. It was obvious how much he loved people and what people are like. Will really miss him as well.
I wrote a White Paper for the USA (and world) inspired by Lear’s controversial “Radical Hope.” You can find it at the link. Rest in Peace.
https://jenniferleelawson.com/2025/08/this-is-as-radical-as-i-get/
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After 150 years, when Bison were nearly extinct via a USA military campaign to starve out indigenous people and rob them of everything they wanted and needed, BISON ARE BACK!
GO SEE THEM!
https://choctawculturalcenter.com/