Jonathan Lear

(born in 1948) – a prominent American philosopher, psychoanalyst and professor at the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. In 2014, he was appointed Roman Family Director at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the university, he is also an active member of the American Philosophical Society. He studied philosophy at Cambridge University and Rockefeller University in New York, where he received his PhD in 1978. His work focuses on philosophical concepts of the human soul and imagination from the time of Socrates to the present, and his papers and publications combine psychoanalysis with philosophy and ethics. His extensive writings concern Freud, Aristotle, Plato, Kant and Kierkegaard. The list of his publications includes Aristotle and Logical Theory (1980), Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony (2003), Freud (2005), A Case for Irony (2011). One of his most popular works is Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2009), , which tackles the various aspects of the fragility of our civilisation and the threats it may face. He received the 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.