Jonathan Lear, who died last month at his home in Hyde Park, Chicago, was, in addition to being a professor in the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought and the author of several celebrated works of philosophy, a teacher and mentor for many of us at The Point. He was a member of our editorial board when the magazine was founded in 2009, and later contributed two essays. “Being remembered, mourned, honored is a persisting good,” he wrote in one of them, which later appeared in his final book, Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life. We agree, and today we’ve published on our website a series of remembrances from a few of his students, colleagues and friends: Robert Pippin, Agnes Callard, Ben Jeffery, Rory O’Connell, Laura Baudot, Thomas Bartscherer, Jonny Thakkar, Jon Baskin, Leon Wieseltier and J.M. Coetzee.
ROBERT PIPPIN, AGNES CALLARD, BEN JEFFERY, RORY O’CONNELL, LAURA BAUDOT, THOMAS BARTSCHERER, JONNY THAKKAR, JON BASKIN, LEON WIESELTIER, J.M. COETZEE
If life is always too much for us somehow, and if the psychic structures we’ve built to deal with it are all basically contingent, then that means that the cages inside us aren’t fixed either. I think there was an intimation of that in how Jonathan made people feel in his teaching, the sense that he could help you see just beyond the boundaries of what you thought had to be true about yourself.
In the case of the death of all humanity, we are confronted with the prospect of the end of the mourning itself. We the hearers of the joke are thus to be the last generation of mourners. Insofar as there is any mourning left to be done, we have the last chance. Does that come with any responsibilities?
I would like to take a look at a particular call of conscience that marks us as human. The example may at first look trivial, but the fact that a call can arise even here shows us something important about ourselves. In her famous interview, Oprah Winfrey asked Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, “What are you most excited about in the new life?” To which Meghan answered, “I think just being able to live authentically.”
Since it was founded in 2009, The Point has remained faithful to the Socratic idea that philosophy is not just a rarefied activity for scholars and academics but an ongoing conversation that helps us all live more examined lives. We rely on reader support to continue publishing.
