A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction
A Chronicle of Higher Education Best Scholarly Book

“A deeply insightful and thought-enriching work by one of the most original philosophers writing today. Imagining the End is acutely aware of the danger we stand in of finding ourselves on an uninhabitable planet. But Lear is also aware of how the consciousness of impending loss can bring out the illumination inherent in meaningful life, often occluded in day-to-day living.”
–Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

“Lear is a lovely and subtle writer, someone who has a rare capacity to introduce ways of seeing and interrogating the world that dignify our confusion and pain while also opening up new possibilities for moving forward.”–Daniel Oppenheimer, Washington Post

The range of Jonathan Lear’s abilities—as a philosopher and psychoanalyst who draws from ancient and modern thought, personal history, and everyday experience to help us think about how we can flourish in a world of flux and finitude—is on full display in Imagining the End. Lear masterfully explores how we respond to loss, crisis, and hope, considering our bewilderment in the face of planetary catastrophe. He examines the role of the humanities in expanding our imaginative and emotional repertoire.

How might we live, he asks, when we realize just how vulnerable the cultures to which we traditionally turn for solace might be? He addresses how mourning can help us thrive, the role of moral exemplars in shaping our sense of the good, and the place of gratitude in human life. Along the way, he touches on figures as diverse as Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, and the British royals Harry and Meghan. Written with Lear’s characteristic elegance, philosophical depth, and psychological perceptiveness, Imagining the End is a powerful meditation on persistence in an age of turbulence and anxiety.

"Lear is a lovely and subtle writer, someone who has a rare capacity to introduce ways of seeing and interrogating the world that dignify our confusion and pain while also opening up new possibilities for moving forward…There are no answers in Imagining the End, or in most of Lear’s work. There are no recipes for maturity. Or plans for a stable peace in Ukraine. What his work does give us is an example of how to engage in the world with extraordinary care." - Washington Post

"Lear moves agilely among the ideas of such philosophers as Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein while using the insights of psychoanalysis to explore the human drive to create meaning…[A] wondrous and humanizing book." - National Review

"Offers provocative reflections on flourishing in the face of existential and civilizational challenges." - Publishers Weekly

"In a world buffeted by multiple catastrophes, from gun violence to the destructive effects of climate change, psychoanalyst and philosopher Lear offers a hopeful path through grief and confusion." - Washington Post

"An utterly distinctive work of moral philosophy, less an analysis of the threat climate change poses to our environment than to our estimation of ourselves…Lear’s writing [is] alive with the pleasure, inquisitiveness, and openness to surprise that it recommends." - Chronicle of Higher Education

"Anyone interested in mourning—and since we are all mourners, that leaves no one out—should read this book." - Commonweal

"An elegant set of essays…[Each] is a lapidary exercise in precisely ordered, original, and aesthetically pleasing writing. The emphasis on ethical exemplars drawing on Aristotle’s virtue ethics is also a refreshing departure from the abstract principle-based approach to ethics which dominates, for example, American bioethics." - Journal of Medical Humanities

"The humanities, says Lear, are dedicated to conserving our best accounts of what it is to be human, ‘human’ in the normative, Aristotelian sense. They are an especially productive form of mourning. They mourn because they look on a glory that is past, they are productive because, if practiced well, they ‘conserve’ that past glory…[A] valuable book." - Society