Jonathan Lear's book, Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life is part of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values series. What is remarkable about the text, other than its lucidity, is the novel way in which Lear provides a persuasive critique of both Aristotle and Freud and at the same time does them a fair degree of justice. Starting with a rather simple question - "What difference does psychoanalysis make to our understanding of ethical life?" - Lear highlights the way in which teleological ethics 'covers over' the various disruptions that teleological ethics embody. In short: with Aristotle we find that happiness is the highest good - more to the point - Aristotle injects a concern for the highest good into ethical life. However he never quite makes good on his promise. After all is said and done, we find that "happiness" is "self-sufficient" - as Lear puts it, "for Aristotle, the fundamental good of ethics is to get as far away from your neighbors as possible" (pg. 53) - rapidly associating Aristotle's notions of contemplation with an escape from the pressures of ordinary practical life and its "deathlike" form. Lear notes a similar strategy in Freud, with his notion of the "death drive." Like Aristotle's teleological ethics, Freud also inserts a teleological metaphysical principle: "Freud introduces 'death' in much the same way that Aristotle introduces 'the good' - as an enigmatic signifier that is supposed to give us the goal of all striving" (pg. 84). What is most insightful about Lear's analysis is the way in which he demonstrates that these teleological principles are nothing more than a retroactive covering over of a fundamental disruption psychic life. In short, "what lies 'beyond the pleasure principle' isn't another principle, but a lack of principle" (pg. 85). In a highly provocative analysis, Lear then illustrates this seduction through the fort/da game: "Only when the game is established will the loss be a loss" (pg. 92). Importantly, what was once a nameless trauma is transformed into a specific loss. The arrival of loss, then, opens up the possibility of creative (and repetitious) play, where the "mind can wander around." Lear's thesis, then, is that life cannot be lived "without remainder." What gets left out, paradoxically, is not another "thing" but a disturbance of the fabric of life which occasions further development.
Those familiar with either Adorno's thought on nonidentity or Lacan's work on fantasy might find Lear's analysis of particular interest.
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