Jonathan Lear(1948-2025)

Jonathan Lear is an American philosopher, psychoanalyst, and author, as well as the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He has written over 15 books, including Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Aristotle and Logical Theory, and A Case For Irony. Lear taught philosophy at Cambridge University and Yale University, where he was the Chair of the Philosophy Department from 1978 to 1979 and from 1985 to 1996. In 2009, he received the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. He is the son of Dr. Harold Lear and Dorothy Lear, the first cousin once removed of legendary television writer and producer Norman Lear, and the father of television writer Sophia Lear.