Book Review: Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life. By Jonathan Lear. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2024,  176 pp., $19.95 paperback.

Psychoanalysts need more interdisciplinary texts like Imagining the End: Mourning in Ethical Life. This book confirms how philosophy and psychoanalysis can combine to offer a thorough exploration of topics like loss, mourning, and gratitude that come to the fore in challenging times like the recent pandemic, the context from which this book originated. Lear's book is compelling, using vivid illustrations from ancient Greek texts and concepts, visceral memories from the author's childhood, and narrated visits to Gettysburg and Hollywood National Cemeteries to invite the reader into a discussion of the value of play and creative meaning-making in effectively mourning losses; a task that is imperative during perilous times, but relevant throughout our lives. Lear argues that by employing our imaginations in mourning, we remain connected to our core shared humanity. He is interested in how humans seek to exemplify the kalon (the good in Attic Greek), particularly during their most tragic and uncertain periods. Using clear and approachable language, Lear makes a strong case for the value of mourning in human flourishing. Imagining the End reads as a conversation between uncertainty, paradox, and hope; a thoughtful and powerful story of loss that ends with an examination of gratitude and its freedom from the need for reciprocity.

Lear opens the book with a joke in the form of a candid interjection by a young audience member at a talk Lear attended. This joke was a disclaimer that suggested following our demise as a species, “We [humans] will NOT be missed!” In an engaging manner, Lear applies

psychoanalytic rigor to Socratic discourse and shows that the joke is more revealing than funny, as it gets at the heart of what makes us mortal and distinct from other creatures we live with on our imperiled planet. We have