Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

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Format: paperback
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published:
ISBN 10: 0674027469
ISBN 13: 9780674027466
Book Overview: How does a nation come to life-and-death decisions at a time of crisis when it can no longer live according to its founding values? The strategic brilliance of Jonathan Lear's response to this deeply important question lies in focusing our attention on the exemplary history of the Crow people, and deploying the insights of psychoanalysis to interpret their struggle for survival. With admirable lucidity, in the most clear-cut language, he shows us that besides the glamorous alternatives of freedom or death there is a third way, less grand yet demanding just as much courage: the way of creative adaptation. -- J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in literature and author of Slow Man As a story of courage and moral imagination, Radical Hope is very powerful and moving. The book deals with a very important contemporary issue, how cultures may seek rescue from near-death; one that cannot help but be more and more relevant to our times. It treats this subject with clarity and depth, drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. As a book which straddles these disciplinary gaps it is rather exceptional; but it aptly demonstrates how superior a discussion of this question is, which comes to grips with the details of a paradigm case. It is a valuable addition to important debates today. -- Charles Taylor, Professor of Philosophy, McGill University This is a philosopher making use of anthropology and history in a way that is quite uncharacteristic of philosophers. It is an attempt to throw light on the concepts of courage, of practical reasoning, of identity, and of hope through a study of the autobiographical testimony of the last great chief of the Crow nation, Plenty Coups, concerning the events which deprived the Crow of their traditional way of life. Plenty Coups said of the extinction of the buffalo, that After this nothing happened. Lear asks and answers the question of what Plenty Coups could have meant by this. This is a remarkable little book. -- Alasdair MacIntyre, Senior Research Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame University A beautifully crafted and skillfully constructed examination of the dreams and hopes of Chief Plenty Coups, the last principal leader of the Crow people. Lear succeeds admirably in portraying the ethical and social issues Plenty Coups overcame to bring his people into a new, dramatically different reality. -- Timothy P. McCleary, Little Big Horn College, Crow Agency, Montana