Jonathan Lear works primarily on philosophical conceptions of the human psyche from Socrates to the present. He has been trained both as a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. His books include: Happiness, death and the remainder of life (2000), Therapeutic action: an earnest plea for irony (2003), Freud (2005), Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006). His most recent book is A Case for Irony (University Harvard Press, 2011). He is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy , University of Chicago.  

The Lecture takes place: Monday, November 12th 2012 at 14.15 in Auditorium 1, 1441/012.

Justus Hartnack was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Aarhus 1954-71. A series of annual lectures in his honour was inaugurated in 2002. John McDowell and Onora O'Neill are among the former Hartnack Lecturers.