Jonathan Lear, who died in Chicago’s Hyde Park in September, was more than just a famous philosopher. He defied academic convention and took a practical approach to thinking, traveling to the Crow Nation to study resilience and training as a psychoanalyst to explore Freud. Idiosyncratic and playful, he brought ancient Greek thinkers into dialogue with modern theory, exploring irony, love, hope, and human finitude. radical hope (2006) remains his most impactful book, asking what happens when the world ends, and that is, when the world ends, not of the earth but of people.
Lear begins with the haunting remarks of Plenty Coups, the last traditional chief of the Crow Nation, spoken near the end of his life in 1932.
“When the buffalo left, the hearts of my people fell to the ground and could not rise again. Nothing happened after that.”
Nothing happened. Because there was no meaning to anything other than that way of life. When the buffalo disappeared and the war ended, the crow’s world fell apart. Behaviors that once defined a good life have lost meaning. There is no end to courage, honor, and purpose, which became their raison d’être.
Lear reconstructs the Crow ethos: hunting and war as a path to honor. “Counting the coup”, that is, the act of public courage, was to plant one’s stock and stand firm. With the war and the buffalo gone, such an act became impossible and no longer understood by the nobility.
Through his dream of the Black-capped Chickadee, a bird that listens to the sound of crows and learns to survive, Plenty Coops transformed traditional symbols into creative responses to crisis, offering the nation a path forward rooted in tradition. Kogarah’s virtue demanded a new kind of courage, but its strength was drawn from an old one.
Leah calls this fundamental hope: The courage to imagine a better future that goes beyond understanding. It is not optimism or faith in progress, but a moral act of imagination, a rejection of despair when even the words of hope have disappeared.
Today, one cannot become a crow in the old sense. Yet crows survive, teaching languages, preserving songs and stories. But the Plenty Coup envisioned a deeper form of survival, a new kind of prosperity that went beyond mere perseverance. Having witnessed the death of a traditional Crow life, he was still unable to tell what its future would be like.
Still, believing in the power of dreams, he risked everything for their rebirth and crossed the abyss. It is a hope that endures the death of meaning and listens with confidence like our ancestors. That was Plenty Coops’ courage.
For Leah, rebirth begins with courage being transformed. When the old battlefields disappear, virtue must be redefined. The courage of the Crow Warrior, the courage associated with war, is replaced by steadfast action amid uncertainty, the courage when meaning is unclear. The old rules have not been broken. They no longer apply.
Lear’s insight extends beyond Crowe. Every society faces a moment when the forms that hold it together crumble, when courage and duty lose their meaning. We imagine that we can adapt, but that confidence masks a deeper anxiety that our sense of meaning is falling apart.
Our belief in flexibility has itself become rigid. We adapt to everything except the loss of meaning itself. Factories close, towns become empty, professions disappear, and the honor once associated with work and craft disappears. We are faced with Plenty Coups’ question of how to live when a world that used to make sense no longer makes sense.
Radical hope begins with listening, like a rattle alert to new signals, and relies on imagination rather than nostalgia. It means acting with integrity without knowing the consequences. Heroism on the battlefield requires a different kind of courage. It is about moving forward in the midst of uncertainty and recreating meaning without illusions.
The source of such hope remains unnamed. Lear describes it, but its origin is not revealed. It is not always understood who will serve best. That might be the point. Radical hope does not rely on doctrine or prophecy. I believe that meaning can return, even if we cannot imagine its form.
Tradition’s call is not just to “repeat what we said,” but to “do what we have done.” We step into the present to seek and listen to the truth that our ancestors knew, and to grasp it from the perspective of our time. The truth does not change, but our relationship to it does. It takes shape from the moment it exists and reshapes that moment from within. Naturally, tradition looks to the future. That was the goal from the beginning.
The world that Lear painted is not lost to history. It still surrounds us. The rituals that once formed our core, such as work, worship, learning, and conversation, are becoming as thin as the high-altitude air. We scroll instead of talk and measure instead of average.
However, the possibilities that Lear raised still remain. Radical hope is not optimism but imaginative perseverance. The courage to live as if meaning still matters, even if silenced. From that silence, something new begins to speak.
Respecting the past means leaving it unfinished. Tradition continues from its beginning by looking to the future.
This reflection is written in memory of Jonathan Lear (1948–2025). He is widely regarded as one of the most original moral philosophers of his generation.
Radical hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation (2006).
control crazy dreams: For the crows, the dream became a guiding vision when a powerful helper like the koala appeared, and the elders publicly interpreted its meaning.
In 1921, at the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Plenty Coups placed a war cap and coup stick on the grave on behalf of the Plains Indians, paying homage to the Crow Nation and all of its fallen soldiers.
“From Warrior to Politician: The Leadership of Plenty Coup Chiefs” —Heart of the West (August 27, 2025).
notes and reading
“A different kind of courage” — Charles Taylor new york review (April 26, 2007). “Jonathan Lear uses the land of crows to provide essential insights for reshaping our moral world.” Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and professor emeritus at McGill University.
Antifragility: What to gain from anarchy (2012) — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, essayist and statistician, former options trader Accidentally deceived and black swan. Taleb argues that some systems can do more than just withstand shocks. They become stronger and are a worldly analogue of crow courage.
henry oliver—second act (2024). A case-driven portrait of how early training, mentorship, and inherited forms can be repurposed into a new future: traditions as toolkits rather than shrines. Oliver is a writer and critic and a fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
“We don’t always understand who will serve us best.”From the poem “Love” Czesław Miłosz is a Polish-American poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.
reference. “You pray to God, and it actually means something. But that meaning is a secondary next step from the original creation.” — Rock legend Nick Cave talks about his music. free press (October 30, 2025), find out more in our newsletter red hand file, Personal answers to reader questions.
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For a wide range of material related to this discussion, please see below.
david bentley hart — divine experience (2013); endless beauty (2004). He complements Lear by reading the collapse of meaning as a call to receptivity, not reinvention but conformity, and grounding radical hope in a response to the intelligence that underlies all existence. Hart is one of the most formidable Christian intellectuals of our time.
richness of presence
last play
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
