Dr. Ernest Becker (September 27, 1924, Massachusetts - March 6, 1974, Vancouver, British Columbia) was a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer.
Becker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrant parents. After completing military service, in which he served in the infantry and helped to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, he attended Syracuse University in New York. Upon graduation he joined the US Embassy in Paris as an administrative officer. In his early 30s, he returned to Syracuse University to pursue graduate studies in cultural anthropology. He completed his Ph.D. in 1960. The first of his nine books, Zen, A Rational Critique (1961) was based on his doctoral dissertation. After Syracuse, he became a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC (Canada).
Becker came to the recognition that psychological inquiry inevitably comes to a dead end beyond which belief systems must be invoked to satisfy the human psyche. The reach of such a perspective consequently encompasses science and religion, even to what Sam Keen suggests is Becker's greatest achievement, the creation of the "science of evil." In formulating his theories Becker drew on the work of Soren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Norman O. Brown, Erich Fromm, and especially Otto Rank. Becker came to believe that a person's character is essentially formed around the process of denying his own mortality, that this denial is necessary for the person to function in the world, and that this character-armor prevents genuine self-knowledge. Much of the evil in the world, he believed, was a consequence of this need to deny death.
Because of his breadth of vision and avoidance of social science specialization, Becker was an academic outcast in the last decade of his life. It was only with the award of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for his 1973 book, The Denial of Death (two months after his own death from cancer at the age of 49) that he gained wider recognition. Escape From Evil (1975) was intended as a significant extension of the line of reasoning begun in Denial of Death, developing the social and cultural implications of the concepts explored in the earlier book. Although the manuscript's second half was left unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed from what manuscript existed as well as from notes on the unfinished chapter.
The Ernest Becker Foundation [1] is devoted to multidisciplinary inquiries into human behavior, with a particular focus on contributing to the reduction of violence in human society, using Becker's basic ideas to support research and application at the interfaces of science, the humanities, social action and religion.
Some of the above information is from the EBF website and used by permission.
Becker also wrote The Birth and Death of Meaning which gets its title from the concept of man moving away from the simple minded ape into a world of symbols and illusions, and then deconstructing those illusions through his own evolving intellect.
Flight From Death (2006) is a documentary film directed by Patrick Shen, based on Becker's work, and partially funded by the Ernest Becker Foundation
所有的研究成果都围绕着一个主题:我们正在做的事,是为了获取自尊。这就是为什么人的英雄诗是一种盲目的内驱力,燃烧着人们 现代生活的危机是:青年人在他们的文化中所确立的行动规范里感受不到英雄主义了 压抑不仅是各种生活能量相对立的消极力量,同时寄生在各种生活能...
评分在图书馆碰到这本书,同时一起借阅的还有另外一本叫做《一年有半》的书。 很神奇的是,在我并没有了解这两本书的作者和内容究竟是什么的时候,昨天晚上,翻完《死亡否认》后,拿起新买的一本《落叶》翻了翻,本来还在说这本书的出版蛮曲折的事情,突然想起了什么,便对跟W先生...
评分老师推荐看的,看过之后,一个强烈的想法冲了出来:太透彻了,太带劲了。周围的朋友看了之后,有的进入了,整个人的生活学习状态都有了很大改变。我是属于那种有着坚硬内核的人,老是打破不了旧的自我。准备买来重读,但找了很多网店,只有孔夫子旧书网还有得卖(淘宝只有复印...
评分读毕此书,叹为观止,从此不再看心理学方面的书。——吴思 确实是一本不错的书,看序言就很受启发。后面的,得多读几遍,才有感悟。 人民出版社出哲学书,还是挺有震撼力的。 译者也真够权威,看得开。
评分一本书值得林和生这样不倦的思想者和诗人在二十五年间三次翻译,这本身就说明了其意义。《死亡否认》比《拒斥死亡》更接近作者要表达的终极关怀深度,也代表了译者走进西方文化思考生命意义的进程。 ——金观涛、刘青峰 一本杰作,致力于直探人性深层,并揭示生存之要义,为...
已买纸质书
评分非常好的一本书,阅读后能更深刻理解自己,带来激情。
评分能更新我
评分伟大的作品!如果你为怎么活着才有意义?这一问题苦恼,那一定得细细读一读。我看此书看了一个月,每天8小时全用上,有重获新生的感觉。
评分引起我强烈共鸣的是导言…越到后面就越艰涩难懂。我想原著语言也许难,但翻译也应该是个问题。有空还是看看原著吧。大概就能知道是谁的问题了~
本站所有内容均为互联网搜索引擎提供的公开搜索信息,本站不存储任何数据与内容,任何内容与数据均与本站无关,如有需要请联系相关搜索引擎包括但不限于百度,google,bing,sogou 等
© 2025 book.quotespace.org All Rights Reserved. 小美书屋 版权所有