the birth and death of meaning by ernest becker

Much of the evil in the world, he believed, was a consequence of this need to deny death.īecause of his breadth of vision and avoidance of social science specialization, Becker was an academic outcast in the last decade of his life. 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. Brown, Erich Fromm, and especially Otto Rank.

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 Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Norman O. After Syracuse, he became a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC (Canada).īecker 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 first of his nine books, Zen, A Rational Critique (1961) was based on his doctoral dissertation. In his early 30s, he returned to Syracuse University to pursue graduate studies in cultural anthropology. Upon graduation he joined the US Embassy in Paris as an administrative officer.

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. Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer.īecker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrant parents.

The birth and death of meaning by ernest becker