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Ernest Becker

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American cultural anthropologist (1924–1974)

Person · Open Library

Born
1924
Died
1974
Works
16

Top works

  • The Denial of Death
  • The birth and death of meaning
  • La negación de la muerte
  • Ölümü Inkar
  • Zen

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
71
Total plays
1,113

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Ernest+Becker">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Ernest Becker

Quotes

  • The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed.
  • Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image.
  • It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.
  • The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.
  • With the truth, one cannot live. To be able to live one needs illusions, not only outer illusions such as art, religion, philosophy, science and love afford, but inner illusions which first condition the outer [i.e., a secure sense of one’s active powers, and of being able to count on the powers of others].
  • The neurotic opts out of life because he is having trouble maintaining his illusions about it, which proves nothing less than that life is possible only with illusions.

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Wikidata facts

Official website
www.ernestbecker.org
Image
Ernest Becker LCCN2014701399.jpg
Show 3 more facts
date of birth
1924-09-27
date of death
1974-03-06
name in native language
Ernest Becker
Sources (2)

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Connections

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