Wisdom Won from Illness brings into conversation two fields of humane inquiry--psychoanalysis and moral philosophy--that seem to have little to say to each other but which, taken together, form a basis for engaged ethical thought about how to live.

Jonathan Lear begins by looking to the ancient Greek philosophers for insight into what constitutes the life well lived. Socrates said the human psyche should be ruled by reason, and much philosophy as well as psychology hangs on what he meant. For Aristotle, reason organized and presided over the harmonious soul; a wise person is...