Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker was an award-winning author and cultural critic who specialized in the realm of death, disaster, and cultural calamities. He wrote about the psychological implications of death and disaster, as well as how humans sought to insulate themselves from theses inevitabilities. Over the course of his career, he authored six books and quite a few essays, articles, and reviews.

Ernest was born in 1924 and raised in an intellectual family in which ideas were always in the forefront. His father was a well-known Austrian-American psychiatrist and the youngest of Becker’s five siblings. His mother was a teacher and he had a close relationship with her from an early age. She taught him to think critically and express his feelings, which served him well throughout his life.

As a young man he studied philosophy, psychology, and literature. He was particularly drawn to the works of Sigmund Freud, particularly Freud’s theories on repressed emotions and its impact on human behavior. He was inspired to apply Freud’s theories in his own work. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Ursinus College in 1949, he moved to New York City to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University.

He remained at Columbia until 1959, when he was awarded a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. He then went on to teach at Boston University and at the University of California, Berkeley. During this time, he wrote extensively. His first book, The Birth and Death of Meaning, was released in 1971 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction the following year.

In The Birth and Death of Meaning, he explored the psychological tensions relating to life, death, and society. He argued that the idea of “nothingness” is something that individuals must grapple with, and that all humans have a desire to build and rebuild meaning throughout their lives. Through his writing, he sought to understand the struggles of individuals as they attempt to assign meaning to their own lives in the face of death and disaster.

His second book, The Denial of Death, was released in 1973 and was even more successful than his first. It argued that death and the fear of death greatly affects human behavior, whether it is directly or indirectly. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction the same year that it was released.

Following the success of his two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, Becker wrote several more, including a memoir and collections of essays. Throughout his writing career, he wrote on many topics such as fascism, evolution, religion, culture, and technology. Although his works did not always receive the same amount of recognition as his first two pieces, they never failed to garner critical acclaim.

Each of Becker’s works deals with the idea of confronting death, disaster, and insecurity. He wrote on the psychological struggle of individuals as they attempt to insulate themselves from these certainties of life. His works influenced generations of authors, philosophers, and cultural critics, and he was a major figure of the American intellectual landscape in the 1970s. Ernest Becker died in 1974, leaving behind a body of work that will continue to influence and shape the lives of many.