Cuadernos Electrónicos de Filosofía del Derecho (Jun 2023)
Atticus Finch or the disappointment
Abstract
This essay on disappointment, taking “essay” in Montaigne’s sense, get inspired by reading Javier de Lucas’s book Nosotros que quisimos tanto a Atticus Finch, published in 2020 (§ 1). Then a brief exploration of the concept of disappointment is made, trying to differentiate it indicatively from similar notions, such as wising up, disillusionment o disenchantment (§ 2). Subsequently, the main forms in which disappointment appears are analyzed: material disappointments, with special reference to consumer disappointments (§ 3); ideological disappointments, with a review of the disappointment of democracy in the Greek classics, that of the revolutions of contemporary times and the more recent disappointment of progress (§ 4); and personal disappointments, which are exemplified in some detail in the figures of Socrates, Jesus Christ, Eichmann and Jefferson (§ 5). Section 6 deals with the peculiar disappointment of a fictional character, Atticus Finch, and Section 7, on the learning of disappointment, attempts to summarize the previous material, also proposing some relevant differences between the different forms of disappointment.