"In Praise of Failure": Costica Bradatan in conversation with Robert Zaretsky

Our obsession with success is hard to overlook. Everywhere we compete, rank, and measure. Yet this relentless drive to be the best blinds us to something vitally important: the need to be humble in the face of life’s challenges.

In this event, Costica Bradatan mounts his case for failure through the stories of four historical figures (Simone Weil, Mahatma Gandhi, E.M. Cioran, and Yukio Mishima) who led lives of impact and meaning – and assiduously courted failure. Their struggles show that engaging with our limitations can be not just therapeutic but transformative.

Bradatan argues that success can make us shallow, while our failures can lead us to humbler, more attentive, and better lived lives. We can do without success, but we are much poorer without the gifts of failure.

Costica Bradatan is Professor of Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University and Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland in Australia. He is the author or editor of ten books and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. His new book, "In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility", is published by Harvard University Press.

Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history at the Honors College, University of Houston. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest book, "Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague", is published by Chicago University Press.