7 - Freud as philosopher? Civilization, art and religion

Summary

In Part I, we examined Freud's ground-breaking theoretical work. In Part II, we looked at subsequent developments in psychoanalytic thought, in object relations, Lacanian, and feminist (readings of) psychoanalysis. Part III continues the process, begun in Chapter 6, of understanding how psychoanalysis has influenced and been challenged by thinkers in other disciplines, and in particular by twentieth-century philosophers. We shall begin in this chapter by looking at what psychoanalysis has said on three topics traditionally reserved for philosophers or theologians: questions concerning the nature of civilization, art and religion.

Psychoanalysis, civilization and Marxism

(The) Freudian ethics? Bearing civilization and its discontents

Freud's magisterial 1930 “Civilization and Its Discontents” (CD) is arguably his most philosophical text, in the several senses of that term. No sooner has it begun than Freud has posed the most perplexing philosophical question of all, concerning the meaning of human life. Like Aristotle, whose Nicomachean Ethics Freud's text darkly doubles, Freud agrees that whatever we pose as this question's solution, the pursuit of happiness must have a central place. Yet different people seek happiness in different ways: from the quests for love, sensuality or intoxication, to the cultivation of the arts, piety or ascetic withdrawal. And unlike Aristotle, Freud's diagnosis for the prospects of human happiness is singularly grim. Human happiness, Freud sagely remarks, does not seem to have been written into the plan of Creation.