Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
There was the young Marx and the old Marx. There was the young Freud and the old Freud. There was Marxism and Marxisms, Freudianism and Freudianisms. There has even been a Freudo-Marxism. One speaks of Freudo-Marxism because it is after a certain level of understanding of Freud that one comes to Marx, in order to bring the two together in an articulated whole which admits of mediations between the two geniuses of reductive analysis of social man and of human society. Hunger and social effort to satisfy it, on one hand, love and desire aimed at satisfaction, related in an unfathomable way with death, on the other, are established as the constituents of the historic and social nature of Man and of humanity in general coming to grips with the great cosmic whole. (Both Marx and Freud seem to have overlooked the Will: the will to power, indeed the will to possess a will. But another, falling between them, included it: Nietzsche.)
This study constitutes the basis of the course and the seminars done in 1968-1969 and in 1969-1970 at the Centre Censier de la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Paris.