Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud was a fan of Nietzsche. He stated that a man’s strongest drives are their sexual and death drive. Freud used Nietzsche’s definition of the Dionysian man to create Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). This work was published during difficult times. Three years later, the Weimar Republic ended and Hitler came to power.
Civilization and Its Discontents
The main subject in Civilization and Its Discontents is the antagonism between a human’s natural drives and cultural restrictions on them.
The contradiction between civilizations and drives lies in the restriction of aggressive and sexual drives to try to create peaceful communities.
“…the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization.”
–Civilization and Its Discontents, Chapter VIII, P. 130-
Man maimed by civilization
To Freud, civilization can only be true when man’s primal instincts suffocate. Civilization can live in perpetual discontent because the only way that it can exist is by repressing man. To maim that animal aspect of them, that free and feared beast that Nietzsche loved.
Nietzschean Dionysism is bound by a civilization’s rules. Supposedly, these rules allow and help us to live in “harmony”.
The cultural human being is neurotic
These repression have bad consequences. They make humans become neurotic and tired of the repression.
The sense of guilt suppresses their instincts and punishes them from within. It turns the man into a malleable and pusillanimous animal.
The drive against the Cartesian cogito
Love and hate in Civilization and Its Discontents
“Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization couldn’t do without it.”
-Sigmund Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents–
