CIVILIZATION AND DISCONTENT
pleasurable activity than pain
FREUD ON RELIGION: OCEANIC FEELING
For Freud: Religion is an Illusion
 Prompted by wishful thinking for an all-powerful
father for protection
His friends argues about the oceanic feeling
 Peculiar feeling, limitless, unbounded sensation
of eternity that is shared by many others across
various religion systems
 Source of religion energy and sensation
 Freud understood this feelings as a feeling in
indissoluble bond, of being one with the external
world as a whole
 He critiques this through his fabric of
psychology- psychoanalysis
- Pathological: boundary lines between the
ego (rational) and the external world
become uncertain or in which they are
actually draw incorrectly.
 It is only normal to have this blurred boundary
between the ego and the external world during
infancy: separate from the world around him.
 Perhaps this psychological state may have
persisted ( which he compares to the ruined of
Rome) and brought about religious needs.
 He emphasized that the oceanic feeling is not the
source of religious energy. There may be
something more.
“FROM MY OWN, EXPERIENCE, I COULD NOT CONVINCE
MYSELF OF THE PRIMARY NATURE IF AUCH FEELING.
BUT THIS GIVES ME NO RIGHT TO DENY THAT IT DOES
IN FACT OCCUR IN PEOPLE”
Religion assures that a careful providence will watch
over one’s life and will compensate him in a future
existence or any frustration he suffers here.
FREUD ON RELIGION: PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
 In the view of Freud, our life works according to
the pleasure principle (maximizing happiness)
However, life threatens us with suffering from three
directions:
 From our body: Decay and dissolution
 From external world: overwhelming forces of
destructions
 From relation to other men
So, we employ measures to avoid these unhappiness or
unpleasure by:
 Powerful deflections: destruction from pain
 Substitutive satisfaction: substitute more
 Intoxicating substances: drugs and alcohol
Freud finds no place for religion from abovementioned
measures. It does not highlight much of the unpleasure.
It just provide simple path for happiness. It puts human
in a mass delusion
FREUD ON RELIGION: REALITY PRINCIPLE
 Freud rejects all these methods, but offers no
alternative
 He believes that not even religion can keep its
promise of salvation and happiness
 He emphasizes that we should moderate our
claims of happiness and have modest reality
principle. “accept the inevitability of pain and
realize that it can be avoided only temporarily”
 We must seek our own salvation through a
balance or moderation of three coping measures
FREUD on UNIVERSAL LOVE
Christian Commandment: (PROBLEMATIC AND
INCOMPREHENSABLE)
 “thou shall love thy neighbors” (difficult to love
someone who is a stranger)
 “love thine enemies” (absurd)
Freud objections
 My love is something that Is valuable to mw
which I ought not to throw away without
reflection
 CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM- I believe because it is
absurd
One ethical view:
 The readiness for a universal love of mankind
and the world represent the highest standpoint
which man can reach.
Freud’s 2 main objective:
 a love that does not discriminate seems to me
forfeit a part of its own value, by doing injustice
to its object
 NOT ALL MEN ARE WORTHY OF LOVE
MAIN PROBLEMS ADDRESSED BY FREUD
1. UNHAPPINESS AND SUFFERING
 3 sources of suffering:
- Superior power of nature (world as a whole)
- Feebleness of bodies (own selves)
 - Inadequacies of regulation in the family,
society and state (relations to other people)
 2 reasons for suffering
- Belief that people were happier in primitive
conditions (simpler lives, less rules and
conventions)
- Christianity and its low estimation upon
earthly life
WHAT IS THEN THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?
- According to him. Human beings have a
limited capacity for adaptation and
achievement so we can only submit these
suffering since they are inevitable. So for
him, the purpose if life acts on the pleasure
principle. If we cannot remove all suffering,
we can at least remove or mitigate some if it
and be in pursuit of happiness.
AGRESSION
- The existence if inclination to aggression,
which can detect ourselves and justly
assume to be present in others, is the factor
that disturbs our relationship with our
neighbor and which forces civilization into
such high expenditure of energy.
 Ethics is civilization super ego (attempt to
control individual super ego)
 Civilization are extension of individuals super
ego and their greatest aims and desire
 Attempts to link “libinal ties” with everyone/ else
community
 Social neurosis (impossible to treat and asses
because they are dependent on entire
economies of guilt)
 Thanatos of civilization and continual struggle
“Freud makes an interesting assertion that at the heart
of our struggle is repression and guilt and that society our
civilization in general suffers from excessive guilt but as
an outcome suppresses libido, activate super ego and
lead to the internal conflict for all whether consciously
and unconsciously”
END

DEATH INSTINCT
- Instinct is diverted towards the external
world and comes to light as an instinct of
aggressiveness and destructiveness
- If mankind strikes this aggressiveness, It will
be bound to self-destruction
- Death instinct can be seen through
aggression so mankind is naturally
aggressive.

SOCIETAL CONTROL AND CONSCIENCE

 Society controls libido and aggression through
the super-ego (act as the conscience telling us if
we are guilty of bad thoughts or deeds this tell
us if we need punishment)
 Internalization of the father, fate or societal
pleasure lead to anxiety, social, otherwise (may
lead to societal anxiety)
 Reduce hedonism
 Oedipus complex to kill father lead to guilt later
on being internalized and extended to the
society. Overall idea is doubtful

GUILT AND SUPRESSION

 Guilt could be conscious or unconscious (can
lead to anxiety or suppression of libido)