European Intellectual History Syllabus
42. 346 Spring 2002
Study
Questions on Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
Chapter 1.
How,
according to Freud, do we come to realize that there are things outside of our
selves (or ego)?
How
does he use this idea to explain the "feelings" of religion?
What
is the point of Freud's discussion of the archeology of Rome?
How
does the survival of past states of mind and memory help him explain the
"oceanic" feelings of religion?
So
why does Freud think people "need" religion?
Chapter 2.
What
does Freud mean when he says that ordinary people's understanding of religion is
"infantile"?
What
does Freud say about how the need for religion has been discussed in the past?
What
does Freud mean by "the pleasure-principle"?
How does this relate to the idea of "happiness"?
What
does he mean by "libido-displacement" and what does this have to do
with the pleasure principle? What
does this have to do with art and culture?
Religion? Love?
What
is Freud's main point in this chapter?
Chapter 3.
What
does Freud consider the three sources of human suffering?
Why
does Freud say that civilization has been a cause of human misery?
Why is modern man hostile to civilization?
What
does Freud mean by culture? What
does he consider achievements of culture and why?
Why
do these achievements not bring happiness?
Why
does civilization also require beauty, cleanliness, and order?
Why
does Freud say that individual liberty is not a benefit of culture?
Why
does Freud say that we should not confuse civilization with progress towards
perfection?
How
does Freud link the idea of libidinal sublimation {displacement-see above} to
civilized activities?
Chapter 4.
Describe
the "primitive family." Why was it not civilized?
How
does Freud explain the evolution of the first laws (totems)?
How
does Freud use the need for physical love (eroticism) to explain the emergence
of culture?
How
does "inhibited" love (friendliness) bind society together?
Why
is there a rift (a contradiction) between love and culture?
The family and society?
Why
does Freud say that women become antithetical to culture?
Why
must culture set restrictions upon sexual life?
What is the result?
Chapter 5.
How
does Freud explain the conflict between sexuality and civilization?
Why
does Freud have difficulty with the proposition "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself"?
Why
are we inclined towards aggression, and how does this require us to be cultured?
What
does Freud mean by saying that "Civilized society is perpetually menaced
with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one
another"?
What
is Freud's criticism of Communism?
Why
does Freud say that "civilization requires sacrifices"?
and how does this help explain why civilized man is unhappy?
Chapter 6.
How
does Freud use the idea that hunger and love make the world go round to derive
the idea of a "death instinct"?
How
does Freud derive from the idea of a death instinct the idea that a tendency
towards aggression is innate and instinctual?
How
does this chapter help Freud explain "the riddle" of the evolution of
culture?
Chapter 7.
What
question is Freud trying to answer in this chapter?
How
does Freud define "guilt," and where does guilt come from?
Why
does he say that "bad conscience" is the dread of loosing love?
What
does he mean by super-ego, and how and why does it create guilt?
What about the dread of authority? (He
goes over these issues twice, so bear with him.)
What
does Freud mean by saying that man's guilt goes back to the murder of the
father?
Why
does Freud consider it a necessary conclusion that civilization brings the
intensification of the felling of guilt?
Chapter 8.
Why
does Freud consider the sense of guilt the most important problem in the
evolution of culture? What is the
price of progress? Why?
Why,
according to this chapter, has civilization led to greater aggression?
_______________________________________________________________
NOW,
think of this work in the context of things we have already read and discussed.
1)
What similarities do you see between the ideas of Freud and Marx?
2) What similarities do you see between the ideas of Nietzsche, Dostoevskii, and Freud?
3)
Is it correct to say that Freud's ideas embraced both the rationalist and
irrationalist legacies of the nineteenth century? How would you link these
ideas to the Enlightenment and to Romanticism?
4) In what way might Freud's ideas have reflected a) the decline of certainty in progress that marked intellectual life on the eve of WW1; and b) the intellectual response to WW1?