Civilization and Its Discontents - Essay Example

Civilization and Its Discontents At the start of his writing, Freud gives an introduction of civilization and its discontents’ texts as the irremediable antagonism that exists between various demands of instinct and the restrictions surrounding civilization. According to Plato, this notion carries no fault weight, although it does not give a sufficient explanation as to why Freud’s book has received as much recognition as though it has a very positive contribution towards culture definition. Freud explains that his book does not just barely touch on civilization and instincts, but covers the whole concept and theory of human behaviors, explaining why people behave as they do, with reasons explaining why even the best-intended of people’s actions give the impression of having hindered human beings in their life quests for senses of well-being and content (Freud, S., 2002, p. 4). This shows that Civilization and its Discontents is a great contributor to the Western culture’s literature. Freud commences his reflections with ruminations based on religious values, and tries to bring out responses to the question as to why human beings are possessed with the feeling of being with the passion of construction, oceanic feelings. An in-depth understanding of the reasons as to why Freud describes this type of feeling as oceanic gives two separate explanations: he intended to establish the view of the superstitions, infantile and mystical religious ways which civilization defines as valuable while based on religious thought, and; the scientific, analytic, and rational ways. An assumption made by Freud in this situation is that the entire method of civilization is based on human’s conscious analyses of the motives of human life that are not trustworthy, and that people do adopt analytical attitudes and methods which as a result lead to a truer, a healthier understanding of the motives, high levels of consistency, and a summary giving a brief on why and how people do it. The common human characteristics is that people have the notion of religion which they hold so dearly and use it to organize their actions and value-systems, though their grounds for this religion value, based on scrutiny, resulted into being explicable through unconscious psychic drivers and processes. Chapter two of the same book shows how the fact that religion exists is an illustration and a manifestation of infantile origins of human beings in the seeking of a father figure to secure them against the world’s pains and depression. Further still, this depicts that civilization has an immensely deep and systematic discontents in the human life, for without them, region would not be a thing of practice since there would be no need for it in eternity. On the contrary, though, there is need for religion since life as it is found by human is quite hard as it brings too much pain, impossible tasks, and disappointments. Therefore, for the purpose of keeping by it, human cannot dispense with such palliative measures (Freud, S., 2002, p. 23). These measures are threefold; deflection of needs, intoxicants, and substitutions for needs. To expound on this, Freud moves on to elaborate on the main purpose of life, overhauled in religion. He, in his own perspective, sees no cosmic purpose to the human life but sees an internal psychic purpose upon which anyone’s psychic economy is based, as the pursuit of happiness or experience of pleasure. Pleasure principle is denoted by an individual’s imperative towards the pursuit of pleasure, but the minds pursuit of happiness being in loggerheads with the entire world’s happenings. Religion plays an important role of trying to restrict people’s efforts by continuously imposing its moral codes upon people who are naturally characterized to have different ways of trying to negotiate their ways to happiness, even though, the project may entirely experience drawbacks. Such moral codes address demands from people’s instinctual drives, although its ways of addressing the demands do not usually conduce to happiness. Both Plato and Freud and the principles of Christianity (just to add), do agree on a concept that love forms that root impulse of life itself; but whereas Freud represents all idealistic impulses as those of religion, affection, and poetry as sublimations of the physical desire, Plato represents the physical desire as a distorted manifestation of just a spiritual impulse. Perfection is the principle of reality as asserted by Plato. Plato regards life as the expression of a purposeless impetus he calls love, hence it is an aspiration and not physical (Plato, 1927). Plato portrays inconsistency in both Phaedo and the Republic where he depicts the world of opinion as a step away from the world of knowledge rather than that towards it. He continues to explain that life gives a distorted view of universals just like water depicts a distorted appearance of a stick virtually inserted into it (Plato, 1927). Human beings are able to understand the demands culture places on people, and evaluate better its effects on them so long as they in the first place understand its origin and systematic development as is on the implicit principle of history of civilization (Plato, 1903). Culture begins when work is fully recognized, and a fellow worker is appreciated adequately for being productive. According to Freud, the resultant sense of community is a replacement of the initial family structure which arose when sexuality first had become a constant, and not an intermittent drive. Taboo observances are described by Freud as the first right or law. Therefore, Eros and Ananke, love and necessity, are the origins of civilization. In Christianity, the greatest love is that of an individual called God; for Plato, the object of desire, though ideal, is impersonal (Platonism. Princeton, 1904, p. 55). Love is known to be creative, leading to reproduction; sex is desire for more and more life. In a nut shell, love is the impulse of realizing the eternal in time. For Feud, aim-inhibited love helps in the escaping of exclusiveness of the genital love, and is consequently less risky. Feud configures that women have grown into hostility towards civilization because it tends to passionately withdraws men from women, and from their families too. He then concludes that civilization impairs sexuality and happiness, at the level of sensuality. The Christian or Biblical God is revealed to create the world out of nonentity, nevertheless Plato's God, as he describes Him, is limited to a creator and more of an designer, modifying the whole universe out of the already existing pieces of materials (Plato, 1888, pp. 102). He is predetermined, in the sense that his actions are solely limited by the possibilities of his pieces of materials. Perfection in the world is not a guarantee or an actuality but an achievement that can be determined. God finds the world to be bad, or rather somehow indifferent, and brings in good features into it. God is in the world fighting for the victory of good as opposed to the evil. In chapter five of the same book of discussion, Feud readdresses the existing conflict between civilization and the individual on sexuality (conflicting needs). The two compared creates a difference. Civilization needs to bring together large number of individuals while individuals’ sexual needs only bind two people at any one time. In this situation, civilization requires that erotic interests are supposed to be robbed since very little if any is left for happiness (Strachey, J., 2001, p. 65). In a summary, civilization experiences the greatest threat to its own continued existence as that which originates from outside the instinctual destructiveness. According to Plato, human beings are considerably wolves to their fellow human beings in civilization since their threat to one another is so great that civilization has to redouble its efforts in ensuring effective and stronger bonds among people, even if it means riding roughshod over to protect itself promptly. On the other hand, human being has achieved control over civilization by having turned individual’s aggression away from the ego as the super-ego (Plato and Platonism, 1902, p. 86). The sinful ego is ever on the push by the super-ego which torments it with similar feeling of anxiety, despite being on the continuous watch for any available opportunities to be used in getting it thrashed by the external world. Cultural super-ego is never necessarily realistic since they issue commands and never request for any possibilities of being obeyed by people. This has proved to be quite problematic when one ones to control violence. But thanks for the rule of love your neighbor as you love yourself, that has been adopted to help cover up the gap of an enormous inflation of love. Works Cited Freud, S. Civilization and Its Discontents, London: Penguin, 2002: 3-60. ISBN 978-0-14-118236-0 Plato and the Older Academicians. Translated by Alleyne and Goodwin. London, (1888). Plato and Platonism. New York, 1902: 86. Platonism. Princeton. London, 1904: 55 -70. Plato. An instructive diminutive book in the series of Philosophies, Ancient and Modern. London, 1914:12-96. Plato. The Man and His Work. New York, 1927. A comprehensive work. Strachey, J. Edition of Completed Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London, Vintage: 2011, Volume 21:27-131. ISBN 978-0-09-942676-9 The Dialogues of Plato. Translation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. The Unity of Plato's Thought. Chicago University Press, (1903). Read More