Freud’s Civilization and it’s Discontents spoke about his views on religion, science, and art. He believes that religion is restrictive, which could lead to more conflicts. He also believes that religion is an illusion. He believed that the origin of religion could be traced back as far as feeling of infantile helplessness. There needs to be a paternal protector for infantile helplessness or else we would not know what to do as children. In religion, we could view the paternal protector as God. Freud views science as facts, technology, and advancements, which could cause problems. Science removes us from the external world.
Freud views art as an illusion of reality, which could bring pleasure. Art provides a difference between reality and illusion. He believed that if you have art and science, you do not need religion. Religion, art and science are also known as achievements of civilization, which fit into his theory of human happiness. Freud defines happiness in terms of the satisfaction of need or desire. Happiness is hard to achieve, which is where Freud’s pleasure principle is found. There are two parts of the pleasure principle, which are negative aim, that avoids pain and suffering and positive aim is getting pleasure.
As a civilization, the more advancements we make, wants we have develop into needs in more amounts. The more needs we have, it becomes difficult to achieve happiness and pleasure. Society also makes it hard to live up to standards, which makes us disobey our instincts. Some people might have a hard time controlling their instincts. Freud discusses palliative measures to ease our suffering. The palliative measures are powerful deflections, substitutive satisfactions and intoxication substances. Powerful deflection deflects the pain through a hobby and science.
Substitutive satisfactions are shown through art by creating an illusion, however, you can’t fix it but you can replace it. Intoxicating substances are drugs, which makes us insensitive to it. Sublimation started out as sexual pleasure by libido. As civilization became more advanced, sublimation became nonsexual, which meant that someone cared about other things that are not sexual. Freud explains unhappiness through the three sources of pain, suffering and unhappiness. One source of suffering is the external world, which is also known as nature.
The external world may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction. Some ways of destruction could be earthquakes, hurricanes and blizzards. Another source of suffering is our own body, which will decay and dissolution, which cannot do without pain and anxiety as warning signals. The last source of suffering is relation to other men, which is more painful to us than the other sufferings. A way to prevent this suffering is through isolation, however it is hard to get pleasure through isolation. Society with wants and needs becomes a setup for unhappiness.
If love is the center of our happiness, we could get hurt, we feel vulnerable and make us dependent. The signs of civilization that Freud discusses are about the exploit of the earth, beauty, cleanliness and order. We exploit the earth for resources, energy and building. It is the way we are able to build and advance our society. Beauty is for pleasure, enjoyment and not for necessary. Cleanliness prevents disease and order is psychological. Law also takes place in civilization because it regulates human relationships.
Freud’s view on state of nature is that society did not start until civilization started when we have a variety of wants and needs. However, Rousseau has a different view on state of nature, which is that we started out with basic wants and needs that included sex, food and sleep. We come together in a society because it is a necessity. We work together to conquer nature and protect ourselves from foreign enemies. Even though we work together as a society through Eros for civilization but there are conflicts. There are two kinds of Eros, which are genital and platonic love.
Genital love is sexual and platonic love is between friends and family members. Platonic love identifies with others in a community but outside the community it will lead to aggressive instincts. Eros binds people together that can have some affection and care about each other. The strength of these bonds is through friendship and not just with a lover. Society also exploits sexuality. We have sexual instincts that we need to control. As a society, we teach children to control sexual instincts or else we wouldn’t be able to control it as adults. Society wants to become bigger but there is a restriction on sexual life.
Since there is a restriction on sexual life, it could lead to unhappiness because pleasure isn’t being achieved. Another restriction could be that a man could only have one mate other than multiple mates. Some people do not deserve love since it needs to be earned or a phrase that we do not mean. We have developed social standards that have an effect of the love decisions that we make. It could cause us to feel unhappy because we don’t find pleasure in something that doesn’t match the standards that we have. Freud discusses the aggressiveness that we have with each other and ourselves.
He said that we have been violent for a very long time such as invasions of Huns and Crusaders. This represents the aggressiveness that we have. We need to control aggression in order to maintain civilization. Aggressive instincts are the greatest obstacle that we have to face. Civilization has to use its utmost effects in order to set limits to man’s aggressive instincts, which means that we need to learn to love each other. Freud believes that we inflict violence and aggressiveness. Rousseau believes in two principles, which is less aggressive such as natural preservation and repugnance.
Freud beliefs are ore aggressive than Rousseau. When it comes to Eros, jealousy occurs and we cannot get rid of aggressiveness. We know that we have sexual and aggressive instincts; we also have a death instinct. Our death instinct turns into aggressive instinct that is shown outside of ourselves but since we are restrictive with it, it will be kept within ourselves. The origin of the death instinct is guilt and our conscience. Sexual instinct is easy to demonstrate by the death instinct is not. According to Freud, since we have all of these instincts, we learn them from our parents because they teach us how to control it.
According to Rousseau, we are self-sufficient, independent society and produce dependency. One believes that we learn it from someone else while the other believes we learn it from ourselves. The topics that Freud discusses about deal with different parts of civilization. He writes about the achievements of civilization that included religion, art and science. Even though we have many important developments in society, it turns us into wanting more for ourselves that will turn into needs, which was similar to what Rousseau thought as well.
He wrote about the different palliative measure that eases our own suffering. We also have three sources of pain that include our body, nature and other men. He discusses the different signs of civilization about the earth, beauty, cleanliness and order. We need Eros in our society, but it could also cause many problems. We have different kinds of instincts that we learned from our parents at a very young age since we are dependent. He explains how society exploits sexuality and our sexual instincts that we have. Civilization has aggressive instincts that we learn how to control.
