Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents: Why does Freud think life is hard for human beings? people likely to be happier in a civilized or uncivilized state? What are the benefits of order? Why is civilization hostile to sexuality? How does civilization inhibit aggression?
Freud's central paradigm is that the tension between the individual and civilization is historically grounded in the violence of warfare and humanity in the early part of the century. The devastation of the First World War haunted Freud, who presumed that "the basis of [the hostility of civilization] was a deep and long-standing dissatisfaction with the ten existing state of civilization and that on that basis a condemnation of it was built up, occasioned by certain specific historical events." (91) His modified just-so stories of taming the fire and slaying the father transfer to his association of the Erziehung, the Germanic upbringing and education, to both high culture and aggression. As the human body is representative of the larger civilization (41), he associates the women to the sexual fulfillment of man and the disinterest of society (51) and libidinous violence as the natural force of nature (52). But civilization, in which the modern man is most conventionally comfortable, is contradictory to the humo homini lupus natural violence of man, and is only established out of fear; in typical Germanic fashion, Freud sets up a series of contradictions, providing the only rationale for societal establishment as to the friend of a neighbor to avoid his hostility (58).
The repression of previous states caused a negligible
Civilization is hostile to sexuality, he proposes, because of
6. Elie Wiesel, Night: Wiesel once described his own mission as making the world more human, not more Jewish. Describe how the character of Elie in the book loses his own humanity. Has Elie lost his faith in God, or does he just have a new image of God? Does he decide there is no God? Do you think he believes in God today? Does he really come to the conclusion that God is dead?
