Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud's argument that civilisation is bought at the price of instinctual renunciation, and so can never fully satisfy.
Freud’s 1930 essay on the price of living together. He argues that civilisation is built by diverting instinct, with the erotic drives redirected into work and bonds and the aggressive drives turned inward as conscience, and that the resulting guilt is not a fault in any particular society but the permanent cost of the arrangement. The book sets out the death drive alongside Eros as a governing force in human affairs, dismisses the commandment to love one’s neighbour as psychologically impossible, and ends without consolation, unwilling to predict which of the two forces will prevail.
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John Gray
Freud thought that civilisation is inestimably valuable – unlike some other writers in central Europe, he was never tempted by barbarism. But he also recognised that civilisation is inherently flawed, not because of political repression and corruption or economic inequality, but because of the nature of the human animal. That is why civilisation can never be rid of its faults, can never be entirely benign.
Interview · March 2012
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