Civilization and Its Discontents

“Civilization and Its Discontents” is a book written by Sigmund Freud in 1929 (originally titled “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur” or The Uneasiness in Culture.) This is considered to be one of Freud’s most important and widely read works. In this book, Freud explains his perspective by enumerating what he sees as fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. He asserts that this tension stems from the individual’s quest for freedom and non-conformity and civilization’s quest for uniformity

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud writes primarily to examine the relationship between the individual and society. Through Freud's examination of the relationship, a deeper understanding of the complexity of mental life is realized. Freud begins to develop the relationship early in the work by depicting the most primitive realizations of self and the most primitive realizations of the external world. He further develops this relationship through the musing of sexual desire and its

them in their young life. While it may seem hopeless, it is possible that this lack of happiness may not be as universalized or necessary to human development as Freud originally believed. In his pieces Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Civilizations and its Discontents, Freud outlines the human death drive, an instinct towards self-destruction that ensures humans continue on their path to mortality; there is no way to reconcile

reason and some believe it is a mistake. Throughout life, some many suffer with life, which allows them to open their mind up to the meaning of life. Suffering is when one goes through pain, hardship, and distress. In the books Beloved, Civilization and Its Discontents, and Man’s Search for Meaning, there are characters who relate to suffering and show what their meaning to life is. In Beloved, Sethe is an African American slave who has suffered through many situations and her meaning of life deals

Freud concerns himself with the discussion of the institution of religion as a principle of ethics in the fifth chapter of Civilization and Its Discontents. Towards the beginning of his analysis, Freud specifically asserts his grievances over one of the Ten Commandments, “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’” (Freud, 91) and utilizes this Christian edict to argue that individuals are “creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness” (Freud, 94)

of freedom is something that has been contradicted during the development of civilization. Everywhere there is freedom, there is restraint. A person is “free” to do whatever he pleases as long as it does not go against any of the judicial laws and restrictions that society imposes on its civilization. Whether it be in the context of civilization as a whole, as Sigmund Freud discusses is Civilization and Its Discontents, in The Doctrine of Fascism, which explains Benito Moussoli’s Fascist regime,

“Limited Civilization” Throughout generations, the idea of civilization has been a controversial subject in a sense that no perfect definition can be given. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, civilization is “the condition that exists when people have developed effective ways of organizing a society and care about art, science, etc”. Although civilization has a positive cognition, Sigmund Freud, a neurologist and initiator of the concept of psychoanalysis, acquainted civilization as being

Both Friedrich Nietzche’s Third Essay in On the Genealogy of Morals, and Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents ponder the implications of self-enslavement, or the imposition of behavior that is contradictory to human nature. Interestingly, both works seem to have a particular bone to pick with religion, as Freud identifies man’s inner psychological conflict in religion itself, and Nietzche views religion as one of the most powerful distracting intoxicants. While both Freud and Nietzche similarly

Edmundson specifically calls Freud a “relentless enemy of the warrior ideal, the religious ideal, and the ideal of transcendent philosophy.” The truth in Edmundson’s analysis of Freud’s anti-idealist view can be seen in Freud’s novel, Civilization and Its Discontents. In this novel, Edmundson’s assessment is most evident that Freud sees a desire to follow ideals as a “fall to illusion, as well as Freud’s obvious

Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche offer prominent critiques of civilization and morality that greatly differ from the commonplace views of ethics and virtue. Rejecting the idea that morality is an instinctive or natural element of human life, they both argue that morality is a reactionary construction to the realities of the human existence. While both Nietzsche and Freud share this view, their views on the value of morality differ greatly. Nietzsche argues that morality suffocates and chokes