Freud as Philosopher
By GORDON MARINO
Sigmund Freud, that seer of the psyche, taught that you could be angry and not know it. You can also be a philosopher and not know it. And Freud was just that, an unconscious philosopher of the unconscious - one who had nary a positive word to say about philosophy. Just listen to him grouse in 1933:
Philosophy is not opposed to science, it behaves itself as if it were a science, and to a certain extent it makes use of the same methods; but it parts company with science, in that it clings to the illusion that it can produce a complete and coherent picture of the universe. Its methodological error lies in the fact that it over-estimates the epistemological value of our logical operations But philosophy has no immediate influence on the great majority of mankind; it interests only a small number even of the thin upper stratum of intellectuals, while all the rest find it beyond them. (New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, Lecture xxxv)
Still, as Philip Rieff observed in his classic 1959 book, "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist," the father of psychoanalysis was also a moralist, and a conservative one at that - conservative in both his personal mores and in his deep seated conviction that repression and self-restraint are essential to civilization. In his science, Freud prescribed a vision of the good life and in that regard he was, for all his sneering at philosophy, a member of the Socrates guild.
Socrates's ukase was "know thyself." Though it may come as a surprise to some philosophers, self-knowledge requires more than intellectual self-examination. It demands knowing something about your feelings. In my experience philosophers are, in general, not the most emotionally attuned individuals. Many are prone to treat the ebb and flow of feelings as though our passions were nothing but impediments to reason. Freud, more than the sage of Athens, grasped the moral importance of emotional self-transparency. Like the Greek tragedians but in language that did not require an ear for poetry, he reminded us of how difficult it is to own kinship with a whole range of emotions.
Socrates's ukase was "know thyself." Though it may come as a surprise to some philosophers, self-knowledge requires more than intellectual self-examination. It demands knowing something about your feelings. In my experience philosophers are, in general, not the most emotionally attuned individuals. Many are prone to treat the ebb and flow of feelings as though our passions were nothing but impediments to reason. Freud, more than the sage of Athens, grasped the moral importance of emotional self-transparency. Like the Greek tragedians but in language that did not require an ear for poetry, he reminded us of how difficult it is to own kinship with a whole range of emotions.
Freud counseled that a much neglected aspect of maturity is the ability to tolerate ambivalent feelings, to be able to eschew dividing the world into white and black hats. After the death of his father, Freud suffered from a profound depression born of torturing himself about the stew of affectionate and hostile sentiments he had towards him. But as Freud came to understand it, the emotions we feel towards those we deeply love are always a blend. And it is Stygian labor to admit the likes of disappointment and rage towards a father or mother. Sometimes, as in the case of sitting bedside at the often long and horrific fifth acts of life, it does not require a Freud to fathom the excruciating work of reconciling intensely conflicting affects.
In short, if there were one wisp of wisdom that we could pluck from the mind of Freud it might be this: those who are unaware of their feelings risk becoming puppets of those feelings.
In his most openly philosophical work, "Civilization and its Discontents," Freud maintained that our psyches are layered. As he explained it, much as Rome is built upon the ruins of past Romes, our emotions are stratified: what is past and below lives on and informs what is above, even if we refuse to acknowledge it. This law of the inner life also applies in telling ways to how we relate to so-called cold-facts.
In an article largely critical of Freud, the philosopher Jonathan Glover gleans this truth: the facts we grasp are often cherry picked by our emotions. He writes, "Knowledge of the possibility of unconscious factors distorting our view of our situation places on us a special duty of skeptical scrutiny." [1]
Our awareness of the idea of the unconscious can help us keep a third eye on the underlying leitmotifs of our lives, lest they dominate our understanding of the world. For example, for whatever reason there are throngs of Americans who detest nothing more than the idea of someone getting something for free, especially if it might involve their tax dollars. Thus, during the recent political debates over health care and, further back, welfare reform, the attention of many was riveted on collecting and serving up instances of the tiny percentage of people who perhaps worked the system to keep from working, or to get free medical treatment - as though the shiftless few were the rule rather than the exception. Could not some of these hidebound individuals profit from considering the possibility that there might be a hefty element of selfishness and/or resentment embedded in their psychic hard-drives, and that these fractious feelings filter their understanding of the facts?
Though Freud was never given to preaching, his guidance was surely that anyone aspiring to think in a clear-headed fashion ought to strive hard to be honest about his or her emotional biases. Of course this, as Glover implies, need not entail surrendering the positions that your sentiments spell out. It does, however, involve taking care that you recognize the possibility that your commitments might not be based as much upon reason as on unacknowledged emotions and desires. No group has appropriated this fundamental Freudian point more than the advertising industry.
Philosophy embodies a love of wisdom, a knowledge of how best to live. And Freud most certainly uncovered and delivered that type of knowledge. Along with Marx, Dostoevsky and a handful of others, Freud was one of the first thinkers in the Western tradition to put conscience under such hard, honest scrutiny. Up until the 19th century, our sense of right and wrong was held to be sacrosanct, grounded in God and/or reason. Freud, however, detected that conscience is often inconsistent, irrational and sometimes plain bonkers. In the end, he believed it was frequently the magistrate on our shoulder rather than our basic drives that steers us into neurosis.
On Freud's reckoning, hyperbolic ideals such as the prohibition of lustful feelings or of hatred towards our loved ones make for a snarling Rottweiler of a conscience, one that takes a sizable bite out of our prospects for happiness. Unlike moral rigorists such as Kant and Kierkegaard, Freud maintained that humans are born with psychological as well as physical limitations. As a result, he was intensely critical of the Christian ideal that we should not only love our neighbor but our enemies as well. In sum, the doctor prescribed calibrating our morals to our psychological abilities.
Like Kierkegaard, Freud endlessly mucked around in the morass of anxiety and depression and, like those other great explorers of the mind, was often accused of being of too depressing. Yet, when pressed to provide some positive vision of health, Freud more than once implied that what is fundamental to happiness is the ability to love and work; that is, to be able to invest in something other than yourself. In an age often daubed in Freudian terms as "narcissistic" and which, in part thanks to Freud, has come to deify the self, getting outside of one's own orbit might be a wise and practical ideal.
FOOTNOTE
[1] Glover, J. Freud, morality, and responsibility. In Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Brian A . Farrell (ed). New York : Macmillan College Pub. Co. 1994, p. 157.
(Related post: A short film by Andy Martin and Norman Lomax on surfing and the city, with a narration from Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents.")
Gordon Marino is a professor of philosophy and the director of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. He is the editor of "Ethics:The Essential Writings" (Modern Library Classics, 2010) and is currently editing "The Quotable Kierkegaard" for Princeton University Press.
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