Eros-and-Civilization-A-Philosophical-Inquiry-into-Freud-.pdf

Front Matter by Editor, in Eros and Civilization: Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud . by Herbert Marcuse. (Beacon Press, Boston, MA,

1955). pp. iii -8. [ Bibliographic Details ][ View Documents ]

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Front Matter

[Title Page and Credits]

EROS

AND CIVILIZATION

A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

HERBERT MARCUSE

With a New Preface by the Author

BEACON PRESS BOSTON

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Library of Congress catalog card number: 66-3219

International Standard Book Numbers : 0- 8070-1554-7

0 -8070-1555-5 (pbk .)

First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1974

Beacon Press books are published under the auspices

of the Unitarian Universalist Association

Printed in the United States of America

109876543

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WRITTEN IN MEMORY OF

SOPHIE MARCUSE

1901-1951

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Contents

POLITICAL PREFACE 1966

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

xxvii

INTRODUCTION

PART I: UNDER THE RULE OF THE REALITY PRINCIPLE

1 . The Hidden Trend in Psychoanalysis

Pleasure principle and reality principle

Genetic and individual repression

"Return of the repressed" in civilization

Civilization and want: rationalization of renunciation "Remembrance of things past " as vehicle of liberation

2 .The Origin of the Repressed Individual (Ontogenesis)

The mental apparatus as a dynamic union of opposites

Stages in Freud's theory of instincts

Common conservative nature of primary instincts

Possible supremacy of Nirvana principle

Id, ego , superego

"Corporealization" of the psyche

Reactionary character of superego

Evaluation of Freud's basic conception

Analysis of the interpretation of history in Freud's psychology

Distinction between repression and "surplus- repression"

Alienated labor and the performance principle

Organization of sexuality : taboos on pleasure

Organization of destruction instincts

Fatal dialectic of civilization

- - viii --

3 . The Origin of Repressive Civilization (Phylogenesis)

"Archaic heritage" of the individual ego

Individual and group psychology

The primal horde: rebellion and restoration of domination

Dual content of the sense of guilt

Return of the repressed in religion

The failure of revolution

Changes in father -images and mother- images

4 . The Dialectic of Civilization

Need for strengthened defense against destruction

Civilization 's demand for sublimation (desexualization)

Weakening of Eros (life instincts); release of destructiveness

Progress in productivity and progress in domination

Intensified controls in industrial civilization

Decline of struggle with the father

Depersonalization of superego, shrinking of ego

Completion of alienation

Disintegration of the established reality principle

5 .Philosophical Interlude

106

Freud's theory of civilization in the tradition of Western philosophy

Ego as aggressive and transcending subject

Logos as logic of domination

Philosophical protest against logic of domination

Being and becoming: permanence versus transcendence

The eternal return in Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche

Eros as essence of being

-- ix - -

PART II: BEYOND THE REALITY PRINCIPLE

6 . The Historical Limits of the Established Reality Principle

129

Obsolescence of scarcity and domination

Hypothesis of a new reality principle

The instinctual dynamic toward non-repressive civilization

Problem of verifying the hypothesis

7 . Phantasy and Utopia

140

Phantasy versus reason

Preservation of the "archaic past "

Truth value of phantasy

The image of life without repression and anxiety

Possibility of real freedom in a mature civilization

Need for a redefinition of progress

8 .The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus

159

Archetypes of human existence under non-repressive civilization

Orpheus and Narcissus versus Prometheus

Mythological struggle of Eros against the tyranny of reason -- against death

Reconciliation of man and nature in sensuous culture

9 . The Aesthetic Dimension

172

Aesthetics as the science of sensuousness

Reconciliation between pleasure and freedom , instinct and morality

Aesthetic theories of Baumgarten , Kant, and Schiller

Elements of a non-repressive culture

Transformation of work into play

10 . The Transformation of Sexuality into Eros

197

The abolition of domination

Effect on the sex instincts

"Self-sublimation" of sexuality into Eros

Repressive versus free sublimation

Emergence of non-repressive societal relationships

Work as the free play of human faculties

Possibility of libidinous work relations

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11 . Eros and Thanatos

222

The new idea of reason: rationality of gratification

Libidinous morality

The struggle against the flux of time

Change in the relation between Eros and death instinct

EPILOGUE : Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism

238

INDEX

275

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Political Preface 1966

Eros and Civilization: the title expressed an optimistic , euphemistic, even positive thought, namely , that the achievements of

advanced industrial society would enable man to reverse the direction of progress , to break the fatal union of productivity and

destruction, liberty and repression -- in other words, to learn the gay science ( gaya sciencia ) of how to use the social wealth for

shaping man's world in accordance with his Life Instincts, in the concerted struggle against the purveyors of Death. This optimism

was based on the assumption that the rationale for the continued acceptance of domination no longer prevailed, that scarcity and the

need for toil were only "artificially" perpetuated - - in the interest of preserving the system of domination. I neglected or minimized the

fact that this "obsolescent" rationale had been vastly strengthened (if not replaced) by even more efficient forms of social control.

The very forces which rendered society capable of pacifying the struggle for existence served to repress in the individuals the need

for such a liberation. Where the high standard of living does not suffice for reconciling the people with their life and their rulers, the

"social engineering" of the soul and the "science of human relations" provide the necessary libidinal cathexis. In the affluent society,

the au -

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thorities are hardly forced to justify their dominion . They deliver the goods; they satisfy the sexual and the aggressive energy of their

subjects . Like the unconscious, the destructive power of which they so successfully represent, they are this side of good and evil,

and the principle of contradiction has no place in their logic.

As the affluence of society depends increasingly on the uninterrupted production and consumption of waste, gadgets, planned

obsolescence, and means of destruction, the individuals have to be adapted to these requirements in more than the traditional ways.

The "economic whip," even in its most refined forms, seems no longer adequate to insure the continuation of the struggle for

existence in today 's outdated organization , nor do the laws and patriotism seem adequate to insure active popular support for the

ever more dangerous expansion of the system. Scientific management of instinctual needs has long since become a vital factor in

the reproduction of the system: merchandise which has to be bought and used is made into objects of the libido ; and the national

Enemy who has to be fought and hated is distorted and inflated to such an extent that he can activate and satisfy aggressiveness in

the depth dimension of the unconscious. Mass democracy provides the political paraphernalia for effectuating this introjection of the

Reality Principle; it not only permits the people (up to a point) to chose their own masters and to participate (up to a point) in the

government which governs them -- it also allows the masters to disappear behind the technological veil of the productive and

destructive apparatus which they control, and it conceals the human (and material) costs of

-- xiii - -

the benefits and comforts which it bestows upon those who collaborate. The people, efficiently manipulated and organized, are free;

ignorance and impotence , introjected heteronomy is the price of their freedom .

It makes no sense to talk about liberation to free men -- and we are free if we do not belong to the oppressed minority. And it makes

no sense to talk about surplus repression when men and women enjoy more sexual liberty than ever before. But the truth is that

this freedom and satisfaction are transforming the earth into hell. The inferno is still concentrated in certain far away places:

Vietnam , the Congo, South Africa, and in the ghettos of the "affluent society": in Mississippi and Alabama, in Harlem . These infernal

places illuminate the whole. It is easy and sensible to see in them only pockets of poverty and misery in a growing society capable of

eliminating them gradually and without a catastrophe . This interpretation may even be realistic and correct. The question is:

eliminated at what cost -- not in dollars and cents, but in human lives and in human freedom ?

I hesitate to use the word -- freedom -- because it is precisely in the name of freedom that crimes against humanity are being

perpetrated. This situation is certainly not new in history: poverty and exploitation were products of economic freedom; time and

again, people were liberated all over the globe by their lords and masters, and their new liberty turned out to be submission, not to

the rule of law but to the rule of the law of the others . What started as subjection by force soon became "voluntary servitude,"

collaboration in reproducing a society which made servitude

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increasingly rewarding and palatable. The reproduction , bigger and better, of the same ways of life came to mean, ever more clearly

and consciously, the closing of those other possible ways of life which could do away with the serfs and the masters, with the

productivity of repression .

Today , this union of freedom and servitude has become "natural" and a vehicle of progress. Prosperity appears more and more as

the prerequisite and by-product of a self-propelling productivity ever seeking new outlets for consumption and for destruction, in

outer and inner space, while being restrained from "overflowing" into the areas of misery -- at home and abroad. As against this

amalgam of liberty and aggression, production and destruction, the image of human freedom is dislocated: it becomes the project of

the subversion of this sort of progress . Liberation of the instinctual needs for peace and quiet, of the "asocial" autonomous Eros

presupposes liberation from repressive affluence: a reversal in the direction of progress.

It was the thesis of Eros and Civilization , more fully developed in my One-Dimensional Man , that man could avoid the fate of a

Welfare-Through-Warfare State only by achieving a new starting point where he could reconstruct the productive apparatus without

that "innerworldly asceticism " which provided the mental basis for domination and exploration. This image of man was the

determinate negation of Nietzsche's superman: man intelligent enough and healthy enough to dispense with all heros and heroic

virtues, man without the impulse to live dangerously , to meet the challenge; man with the good conscience to make life an end-in-

itself, to live in joy a life without fear.

-- xv - -

"Polymorphous sexuality" was the term which I used to indicate that the new direction of progress would depend completely on the

opportunity to activate repressed or arrested organic , biological needs: to make the human body an instrument of pleasure rather

than labor. The old formula, the development of prevailing needs and faculties , seemed to be inadequate; the emergence of new,

qualitatively different needs and faculties seemed to be the prerequisite, the content of liberation.

The idea of such a new Reality Principle was based on the assumption that the material (technical) preconditions for its

development were either established, or could be established in the advanced industrial societies of our time . It was self -understood

that the translation of technical capabilities into reality would mean a revolution. But the very scope and effectiveness of the

democratic introjection have suppressed the historical subject, the agent of revolution: free people are not in need of liberation, and

the oppressed are not strong enough to liberate themselves. These conditions redefine the concept of Utopia: liberation is the most

realistic, the most concrete of all historical possibilities and at the same time the most rationally and effectively repressed -- the most

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