Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud by Herbert Marcuse

Author:Herbert Marcuse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

The other turning point, however, is no longer a geological-biological one: it occurs at the threshold of civilization. The exogenous factor here is Ananke, the conscious struggle for existence. It enforces the repressive controls of the sex instincts (first through the brute violence of the primal father, then through institutionalization and internalization), as well as the transformation of the death instinct into socially useful aggression and morality. This organization of the instincts (actually a long process) creates the civilized division of labor, progress, and “law and order but it also starts the chain of events that leads to the progressive weakening of Eros and thereby to the growth of aggressiveness and guilt feeling. We have seen that this development is not “inherent” in the struggle for existence but only in its oppressive organization, and that at the present stage the possible conquest of want makes this struggle ever more irrational.

But are there not, in the instincts themselves, asocial forces that necessitate repressive constraints regardless of scarcity or abundance in the external world? Again, we recall Freud’s statement that the nature of the instincts is “historically acquired.” Therefore, this nature is subject to change if the fundamental conditions that caused the instincts to acquire this nature have changed. True, these conditions are still the same in so far as the struggle for existence still takes place within the framework of scarcity and domination. But they tend to become obsolete and “artificial” in view of the real possibility of their elimination. The extent to which the basis of civilization has changed (while its principle has been retained) can be illustrated by the fact that the difference between the beginnings of civilization and its present stage seems infinitely greater than the difference between the beginnings of civilization and the preceding stage, where the “nature” of the instincts was acquired. To be sure, the change in the conditions of civilization would directly affect only the formed human instincts (the sex and aggression instincts). In the biological-geological conditions which Freud assumed for the living substance as such, no such change can be envisaged; the birth of life continues to be a trauma, and thus the reign of the Nirvana principle seems to be unshakable. However, the derivatives of the death instinct operate only in fusion with the sex instincts; as long as life grows, the former remain subordinate to the latter; the fate of the destrudo (the “energy” of the destruction instincts) depends on that of the libido. Consequently, a qualitative change in the development of sexuality must necessarily alter the manifestations of the death instinct.

Thus, the hypothesis of a non-repressive civilization must be theoretically validated first by demonstrating the possibility of a non-repressive development of the libido under the conditions of mature civilization. The direction of such a development is indicated by those mental forces which, according to Freud, remain essentially free from the reality principle and carry over this freedom into the world of mature consciousness. Their re-examination must be the next step.

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