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authorSilvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>2018-01-22 17:01:05 -0200
committerSilvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>2018-01-22 17:01:05 -0200
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Updates Eros and Civilization
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@@ -415,6 +415,19 @@ Superego:
than ever before. This time there shall be no killing of the father, not even a
"symbolic" killing -- because he may not find a successor.
+ [...]
+
+ Note: 20 In his paper on "The Delay of the Machine Age," Hanns Sachs made an
+ interesting attempt to demonstrate narcissism as a constitutive element of the
+ reality principle in Greek civilization. He discussed the problem of why the
+ Greeks did not develop a machine technology although they possessed the skill
+ and knowledge which would have enabled them to do so. He was not satisfied with
+ the usual explanations on economic and sociological grounds. Instead, he
+ proposed that the predominant narcissistic element in Greek culture prevented
+ technological progress: the libidinal cathexis of the body was so strong that
+ it militated against mechanization and automatization. Sachs' paper appeared in
+ the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, II (1933) , 42off.
+
### Repression due to exogenous factors: the central argument
Therefore, if the historical process tended to make obsolete the institutions
@@ -735,6 +748,133 @@ Superego:
would be so small that a large area of repressive constraints and
modifications, no longer sustained by external forces , would collapse.
+### The Aesthetic Dimension
+
+ Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), written largely
+ under the impact of the Critique of Judgment, aim at a remaking of civilization
+ by virtue of the liberating force of the aesthetic function: it is envisaged as
+ containing the possibility of a new reality principle.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Since it was civilization itself which "dealt modern man this wound," only a
+ new mode of civilization can heal it. The wound is caused by the antagonistic
+ relation between the two polar dimensions of the human existence. Schiller
+ describes this antagonism in a series of paired concepts: sensuousness and
+ reason, matter and form (spirit), nature and freedom, the particular and the
+ universal.
+
+ Each of the two dimensions is governed by a basic impulse: the "sensuous
+ impulse " and the "form-impulse." 20 The former is essentially passive,
+ receptive, the latter active, mastering, domineering . Culture is built by the
+ combination and interaction of these two impulses. But in the established
+ civilization, their relation has been an antagonistic one: instead of
+ reconciling both impulses by making sensuousness rational and reason sensuous,
+ civilization has subjugated sensuousness to reason in such a manner that the
+ former, if it reasserts itself , does so in destructive and "savage" forms
+ while the tyranny of reason impoverishes and barbarizes sensuousness. The
+ conflict must be resolved if human potentialities are to realize themselves
+ freely. Since only the impulses have the lasting force that fundamentally
+ affects the human existence, such reconciliation between the two impulses must
+ be the work of a third impulse. Schiller defines this third mediating impulse
+ as the play impulse, its objective as beauty, and its goal as freedom.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The quest is for the solution of a "political" problem : the liberation of man
+ from inhuman existential conditions. Schiller states that, in order to solve
+ the political problem, "one must pass through the aesthetic, since it is beauty
+ that leads to freedom." The play impulse is the vehicle of this liberation. The
+ impulse does not aim at playing "with" something ; rather it is the play of
+ life itself, beyond want and external compulsion -- the manifestation of an
+ existence without fear and anxiety, and thus the manifestation of freedom
+ itself.
+
+ Man is free only where he is free from constraint, external and internal,
+ physical and moral -- when he is constrained neither by law nor by need. 21 But
+ such constraint is the reality. Freedom is thus, in a strict sense, freedom
+ from the established reality: man is free when the "reality loses its
+ seriousness" and when its necessity "becomes light" ( leicht). 22 "The greatest
+ stupidity and the greatest intelligence have a certain affinity with each other
+ in that they both seek only the real"; however, such need for and attachment to
+ the real are "merely the results of want."
+
+ In contrast, "indifference to reality" and interest in "show" (dis-play,
+ Schein) are the tokens of freedom from want and a "true enlargement of
+ humanity." 23 In a genuinely humane civilization, the human existence will be
+ play rather than toil, and man will live in display rather than need.
+
+ These ideas represent one of the most advanced positions of thought. It must be
+ understood that the liberation from the reality which is here envisaged is not
+ transcendental, "inner," or merely intellectual freedom (as Schiller explicitly
+ emphasizes 24 ) but freedom in the reality. The reality that "loses its
+ seriousness" is the inhumane reality of want and need, and it loses its
+ seriousness when wants and needs can be satisfied without alienated labor.
+ Then, man is free to "play" with his faculties and potentialities and with
+ those of nature, and only by "playing" with them is he free. His world is then
+ display ( Schein), and its order is that of beauty.
+
+ Because it is the realization of freedom, play is more than the constraining
+ physical and moral reality: ". . man is only serious with the agreeable, the
+ good, the perfect; but with beauty he plays." 25 Such formulations would be
+ irresponsible "aestheticism" if the realm of play were one of ornament, luxury,
+ holiday, in an otherwise repressive world. But here the aesthetic function is
+ conceived as a principle governing the entire human existence, and it can do so
+ only if it becomes "universal."
+
+ [...]
+
+ If we reassemble its main elements, we find:
+
+ (1) The transformation of toil (labor) into play, and of repressive
+ productivity into "display" -- a transformation that must be preceded by the
+ conquest of want (scarcity) as the determining factor of civilization. 43
+
+ (2) The self-sublimation of sensuousness (of the sensuous impulse) and the
+ de-sublimation of reason (of the form-impulse) in order to reconcile the two
+ basic antagonistic impulses.
+
+ (3) The conquest of time in so far as time is destructive of lasting
+ gratification.
+
+ These elements are practically identical with those of a reconciliation between
+ pleasure principle and reality principle. We recall the constitutive role
+ attributed to imagination (phantasy) in play and display: Imagination preserves
+ the objectives of those mental processes which have remained free from the
+ repressive reality principle; in their aesthetic function, they can be
+ incorporated into the conscious rationality of mature civilization. The play
+ impulse stands for the common denominator of the two opposed mental processes
+ and principles.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Non-repressive order is essentially an order of abundance: the necessary
+ constraint is brought about by "superfluity" rather than need. Only an order of
+ abundance is compatible with freedom. At this point, the idealistic and the
+ materialistic critiques of culture meet. Both agree that nonrepressive order
+ becomes possible only at the highest maturity of civilization, when all basic
+ needs can be satisfied with a minimum expenditure of physical and mental energy
+ in a minimum of time.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Possession and procurement of the necessities of life are the prerequisite,
+ rather than the content, of a free society. The realm of necessity, of labor,
+ is one of unfreedom because the human existence in this realm is determined by
+ objectives and functions that are not its own and that do not allow the free
+ play of human faculties and desires.
+ The optimum in this realm is therefore to be defined by standards of
+ rationality rather than freedom -- namely, to organize production and
+ distribution in such a manner that the least time is spent for making all
+ necessities available to all members of society. Necessary labor is a system of
+ essentially inhuman, mechanical, and routine activities; in such a system,
+ individuality cannot be a value and end in itself. Reasonably, the system of
+ societal labor would be organized rather with a view to saving time and space
+ for the development of individuality outside the inevitably repressive
+ work-world. Play and display, as principles of civilization, imply not the
+ transformation of labor but its complete subordination to the freely evolving
+ potentialities of man and nature.
+
### Misc
But, again, Freud shows that this repressive system does not really solve the