Updates Eros and Civilization

books/psicologia/eros-civilization.md

@@ -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