Freud: we cannot prohibit everything because it risks leading to self-destruction
“Life is too hard for us,” writes Freud in Unease in Culture. We therefore need diversions to survive. So, if we prohibit too much, the risk is a destruction of culture. As Jacques André indicates, “culture has sources, needs energy”. He takes the example of the writer Victor Klemperer, “German Jew, banned from teaching, professor of philology, locked up in Dresden with his wife in atrocious conditions, it’s impossible. He’s there, he’s hungry, he can’t even eat, there’s nothing at all. And then he says, I won’t be able to live if for at least an hour I don’t work on 18th century France, which is his subject of interest and passion. He needs this diversion from intellectual work, from intellectual passion, to be able to survive, basically”.
Spinoza: we cannot restrict our appetites because that would be unnatural
Against the thesis of free will, Spinoza underlines the weight of appetites. Thus, prohibiting certain things “ it doesn’t make sense, it’s even something that can be violent, since it’s something that would go against human nature ” explains Céline Hervet. So what can we do to limit certain appetites that can be harmful to ourselves? We can imagine remedies with Spinoza, because he “do not leave humanity like this, lost in its misfortune and in its servitude”. These remedies are “meetings and the diversification of sources of pleasure that must be prioritized ”.
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Jacques André, psychoanalyst, professor emeritus of psychopathology at Paris-Diderot University, director of the Petite Bibliothèque de Psychoanalyse at the PUF. He is the author of:
- Female sexuality (PUF, 2009, reissued in 2022)
- Male sexuality (PUF, 2013, reissued in 2022)
- Freud’s Lectures (PUF, 2019)
- The 100 words of psychoanalysis (PUF, 2021)
- Revenge of the jellyfish (PUF, 2021)
- Freud’s 100 words (PUF, 2022)
Céline Hervet, agrégée, lecturer in the history of modern philosophy, moral and political philosophy at the University of Picardie Jules Verne. She is currently preparing an essay on the concept of refractory as well as a collection of texts devoted to the work of historian Nicole Loraux. She is the author of:
- From imagination to understanding. The power of language in Spinoza (Garnier Classics, 2012)
- Under the direction of Céline Hervet. Think about sound, hear the unheard. Aesthetics and politics of sound modernity (Garnier Classics, 2023)
Sound references
- Excerpt from the film American Nightmare (2013), directed by James DeMonaco, with Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Max Burkholder.
- Reading by Anna Pheulpin of an extract from Freud, Unease in culture (1930) , In Complete Works, tome XVIII (PUF, 2015)
- Lecture by Riyad Cairat from an extract from Spinoza, Theological-political treatise (1670).** Chapter XX. Edition La Pléiade, translation by Dan Arbib
- Lecture by Riyad Cairat from an extract from Spinoza, Political treatise 10, 4-6. PUF edition, translation by Charles Ramond
- Lecture by Riyad Cairat d’un extrait de Freud, Unease in the culture, In Complete Works, tome XVIII (PUF, 2015)
- Song at the end of the show: Daniel Balavoine “Life teaches me nothing” (1980)
