Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

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PUR sViet Tie Ss

HERBERT

MARCUSE

Eros and Civilization A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

ALLEN

LANE

THE

PENGUIN

U.S. 7. LiswAR}

PRESS

of America by tes ed: Sta ites n the UnPi iint 5 d 108 she pli First pu 6r eat Britain, 19 Published in Gr

Reprinted, 1979

Penguinin Presa Allen Lane The on W1 Vigo Street, Lond

spn 71990159 4 ain by Printed in Great Brit

bridge, Wiltshire Redwood Press, Trow

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sive instincts because its social utilization (in labor) sustains

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and mind are made into instruments such instruments only ee can functasion

of the libidinal subject-object

desires. The distrii ich’ che human organism primarily is and

et

days, as an

time, durin eae

ee

ne

of

ce; the rest of the time hepre-is

Ee

average working day, incl

free

another ten hours, the free time would be four out of each és hours throughout the greater part twenty-four vidual's life.) This free time would be potentially available for id is rns the But the pleasure principle which gove temporal ’ it militates against the sense that in theess mel ‘tialso dismemberment of pleasure, against its distribution in small separated doses. A society governed by the performance principle must of necessity impose such distribution because the organism must be trained for its alienation at its very roots—

cs oe

rs, paration and travel to and from work, amounts to ten require and if the biological needs for sleep and nourishment

over, from

the working

day, alienation

and

regimentation

spread into the free time. Such coordination does not have to

routine of alienated labor; these require that leisure be a

sive relaxation and a re-creation of energy for work. Not until

the late: stage of industrial civilization, when: the growth of

ee eee

and useless gratification, for the ‘eternity of pleasure.’ More-

= ee

ego.* It must learn to forget the claim for timeless

Productivity threatens to overflow the limits set by repressive ‘as

tion, has the technique of mass manipulation developed

Or hae tment industry which directly controls leisure time, control! The inner aken over the enforcement of such itscll. and gone wdividual is not to be left alone. For left to alities of liberi eos ree intelligence aware of the potentienergy generated oo rama y lirust of repression, the libidinal pai

extraneous limitations and strive to fi

the reality ego and

the

“*

Fes panto? Ni er

eR

Be

a tian

|

R SS ha

pe Rk

hat

|

It is especially operasi

ee

of sexuality reflects the basic features of

‘

:

against its ever more

in the ‘unification’ of the various objects of the partial

insattincts into one libidinal object of the opposite sex, and in

che sstablishment of genie’ supremacy. In both cases, the process is Vv is to say, the partial infreely into a ‘higher’ stage of gratification stincts do not develop d which preserves their objectives, but are cut off and reduceto

-gubservient functions. This process achieves the socially neces-

|

n: e ody za sary desexualiof thte ibo th libido becomes concen-

| i

the sex instinct taboos as perversions practically all its manifestations which do not serve or prepare for the procreative function. Without the most severe restrictions, they would

trated in one part of the body, leaving most of the rest free for duction of the use as the instrument of labor. The temporal re d e t n e m e libido is thus supplby its spatial reduction. y the sex instinct has no extraneous temporal and spatial limitations on its subject and object; sexuality is by nature ‘polymorphous-perverse.’ The societal organization of

j

counteract the sublimation on which the growth of culture

|

According to Fenichel, ‘pre-genital strivings are the object of sublimation,’ and genital primacy is its prerequisite.” Freud questioned why the taboo on the perversions is sustained with such an extraordinary rigidity. He concluded that no one can forget that the perversions are not merely detestable but also something monstrous and terrifying—‘as if they exerted a seductive influence; as if at bottom a secret envy of those who

enjoy them had to be strangled.’* The perversions seem to give a promesse de bonheur greater than that of ‘normal’ sexuality. What is the source of their promise? Freud emphasized the ‘exclusive’ character of the deviations from normality, ree ee cere nes ney ube perenne

’ ’

express rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality under the order of procreation, and against the institutions which

c ti yes arylse neo guarantee this order. Psychoath in the

that exclude or prevent procreation an opposition

|

con-

dominton_an tempt preven the Teapetranc of the entire enslavement seem to reject cree tinuing

;

the chain of

Pleasure

freedom in a wor

ion

the reali

and

of

paternal

Claiming

of refesationy oer avs ohten: cuaractertand

Penne Tong Rejection of that feeling of guilt which accom -.

» By meen virtue of ithe egane

eee

r e Ue renee

oein

aftnty

free phantasy as that mental activity which ‘was kept livy-testing and remained subordinated to the pleasure

role only plays a constitutive not sy principle alone.’* Phanta imagina-

stic in the perverse manifestations of sexuality,® as arti of integral tion, it also links the perversions with the images

which enforces freedom and gratification. In a repressive order,

the equation between normal, socially useful, and good, the

manifestations of pleasure for its own sake must appear as

fleurs du mal. Against a society which employs sexuality as end in itself; they thus place themselves outside the dominion of the performance principle and challenge its very foundation. They establish libidinal relationships which society must ostraof civilization cize because they threaten to reverse the which turned the organism into an instrument of work. They are a symbol of what had to be suppressed so that suppression could prevail and organize the ever more efficient domination of man and nature—a symbol of the destructive identity between freedom and happiness. Moreover, license in the practice of perversions would endanger the orderly reproduction not only of labor power but perhaps even of mankind itself.

The fusion of Eros and death

instinct, precarious even in the

normal human existence, here seems to be loosened beyond the

danger point. And the loosening of this fusion makes manifest ent the erotic compon in the death instin and thect fatal com-

poninent the sex instinct. The perversions sugthe te ges ultimat identity of Eros and death instinct, or the submission of Eros

to the death instinct. The cultural task (the life task?) of the libido—namely, to make the ‘destructive instinct harmless’"—

ee

the instinctual drive in search of ulti-

fulfillment regresses from the

pleasure

prin-

ciple to the Nirvana principle. Civilization has acknowlelged

d : it admire one s e danger and sancti this suprem the convergence of death instinct and Eros i i

—-

--

~

Ce

®

the entire progress of civilization is rendered

ible

the transformation and utilization of the death

toatias ce i.

derivatives. The diversion of primary destructiveness from the

ego to the external world feeds technological progress, and the use of the death instinct for the formation of the superego

achieves the punitive submission of the pleasure ego to the reality principle and assures civilized morality. In this transformation, the death instinct is brought into the service of

Eros; the aggressive impulses provide energy for the continuous alteration, ater and exploitation of nature to the advantage of mankind. In attacking, splitting, changing, pulverizing things and animals (and, periodically, also mea ee extends

his dominion over the world and advances to ever richer stages

of civilization. But civilization preserves throughout the mark of its deadly component: .-» we seem almost forced to accept the dreadful hypothesis that in the very structure and substance of all human constructive social efforts there is embodied a principle of death, that there is no progressive impulse but must become fatigued, that the intellect can provide no permanent defence against a vigorous barbarism.™ The socially chaneled destructiveness reveals time and again its origin in a drive which defies all usefulness. Beneath the manifold rational and rationalized motives for war against national and group enemies, for the destructive conquest of time, space,

and man, the deadly partner

of Eros becomes

manifest of the sctimne 5. in the persistent approval and participation 3

‘In the construction of the personality the destruction instinct manifests itself most clearly in the formation of the super-

ego.’* To be sure, by its defensive role against the ‘unrealistic’ impulses of the id, by its function in the lasting conquest of

the Oedipus complex, the superego builds up and protects the

unity of the ego, secures its development under the reality principle, and thus works in the service of Eros. However, the

superego attains these objectives by directing the ego against

its id, turning part of the destruction instincts against 2 part of ar

the:

of the perty—by destroying, ‘splitting’ the unity

as a whole; this it works in the service of the antagonist

%

o

te hy

< '

eas

. 2

PRD, Ly aes a ee

© > -< O¥€r, constitutes the moral core.of the mature personality.

ed Conscience, the most cherished moral agency of the civiliz the ct; instin death individual, emerges as permeated with the categorical imperative that the superego enforces remains an

imperative of self-destruction while it constructs the social

existence of the personality. The work of repression pertains

to the death instinct as well as the life instinct. Normally, their

fusion is a healthy one, but the sustained severity of the super-

ego constantly threatens this healthy balance. “The more a man

checks his aggressive tendencies toward others the more tyran-

nical, that is aggressive, he becomes in his ego-ideal ... the more intense become the aggressive tendencies of his ego-ideal against his ego.’ Driven to the extreme, in melancholia, ‘a

pure culture of the death instinct’ may hold sway in the superego: it may become a ‘kind of gathering place for the death

instincts." But this extreme danger has its roots in the normal situation of the ego. Since the ego's work results in a .-. liberation

of

the

aggressive

instincts

in

ee

its struggle against the libido exposes it to the danger of maltreatment and death. In suffering under the attacks of

the super-ego or perhaps even succumbing to them, the ego is meeting with a fate like that of the protozoa which are

destroyed by the products of disintegration that they themselves have created.”

And Freud adds that ‘from the [mental] economic point of

view the morality that functions in the super-ego seems to be a similar product of disintegration.’

It is in this context that Freud's metapsychology comes face to face with the fatal dialectic of civilization: the very progress of civilization leads to the release of increasingly destructive forces. In order to elucidate the connection between Freud's

individual psychology and the theory of civilization, it will be necessary to resume the interpretation of the instinctual

dynamic at a different level—namely, the phylogenetic one.

1In addition to Freud's own especially in the New Introswcory, Lectures), see § ied Santer ‘Ueber die Einteilung der

Triebe, mago, Vol. X I (19g5); ‘ oe Perce and the Instincts," in: British Journal Ernest Jones,

of the, Froblersanalysis t andof Psychoa menJournal p on ti la the of Hee io ttbernat Vol. 56

shing s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Liveright Publi alysis -» 1959)» P- 54 es Psychoan on ur Lect } 2 ao a, See also New Introductory145146. 1933), PP(ew York: W. W. Norton,on ms, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund of Drea tati

‘The I

York: Modern Library, 1998), P+ 534:

Freud (New

& Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 6 Jbed. : Hogarth Press, 1950), p. 66. Quo(Lo 1 The Ego and the Id of the publisher.

tations are used by perm

Beyond the Pleasure Principle,-p. 76.

iT.

and the Id, p. 66.

w Rayos tee Pleasure Principle,

- 52-§3-

eis (New York: in hoanalys of Psyc i dn Outl

Pp:

‘

nd osure yPlea U Bethe

Principle, p. 53-

Pe.P

UB Ibid.

Ui Tbid., p. 80. 8 Fbid., PP- 0-51. i The

(London: va ”

the Id,

p. 88; Civilization and

Jis Discontents

Press, 1949), p- 102. Subsequent quotations are o€ the publisher. Bibring, “The and Proble of the ms Theory

e

s fhe Ego and the Id, p70. Franz

W. W. Norton, 1949),

hoanalysis

Alexander,

Total

(New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph No. sn

" ‘The

Prevalent Form of

Collected

© Ernest

Study of

i Hogarth

In

a Pres,

‘

ee

1

tel, ‘On Memory and Childhood.’

S15:

Deals,"

:

in A

Relations, ed, Patrick Mullahy (New York:

S7

tees pera

Se

ae

i

Aor

Hermitage Press, 1950), P- 24BIbid., p. 26. ™ Civilization and Its Discontents, p- '74a

Chntnation anced Its Discontents, i p . 3 9-20 io Prychoanal P- 95%.

A General ogee Co., 194), City Publishing

hology

er Publishing

(New York:

Garden

hnctple, Pp. 57-

d Beyond the Pleasure

® An Outline of Psychoanalysis, p. 20. # Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 57. Group

by

and

the asain

+» 1949), BP 40-

of the Ego

(New

York:

p. Bo. See also The Future of Its Discontents, andzation “ Civili an IMusion (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1949). pp. 10-11.

“4 Civilization and Its Discontents, pp. ; “To be sure, every form of society, every civilization has to exact ities labor time for the t of the necess and luxuries of life.

But not every and mode of labor is essentially irreconcilable with the pleasure principle. The human relations connected with work may a

om for a very considerable discharge of libidinal mpulses, narcissistic, aggressive, and even erotic.’ (Civil-

Saar taceees york@aey ice Ie and Eros (pleasure principle),

not wor ty prina . but between Gorated taba tpastraseaee inciple) and Eros. "The notion of non-alienated, libidinal work will be discussed below. “See Chapter 4 below.

“ The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis,

“4 General

#G. Mates

p. 142.

reduction TS Pschomabrie eg goa

der Prostitution,” in Imago, Vol.

® Otto Rank,$7 Fat und Schuldgefihl (Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich:

Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1926), p. 103. es ee Principles in Mental Functioning," in Collected i:

iF

1

17.

Seay Sexualitdt und Sch

ne

aoe Economic

-

ig-i

lem int “Masoch

in Collected

CS Wintred ‘Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Pocc pp.

don: Oxford University Press,188)

oe Freud, “Why Alexander,

5. i

War?’ in

Ibid.,

Pp. By.

Papers, V, 273.

The Psychoanalysis of the Total

" The and the . Ibid. Sp Ie 79. 14, PP. 79, 80. @

196-197. ee Personality,

,

CHAPTER THREE

THE ORIGIN OF REPRESSIVE CIVILIZATION (PHYLOGENESIS) origin of instinctual repression, which occurs during early childhood. The superego is the heir of the Oedipus complex,

and the repressive organization of sexuality is chiefly directed

against its pregenital and perverse manifestations. Moreover, the ‘trauma of birth’ releases the first expressions of the death instinct—the impulse to return to the Nirvana of the womb—

and necessitates the subsequent controls of this impulse. It is such thoroughness and severity thdt the mature individual's behavior is hardly more than a repetitive pattern of childhood experiences and reactions. But the childhood experiences which become traumatic under the impact of reality are preindividual, generic: with individual variations, the protracted dependence of the human infant, the Oedipus situation, and pregenital sexuality all belong to the genus man. Moreover, the unreasonable severity of the superego of the neurotic personality, the unconscious sense of guilt and the unconscious

need for punishment, seem to be out of proportion with the actual ‘sinful’ impulses of the individual; the and (as we shall see) intensification of the sense of guilt throughout maturity, the excessively repressive organization

of sexuality, cannot be adequately explained in terms of the still acute danger of individual impulses. Nor can the individual reactions to early traumata be adequately explained

by ‘what the individual himself has experienced’; they deviate

or a

better with their

oe

accord much

reactions to genetic events,’ and in

"guilt? which stands for the demands of the &

iid imbibes from the persons res

‘which

springing dung the first years of its life’ reflect

echoes of primitive man.'* Civilization \ by its petals heviingy, ant Es bes

_ is

so Freud asserts, includes ‘not only

ee

—

les, The moral

spositions, but

of ideational contents, memory traces of the experiences thus in itself is former generations.’ Individual

group ps

logy in so far as the indiy

ual itself still is in

has

far-reaching

method and substance of social science.

gy eer

for

the

psychology tears

ape

This conception

ee

with the species. This archaic heritage bridges Teed logy."* the ‘gap between individual and mass the ideological veil and traces the construction of the personality, it is led to dissolve the individual:

personality a

his autonomous

nl tio genera of the as the frozen manifesta

repression of mankind. Self-consciousness and reason, which have conquered and shaped the historical world, have done so al al. They have and extern in the image of repression, intern worked as the agents of domination; the liberties which they ) the soil of have brought (and these are considerable grew in songs er erate inary er ggg whedon foe mplications of Freud's theory of the ur se

into of athe ego-personality ty. ving’ the ide ‘dissol personByali

its primary components, psychology now bares the subindividual and pre-individual factors which unconmake the individual: it reveals the to the ego) actually scious

I

ei

ee

a

in and over the individuals.

a

power of the

domination, symbol iz the pri ed is the experience of Ocd mal ipus situation. It is by never entirely : the mat

ego of the civili preserves the archaicure heritage of man. zed I

5

is in Freud’s later writings on the

ne thay autonomy

af the mater ago might be abused as justilcation for shandowing the most advanced conceptions of psychoanalysis

undertaken by the cultural and interpersonal schools. In one

the ego are ‘acquired during the defensive con flicts of early

childhood’; he suggests that ‘each individual ego is endowed from the beginning with its own peculiar dispos a

* that t

exist

itions and

‘primary congenital. variations in

the ego.’ However, this new autonomy of the ego seems to turn

into its opposite: far from retracting the notion of the ego's ewential dependency

on pre-indi vic con generi dusteal llaintio,ns,

Freud strengthens the role of these constellations

the

of the ego. For he interprets the con genital

i a ie —

archaic mental immaturity. The memory of prehistoric oan and deeds continues to haunt civilization: the re-

pressed material returns, and the individual is still punished

forimpulses long since mastered and deeds long since un-

Hy:

ud’s hypothesis is not corroborated by any anthroevidence, it would have to be discarded altogether ical of catafor the fact that it telescopes, in a sequence events, the historical dialectic of domination

and

thereby clucidates aspects of civilization hitherto unexplained. We use Freud’s anthropological speculation only in this sense:

q

its symbolic value. The archaic events that the hypothesis stipulates may forever be beyond the realm of anthropological verification; the alleged consequences of these events are historical facts, and their interpretation in the light of Freud's

hypothesis lends them a neglected significance which points

to the historical future. If the hypothesis defies common sense,

it claims, in its defiance, a truth which common sense has been trained to

cu

‘domination but also created the

continued functioning of domina-

n

pleasure as well as wit!th his power,

te; F il

his age,

father

Hi

ren ov because the chick his publecte seqastiol Kiet set accompanied which were expressed the wish = shactepangelepacari’ , to identify oneself iH! S

tt Hu

ure was

TH

fete

ead

i

ert (ENE

‘he seasiaeniion ther, the suppression of pleas

wrod papas Goa

function,

(most of

ie

would immediately dissolve. In this role ities Seeddindoen tue uent fatherie progressed. In his and functhe inner and of the reality has histories! oi

“Tr

2

y “"

.-

a

ay

m

Fowratde

‘

Wwe,@

' . . 5. fe En

tp

_,

=

pine luck Het

similar to that of the father favoured

in the ar inal horde. One

tion came about in a nat

of the cn ae

way:

it was that

son, who, protected by his mother's love,

could profit by his father’s advancing years and replace him after his death.’

Primal

patriarchal despotism thus became an ‘effective’ order,

But Tks utiedh rakes

of the superimposed organization of the

horde must have been very precarious, and consequently the

hatred against patriarchal suppression very strong. In Freud's

construction, this hatred culminates in the rebellion of the exiled sons, the collective killing and devouring of the father, and the establishment of the brother clan, which in tum

deifies the assassinated father and introduces those taboos and

restraints which, according to Freud, generate social morality. Freud's hypothetical history of the primal horde treats the rebellion of the brothers as a rebellion against the father’s taboo on the women of the horde; no ‘social’ protest against the unequal division of pleasure is involved. Consequently, in

a strict sense, civilization begins only in the brother clan, when

the taboos, now self-imposed by the ruling brothers, implement

repression in the Common interest of preserving the group as a whole. And the decisive psychological event which separates the brother clan from the primal horde is the development of guilt feeling. Progress beyond the primal horde—i.e., civilization—presupposes guilt feeling: it introjects into the indivi-

duals, and thus sustains, the principal prohibitions, constraints,

and delays in gratification on which civilizaton depends. It is a reasonable surmise that after the

—

_ a time followed when the brothers ceauits a ce

es

obtain tn, the succession, which each of them wanted to

were as himselé alone. They came to see that these fights

undentaning

ee

a wll as

futile.

This

hard-won

of the deed of liberaMemory

achieved together and the attachment that

time of their exile— at last tore unre “nem during thea sort of social contract. © & union among them, a social “being the: first form of

ves,

of the father must repent. The assassination and selves, aiyreme crime because the father established the order of reproductive sexuality and thus is, in his person, the genus

The which creates and preserves all individuals.

father and tyrant in one, unites sex and order, pleasure and

B

reality; he evokes love and hatred; he guarantees the biological iological basis on which the history of mankind depends. The annihilation of his person threatens to annihilate lasting group life itself and to restore the prehistoric and subhistoric destructive force of the pleasure principle. But the sons want esdopeydnyen Spubbenhmenrdhsei lb! meataatiar epsngestingeton their needs. They can attain this objective only by repeating, in a new form, the order of domination which had controlled

pleasure and thereby preserved the group. The father survives as the god in whose adoration the sinners repent so that they can continue to sin, while the new fathers secure those sup-

pressions of pleasure which are necessary for preserving their rule and their organization of the group. The progress from

domination by one to domination by several involves'a ‘social spread’ of pleasure and makes repression self-imposed in the

ruling group itself: all its members have to obey the taboos if they want to maintain their rule. Repression now permeates

the life of the oppressors themselves, and part of their in-

stinctual energy becomes available for sublimation in ‘work’.

hypothesis, as consequences of the overthrow of patriarchal ©.

PORES by

hs

E

tee iF a

me

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a

mar

oti ig oth

=

Baa

ia

s

&

ih

iA

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i

“a

Le

as Mike Ue eet

Se d

a

cae Fn

a

r

o =

oe

_ A

Menge oe Oe

wet ata |

Fea

c

ety

ree

aa

to fo SNL i

1

aati a

ae

ay

nen ao we BEng ree * ty

lopment

as of civilization, freedom becomes possible only

aced by a pataffirmation of domination. Matriarchy 1s repl ilized by the riarchal counter-revolution, and the latter ts stab institutionalization of religion. Daring ha

Ne 6 ee

ee rmion af tha oe

patof the on place. Matriarchy was followed by a restituti

riarchal order. The new fathers, it is true, never succeeded of the primeval father. There were too to the omnipotence many of them and they lived in larger communities than

al in been; they had to get on with one had horde the orig r icted by social institutions.” he restr and were anot

Male gods at first appear as sons by the side of the

mother-deities, but gradually they assume the features of the

father; polytheism cedes to monotheism, and then returns the

‘one and only father deity whose power is unlimited.’™ Sublime

and sublimated, original domination becomes eternal, cosmic, and good, and in this form guards the process of civilization. The ‘historical rights’ of the primal father are restored.™

The sense of guilt, which, in Freud's hypothesis, is intrinsic to the brother clan and its subsequent consolidation into the

first ‘society,’ is primarily guilt feeling about the perpetration of the supreme crime, patricide, Anxiety arises over the con-

sequences of the crime. However, these consequences are twofold: they threaten to destroy the life of the group by the

removal of the authority which (although in terror) had pre-

served the group; and, at the same time, this removal promises

:

¢ father—that is, without suppression and

domination. Must it not be assumed that the sense of guilt

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