Preview

Comparing Freud's Views On Religion, And Art

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1256 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparing Freud's Views On Religion, And Art
Freud’s Civilization and it’s Discontents spoke about his views on religion, science, and art. He believes that religion is restrictive, which could lead to more conflicts. He also believes that religion is an illusion. He believed that the origin of religion could be traced back as far as feeling of infantile helplessness. There needs to be a paternal protector for infantile helplessness or else we would not know what to do as children. In religion, we could view the paternal protector as God. Freud views science as facts, technology, and advancements, which could cause problems. Science removes us from the external world. Freud views art as an illusion of reality, which could bring pleasure. Art provides a difference between reality and illusion. He believed that if you have art and science, you do not need religion. Religion, art and science are also known as achievements of civilization, which fit into his theory of human happiness. Freud defines happiness in terms of the satisfaction of need or desire. Happiness is hard to achieve, which is where Freud’s pleasure principle is found. There are two parts of the pleasure principle, which are negative aim, that avoids pain and suffering and positive aim is getting pleasure. As a civilization, the more advancements we …show more content…
We exploit the earth for resources, energy and building. It is the way we are able to build and advance our society. Beauty is for pleasure, enjoyment and not for necessary. Cleanliness prevents disease and order is psychological. Law also takes place in civilization because it regulates human relationships. Freud’s view on state of nature is that society did not start until civilization started when we have a variety of wants and needs. However, Rousseau has a different view on state of nature, which is that we started out with basic wants and needs that included sex, food and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Rousseau concludes that the progression of the sciences and arts are the cause of the corruption of virtue and morality. This discourse won Rousseau fame and recognition, and it laid much of the philosophical groundwork for a second, longer work, The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Rousseau’s praise of nature is a theme that continues throughout his writing career.…

    • 192 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In my first essay on Freud and Lewis, I say like Lewis, I have had my doubts, but have always taken a leap of faith. Through the course, my view has been affirmed to take that leap of faith. A text that has definitely affirmed and develop that same view is Stanley Hauerwas’s On the Church and the Christian Story. I have always been a believer in the Lord, and stuck to his belief.…

    • 977 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Freud places emphasis on the power of the individual versus the power of civilization as a whole in his book Civilization and Its Discontents, an emphasis that is clearly replicated in both 1984 and Panopticon. Freud states, “Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals” (46). This particular sentiment is echoed in the theory of the panopticon as tool to suppress the imprisoned individual, illustrated through the guard tower placed in the center of the prison that does not allow for inmates to decipher whether there is anyone inside watching them; an illusion that is intended to demonstrate the power of the panopticon…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Searle Dualism

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Freud and Nietzsche doesn’t believe there is a god. Nietzsche once said “God is dead.” and he believed God never existed. Freud believed that religion is created for someone to believe they are protected.…

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Freud and Tillich

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Now the gods have been replaced by science and a singular God (a father), who became more sophisticated than his predecessors, promising compensation for all the hard aches. Freud claims, that religion isn’t the essence of morality, that society didn’t adapt to the Ten Commandments but the…

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Happiness is the most ideal state of mind that any person can achieve in his life and which indicates complete physical and moral satisfaction of an individual. According to Freud, happiness is nothing but another synonym for sexual pleasure; in other words, following the pleasure principle, happiness can only be achieved by investing all of our libidinal energies in the aim of reaching genital satisfaction. But due to some obstacles that will never allow any human being from reaching the ultimate state of happiness, like the weakness of our own bodies, Freud, adopting the reality principle, came up with the theory of sublimation; which suggests that an individual can avoid the pain caused from not achieving complete happiness by deviating his libidinal energies towards other activities, like sports, gardening, painting… These activities will later cause the birth of human civilization. But note that when this sublimation exceeds its limits, and there are no more libidinal energies to be diverted, a more primitive instinct begins to show: the death drive, which can only be contained by the fund of libidinal energies that we possess.…

    • 309 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Freud thinks that man created religion to keep order from chaos. Contrarily, Hitchens thinks religion creates, and actually is, chaos. Hitchens points out all the wars that were caused by religion in his book in order to support his theory. Freud’s general viewpoint of religion is that it was there to help people to go about their daily lives, in a moral and ethical way. Freud believed that without religion in place people would go around committing crimes, because if there was no fear of the possibility of hell, or a losing a chance at heaven, nothing would stop them from doing unmoral things. Throughout the book, God is Not Great, Hitchens talks about Freud, and clearly holds him in high regard; much like he does with Marx. “Freud made the obvious point that religion suffered from one incurable deficiency: it was too clearly derived from our own desire to escape from or survive death.” (God Is Not Great, 103). Hitchens seems to agree with Freud, further supporting the fact that religion was human mad. So Freud believes that religion has done its work and has helped people, but it is now ready for a transition to a next step. The next step in Freud’s eyes is psychoanalysis. Furthermore, Freud never comes out right and says that he is an atheist, nor does he recognize the statement throughout his text. Contrarily, Hitchens openly states that he is an atheist.…

    • 1761 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis, believed that religion was a defence against the oceanic greatness of the world. The…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Freud also felt that religion was just an escape and a misleading notion which was an idea that should not be spread to people, that religion was a drug of the masses. His faith was fully in the minds ability to access its unconscious thoughts, thus avoiding any psychiatric disorder. Freud viewed the unconscious as a collection of images, thoughts and experiences that an individual refused to process, which led to psychiatric problems. (Wikipedia, 2010)…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Was Rousseau a Philosophe?

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Self preservation is the other key principle which Rousseau attributes to his idea of Natural Right. The desire to preserve oneself is the only thing that can drive one being to harm another, but only in extreme circumstances. Through the evolution of man and the occurrence of village festivals, ideas such as…

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to Rousseau man should want to live in the natural state. Nithin Coca is a journalist who writes from Colombia University discusses Rousseau’s ideas about the Natural State by saying, “Man in his natural state had more equality and freedom from…

    • 3155 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau describes the state of nature and the origin of chance events that gave birth to a civil state, where men build social relationships and developed reason. His description of state of nature is very different from that of Locke and Hobbes, as he believes that state of nature is actually better than the civil society. According to Rousseau, civil state is the culprit behind destroying the rudimentary man. It is surprising to note that Rousseau prefers state of nature over civil state, where savage humans live amicably. Rousseau indirectly criticizes Hobbes’ way of examining original man’s traits that developed because of living in a society. Through his thought experiment, Rousseau tries…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Freudian view of humanity is quite pessimistic. According to his ideology, people act only in order to satisfy their needs, regardless of how noble their intentions may seem. Their actions stem either from hunger, which is the internal need to preserve the individual/ego, or from love, i.e. when a person utilizes external objects to satisfy his desires. And even when humans try to impose some form of rational thought over their desires, they fail miserably. While the concept of civilization was constructed to protect people, according to Freud “Civilization is built to reduce suffering, yet civilization is the cause of our misery.” This being the case, the only impact rational thought has, is to cause further pain and suffering, as opposed to acting based on instinctual desire alone, which gives a person the chance at some pleasure, even if for a short while.…

    • 1424 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Freud paper

    • 383 Words
    • 1 Page

    God to answer to or to even have in our lives. Freud is essentially saying we don't…

    • 383 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Carl Gustav Jung a Swiss psychiatrist and a contemporary to the most controversial minds: Freud, who of which Jung’s theories to begin with were influenced by, but later grew opposition towards his ideas and started pursuing his own. Simply Viewing religion as a natural process and considered it as something that was ultimately good for our mental well being.…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays