Wilhelm Reich's Theory: Ethical Implications

The political implications of Wilhelm Reich's works were studied in the German SDS movement somewhat before they became of interest to the American public. The recent re-issue of Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism will probably make Reich's political theories of increasing interest in this country— an interest that was already whetted by Paul Robinson's The Freudian Left, which came out in 1969, and also to an extent by Elsworth Baker's 1967 book, Man in the Trap. (With the latter's construction of the political implications of Reich's works I shall presently take issue.) My central thesis is that both the political and the psychological aspects of Reich's work have considerable ethical import which those ethicists of a naturalistic persuasion who look to psychoanalytical theory for guidance cannot afford to overlook. This essay will be to a certain extent exegetical, form a synoptic point of view which has not yet to my knowledge been available.

I have noticed a certain reluctance on the part of many people to enter into a serious philosophical discussion of the ideas of Wilhelm Reich. The reason seems to be partly because he had a great deal to say about the role of sexuality in human life and thought, and partly because he appears to have suffered from something akin to paranoid symptoms during the last years of his life.

I do not see a need to defend Reich's right to claim our philosophical attention for his views on sexuality because those views can stand or fall on their own merits. However, I should like to point out that we ought in philosophy avoid something which I am going to call the “end-state fallacy.” We know that it is fallacious to disparage the worth of something because that something arose from lowly origins. To do this is to commit what we call the “genetic fallacy.” I submit that it is equally fallacious to disparage the worth of something because