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The philosophers who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all felt the necessity of going back to a state of nature; but not one of them has got there.… Every one of them, in short, constantly dwelling on wants, avidity, oppression, desires, and pride, has transferred to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they described the social man.
The world is primarily a moral order.
Psychoanalysis … stands in opposition to everything that is conventionally restricted, well-established and generally accepted.
… the ‘silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development. Suppose we admitted this principle in the sphere of morals. … the ‘silly question' as applied to morals would open the way to a discovery of the few ultimacies behind all systems of morals, a region in which very little has as yet been done.
Psychoanalysis is a moral undertaking, aiming to promote individual freedom and responsibility through expanded reflection, reduced self-deceit, and a challenge to irrational authority. Much of its core content, however, conflicts with this radical aim. Freud assumed, for example, that repression is a condition of individual and societal development, that has a natural-scientific basis. Both assumptions must now be considered dubious.
Ideological conflicts arising from protests against such assumptions are important to the growth of the field, but