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In Foundations of Morality, George Frankl, from the perspectives of both psychoanalysis and philosophy, explores the consequences of what he sees as the loss of an overarching moral consciousness governing human behavior. The hope that science and reason, through philosophy, would provide an alternative to faith-based morality has failed. The superego, previously allied with God, but now weakened and, no longer able to direct angry and aggressive impulses outwardly, has itself become the target of these impulses. The result has been the overwhelming of our society by pathological narcissism, greed (the deification of the profit motive), and sadomasochism, in all strata of society. A sign of this degradation is seen in the coarsening of art since the Expressionists. Frankl's condemnation of our current culture, in a chapter entitled “The End of Civilization?” amounts almost to a jeremiad.
According to Frankl, the promise of the Enlightenment to provide a non-religious philosophical basis for morality has been largely a disaster. As he sees it, the attacks on metaphysics and universals, by the logical positivists, linguistic analysts, post-modernists and deconstructionists, became more and more convoluted until they ended up in the obscure nonsense of Lacan. Frankl suggests that the philosophy of Wittgenstein, one of his particular bête noires, was influenced by the need to hide his homosexuality. Only Kant, Frankl's guiding light, upheld the need and legitimacy of nontheistic moral standards.
To combat those who hold a relativistic view of morality and believe that there is no essential difference between the brains of animals governed by genetic instinctual determinants and the human brain, Frankl undertakes a review of human brain science to find support for Kant's belief that “man is destined to shape his own fate.” In his review, Frankl emphasizes the interactivity of the various components of the incredibly complicated human brain. He emphasizes the unique, multip