1

Eros and Civilization,

by Herbert Marcuse
Outline by Philip Turetzky, turetzky@colostate.edu

Preface
:
Psychological categories have become political categories: Task = to
develop the social substance of psychological forces.
Introduction:
A) Freud’s thesis: civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of
instincts: sacrifice and delayed satisfaction are necessary for progress.
B) Technical progress has paid off, but at the cost of increased domination.
C) Q: Are the connections between progress & domination, productivity
& destruction, freedom & repression essential to civilization or are they
historically specific? i.e. is a non-repressive civilization possible?

Part I: Under the Rule of the Reality Principle:

1. The Hidden Trend in Psychoanalysis:

Freud: History is the history of repression. Culture constrains instincts,
which would destroy society and self because instincts seek unattainable
satisfactions. Yet this constraint is the precondition of progress.
A) Pleasure principle and reality principle:
1) Objectives of instincts change from pleasure principle (largely
unconscious, primary processes) to reality principle (largely conscious secondary
processes) (cf. p.12).
2) The latter restrains yet safeguards the former to deal with nature and
society. This alters pleasure itself.
3) The ego strives for the useful, developing reason (attention, memory,
judgment, i.e. becomes a subject) which tests reality.
4) Phantasy retains pleasure principle and the rest of the mind is devoted
to action.
5) Civilization struggles against freedom (absence of repression).
B) Genetic and individual repression:
1) Both ontogenetically and phylogenetically the reality principle
represses the pleasure principle.
2) The reality principle must be continually re-established.
C) “Return of the repressed” in civilization:
1) The repressed pleasure principle is never destroyed and returns in the
unconscious.
2) The dynamic: enslavement->rebellion->more domination; makes
repression into a social and historical phenomenon.
3) This dynamic of repression and the oppressor is internalized.
D) Civilization and want: rationalization of renunciation:
1) Scarcity reinforces repression and the reality principle.
2) Freud thinks that because of scarcity the dynamic of repression is
unavoidable. He shows the barbarous roots of the highest values. Constraint
and unfreedom are then the price of culture.
E) “Remembrance of things past” as vehicle of liberation:
 1) The unconscious is the drive for integral gratification and so is the
immediate identity of necessity and freedom.
2) It thus contains the memory of integral gratification in the past, and
utopian aspirations for the future.
3) The truth value of memory lies in such betrayed utopian promises.
4) Liberating memory yields critical standards exploding rational
repression and restoring phantasy.

2. The Origin of the Repressed Individual (Ontogenesis):

A) The mental apparatus as a dynamic union of opposites:
unconscious/ conscious; primary/secondary processes; inherited/acquired
forces; soma-psyche/external reality
B) Stages in Freud’s theory of instincts;
1) Sexuality is privileged in the mental apparatus as pleasure and life
oriented.
2) Early theory: libido (sexuality is one group of instincts)/self-
preservation (another group); middle: narcissism as pan-sexual); later Eros
includes self-preservation and life instincts/death instincts.
C) Common conservative nature of primary instincts:
1) Yet the instincts come to seem to have a common regressive nature.
2) They seeking a return to quiescence and the removal of inner tension.
The instincts serve repetition and death.
D) Possible supremacy of Nirvana principle:
1) Nirvana principle = seeking removal of internal tension due to stimuli.
2) This seems to splits into Eros and Thanatos. Eros delays & counteracts
tendency toward death by producing new tensions.
3) Q: Does Eros just serve as a long detour to death? The delay is long
enough to see Eros as unifying force preserving all life. Yet Eros ultimately
seems to partake of the the same conservative nature as the death instinct.
4) Death instinct is not just blind impulse to destruction but serves as an
unconscious flight from suffering, to relieve tensions.
E) Id, ego, superego: The historical character of the instincts requires a
new model of the person.
1) Id (the “it”) = unconscious primary instincts, atemporal, non-social
and valueless.
2) Ego (the “I”) splits off from the id under external pressures and
mediates between instincts and the external world. Perception and
consciousness are the part of the ego that test reality and preserve its existence.
The ego represents the external world for the id, and it asserts the reality
principle,ordering and controlling the id's impulses. Ego thinks as a detour from
past to repeated gratifications, and defends them against external world and
destructive impulses.
3) Superego: Derives from parental influence it represents morality as
social restrictions introjected as guilt, conscience, the need for punishment.
F) “Corporealization” of the psyche:
1) Conscious condemnation becomes unconscious repression and the
individual becomes re-actionary.
2) Psyche enforces past prohibitions, even when maturity makes them
unnecessary.
 G) Reactionary character of superego:
1) Mental development lags behind real development: id carries past
pleasure, superego past adjustments to reality.
2) Memory of unity of freedom and necessity, yield an acceptance of the
necessity of unfreedom.
H) Evaluation of Freud’s basic conception:
I) Analysis of the interpretation of history in Freud’s psychology:
1) The external world for humans is an historical world.
2) Freud’s conception is unhistorical in that it derives all civilization from
organized domination justified biologically.
3) Yet, this implies an historical development that is hidden in natural
(biological) reified processes.
J) Distinction between repression and “surplus-repression”:
1) Unfolding the social-historical nature of Freud’s concepts requires
parallel socio-historical concepts:
2) Surplus-repression = restrictions necessitated by social domination as
opposed repression which modifies the instincts necessary for survival.
3) Performance principle: the prevailing historical mode of the reality
principle.
K) Alienated labor and the performance principle:
1) Work (some pain and delayed gratification) is necessary to deal with
scarcity.
2) But this is fallacious if applied to consequences of particular historical
organizations of scarcity. The mode of work, distribution of scarce goods,
direction of goods to needs have been imposed on individuals by violence and
the rational use of power.
3) Domination = exercise of power to serve the interests of a particular
group. Different modes of domination will yield different forms of repression:
who works, under what sort of production and economy, e.g. patriarchal family,
hierarchical division of labor, public control of private lives.
L) Organization of sexuality: taboos on pleasure:
1) Surplus repression and basic repression interact.
2) e.g. senses of smell & taste are repressed aesthetically re: feces and also
under strict taboos on bodily pleasures, if eroticized smell & taste would
undermine the desexualization necessary for useful labor.
3) Sex instincts are repressed re: procreation function and primacy of
genitality make non-genitality and partial gratification taboo.
4) How can Eros both opposed civilization and yet be an integrative force
uniting people through love? This tension in Freud’s thought is unreconciled.
5) Civilization involves a dialectic (cf. N below) in which the repression
of Eros calls up the very destructive forces that repression was meant to quell.
6) The performance principle is historically specific to modernity. It
assume rationalized domination in which the interests of domination and of the
whole coincide.
7) But work is increasingly alienated and restrictions on libido general,
negating the pleasure principle. Restrictions operate as objective laws and are
internalized in individual desires (p. 46). Body and mind become instruments of
alienated labor under the distribution of time. Work time is separated from “free
time” and free time is increasingly regimented by the culture industry.
 8) Libido is spatially unified and restricted to the opposite sex and
genitality. Sexuality is originally polymorphous-perverse. The perversions are
seductive in promising greater satisfaction, express rebellion against the
performance principle, claim instinctual freedom, are allied with phantasy and
art. The order of procreation is endangered showing the identity of Eros and the
death instinct and the drive to fulfillment regresses from the pleasure principle to
the Nirvana principle.
M) Organization of destruction instincts:
1) There is no social organization of the death instinct. It is manifest in
sadomasochistic perversions and is taboo.
2) But the death instinct is used in the punishments and morality of the
super ego, which turn the ego against the id and split the personality, and
technological progress as aggressive forms of alteration, mastery, and
exploitation of nature in the service of Eros.
N) Fatal dialectic of civilization: The very progress of civilization leads
to the release of increasingly destructive forces.

3. The Origin of Repressive Civilization (Phylogenesis):

A) “Archaic heritage” of the individual ego:
1) Repression originates in pre-individual and generic experiences not in
individual ones.
2) The severity of the superego, guilt, and need for punishment are out of
proportion with individual acts & impulses.
3) So we must turn to the psychology of the species (the universal), the
archaic heritage, of which the individual is an instance.
B) Individual and group psychology:
1) The individual (self consciousness & reason) seem to be frozen
repression. The ego dissolves: the pre- & sub-individual make the person.
2) This undermined the ideology of the autonomous individual. The, not
yet mastered, past (of both child & species) defines the present.
C) The primal horde: rebellion and restoration of domination:
1) The archaic heritage leads back to the domination of humans by
humans and the incomplete rebellion against the father. We are still haunted by
the memory of these prehistoric impulses.
2) Freud’s anthropology is symbolic. Its truth eludes verification, but
explains actual historical consequences.
3) The father dominated the horde and reserved the pleasures of the
women, the sons had to steal wives, and channel energies into useful work.
Domination suppressed pleasure and created the conditions for labor and
progress to continue. (exogamy & labor)
4) By his success the father creates order and inspires others to want to
identify with him and his pleasures. The father and his later images embody the
reality principle.
5) Hatred of the father-order inspires the sons to kill him and establish
the brother clan (civilization), deify the father and institute taboos, morality, and
the development of introjected guilt feelings [cf. quote p63-64]. (exogamy exchange -
economy of marriage)
6) Repression permeates the group releasing energy for work, since the
sons want lasting gratification just like that the father guaranteed.
 7) Matriarchy and liberation follow domination (\ not natural) and lead
to the reaffirmation of domination. Religion reinforces this order polytheism
turns to monotheism and restores the all powerful father.
D) Dual content of the sense of guilt:
1) Guilt about the original patricide threatens to destroy the group by
removal of the preserving authority and by return of the pleasure principle.
2) Sons restore domination but having internalized the father they betray
the promise of pleasure (represented by women and the fear of incest and return
to the mother) and are guilty of a second crime. They then embody the reality
principle.
3) Anxiety continues because the crime against the pleasure principle is
not redeemed
E) Return of the repressed in religion:
1) The primal crime is repeated throughout history, a cycle of revolt and
restoration of authority.
2) The return of the repressed is exemplified in religion: Moses - Judaism
first born and source of Christianity, then Christ as redeemer of flesh
(Eros/Agape), and betrayal, Christ as divine source of law.
3) NB: Freud accepted Enlightenment’s view that science would liberate
us from the myths of religion and create progress, but science has created
instruments of destruction and given us good consciences in the face of suffering
and alienation.
F) The failure of revolution:
1) How is the return of the repressed manifested historically? By finding
the “memory traces” of repressed material in the institutions and ideologies
reproduced daily by force, identification, repression, sublimation forming the
ego & superego, reproducing both domination and the impulse to revolt. Actual
history matters little, the consequences are the same.
2) Objective laws and institutions (e.g. monogamy, private property,
universalized labor) more rationally distribute repression throughout the society
making rewards more secure.
G) Changes in father-images and mother-images:
1) The pleasure principle transformed into the performance principle
changes the object of struggle.
2) The mother combined Eros and Thanatos the aim of sex and the return
to Nirvana. These become divided by the incest taboo which separates affection
(created by abstinence) from sensual desire, making lasting group relations
possible.
3) The father is perpetuated as proper authority in every child and
institutions for the satisfaction of needs expand. But the industrial age develops
these institutions past their limits. They begin to destroy civilization.

4. The Dialectic of Civilization:

A) Need for strengthened defense against destruction:
1) Freud argues, from the nature of the instincts and the increase in
contemporary wars and bigotries, that progress requires an increase in the sense
of guilt.
 2) The superego takes over renounced aggression from the death instinct.
The father’s prohibitions inhibited the death instinct, serving Eros by unifying
the sons, creating affection, exogamy, sublimation.
3) Guilt seems to lose its irrationality as domination becomes the only
rationality of civilization. But strengthening defences against aggression needs
to and cannot enlist a strong Eros as a binding force, since civilization is founded
on the suppression of Eros.
B) Civilization’s demand for sublimation (desexualization):
1) Civilization = work, which is painful and must be enforced.
2) Aim inhibited sexuality inhibits and socializes erotic impulses:
civilization = sublimation and desexualized Eros.
C) Weakening of Eros (life instincts); release of destructiveness:
1) Culture demands continuous sublimation weakening Eros’s binding
force, unbinding destructive impulses.
2) Objections: not all work is unpleasurable/cultural inhibitions also
limit destructive impulses; work is social use of aggressive impulses and so
serves Eros. So the performance principle is not absolute instead the image of a
non-repressive civilization bears examination.
D) Progress in productivity and progress in domination:
1) Creative work must be distinguished from necessary labor.
2) Sublimation is an inappropriate concept for the former, but most
labor is the latter, alienated from individual needs.
E) Intensified controls in industrial civilization:
1) Progress is base in technics; technical rationality seems identical
w/civilization as power over nature. These destructive violations of nature are
not as effectively sublimated as Eros and seldom strengthen life.
2) The instincts of self-preservation, self-assurance and mastery function
to lead to death only fulfilling human needs as a by product.
3) The amount of surplus repression (historical rather than biological
sources of suffering) is the gauge of instinctual repression. Mastery over nature
and better social arrangements change historically and lessen the need for
delayed gratification and inhibition of the instincts, so less regimentation could
still indicate more repression.
F) Decline of struggle with the father:
1) The domination-rebellion-domination cycle progresses with increasing
impersonal, objective, universal, rational, productive domination. (e.g. the
performance principle embedded in the division of labor). Instincts become
controlled by social use of labor power.
2) Hierarchical social labor contains rebellions: historically all revolts to
abolish domination have ended in new improved forms of domination. Why?
3) The rationalization of guilt is completed when no replacement of the
domination of society seems possible and revolutionaries identify with the
power against which they revolt. Revolt becomes crime against the whole social
order which secures goods and fulfills needs, so maximizes guilt.
4) This rationality is bogus. With growing mastery over nature, the alibi
of scarcity is a mask for poor distribution. Technics free energy that could be put
into free play for the satisfaction of needs beyond those of survival.
 5) Instead productivity is used against the individual to reinforce
universal control (totalitarianism), lest the order of domination dissolve. Not
even a symbolic killing of the father must be allowed, lest no successor arise.
G) Depersonalization of superego, shrinking of ego:
1) Domination defends itself by strengthening control over consciousness
(the “automatization” of the superego), which if free might recognize the
repression hidden in the growing satisfaction of needs (e.g. popular culture).
This transfer of control over formerly free consciousness allows relaxation of
restrictions on sexuality.
2) Sexuality has been so aligned with the reality principle that sexual
liberty is harmonized with profitable conformity (e.g. the unhappy romance and
commercials).
3) The family father/son image is no longer primary, but is replaced by
the social system and its images. The social function of the family declined
under technical, economic, political and cultural rule and the superego is no
longer individual but depersonalized and social (e.g. media),
4) The son now knows better (reality principle) than the father.
Domination takes the form of administration. Even people at the top seem to
serve objective laws of the apparatus: frustration & impotence derive from a
productive system providing a good living.
5) The aggressive impulses cannot be directed toward anyone (it finds
only smiling functionaries). Aggression is introjected and guilty, but not guilty
of anything. So, with its co-ordinated consciousness, lack of privacy, conformity
of emotions, the ego shrinks and the classic tensions of ego, id, superego cannot
develop.
6) Guilt is collective. What is repressive is the containment of productive
forces, and the concealment of universal co-ordination under bogus choices,
liberties, and individualities. That production and consumption reproduce and
justify domination: material culture increases but sustains domination.
Individual time, consciousness, dreams, and social liberty, justice and peace are
sacrificed. [repressive desublimation]
H) Completion of alienation:
1) The whole is protected against aggression by administrative power, so
aggression accumulates and turns against “the enemies of the whole” in socially
“useful” labor camps, civil wars, punitive expeditions, etc.
2) Contemporary destruction is qualitatively different, since it is directed
toward whole populations using vast technical resources, both as war and
control of consciousness. Terror combines with normality, destruction with
construction.
3) The alienation of labor is almost complete: work is divorced from
human potential. Individuality and spontaneity are superficial and people in the
work world have become a system of administered things. The psycho-
dynamics of the id, ego & superego have become automatic
I) Disintegration of the established reality principle:
1) The co-ordination of the individual with the whole, as the last task of
the ego, has decreased unhappiness by decreasing awareness of repression.
2) This pseudo-happiness in the mere feeling of satisfaction has replaced
real happiness in real freedom and satisfaction which requires knowledge, which
has been administered and confined.
 3) As people function less as agents of their own life, culture seems to
have abandoned its function as inhibition of instincts by the reality principle.
The elimination of human potentials from alienated labor is the precondition of
the elimination of labor from human potentials. [repressive desublimation].

5. Philosophical Interlude:
A) Freud’s theory of civilization in the tradition of Western philosophy:
1) Instincts are organized (a) by repression of sexuality expanding group
relations, and (b) the inhibition of destructive instincts produces mastery over
nature and morality. Eros gains by use of death instinct for social use, but thru
progress the death instinct increases aggression and sublimation.
2)Freud’s metapsychology has ontological implications: An innermost
tendency of organisms is to rebel against repression they aim not only at the non-
being of Nirvana but at a new mode of being, i.e. at the limits of the reality
principle. This joins a mainstream of western philosophy.
B) Ego as aggressive and transcending subject:
1) Scientific rationality gradually becomes conscious that it is an
aggressive subject mastering objects. Nature given as object to be controlled.
2) Since Plato, reason has been seen as functioning to repress our
sensuous-appetitive faculties. This has become domination over nature,
[knowledge is power]. Work of the ego is a priori power and overcoming the
resistance of nature. Reality (being as such)= resistance & target of aggression
C) Logos as logic of domination:
1) “Logic” = ordering, classifying, mastering reason.
2) Reason comes to seem opposed to the receptive tendencies toward
gratification, which appear to be irrational. As means to realizing fulfillment,
logic becomes domination: the means dominate.
D) Philosophical protest against logic of domination:
1) Philosophy tries to harmonize the logic of use-value and the logic of
gratification by trying to unify subject and object as “being-in-and-for-itself.” In
which becoming returns in a circle of being that is self defined and not defined
by anything outside itself (Aristotle’s god)
2) Yet the empirical world can only yearn (Eros-like) for its end-in-itself.
Aristotle’s god is a telos in which all potential is actual.
E) Being and becoming: permanence versus transcendence;
1) With Hegel the absolute idea is a circle that ends unhappy
consciousness and contains the whole.
2) Reason develops self-consciousness out of desire and the other, which
is ultimately negated in being-for-itself against all others [domination]: ego as
negativity becomes free by the denial of its own freedom and then via a life and
death struggle where one’s entire being is at stake.
3) The Phenomenology of Spirit leads to the overcoming of freedom as
antagonism towards the other. True freedom is rest in transparent knowledge
and gratification of being (in mutual recognition). Truth lies in the negation of
the principle of civilization.
F) The eternal return in Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche;
1) Reason in its highest form is a dynamic union of subject and object
where all becoming is free self expression and enjoyment of potentials. Spirit
negates time in the recollection of the past rather than the conquest of the future,
replacing progress with cyclical time. W/o memory progress = continual
transgression. But this true freedom remains only pure thought, testifying to the
reality principle in the experience world.
2) Philosophy and being as the logos of domination ends and being as
will (which first must be negated - Schopenhauer) then as will-to-power in
Nietzsche. The will-to-power is not sufficient because it cannot overcome time
(the past), breeding the spirit of revenge justifying repression. The fallacy of
western morality is treating the historical as essential and the deification of time,
which justify slavery, productive efficiency and the decline of the life instincts.
Nietzsche speaks for a new reality principle of joy and “being-as-end-in-itself”
eternal return as finite, concrete and total affirmation of life instincts w/o escape
or negation. This is an erotic attitude toward being, as a thus I willed it not a
simple repetition.
3) Nietzsche’s affirmation of pain still continues the morality he strives to
overcome. But it contains the new reality principle which sees guilt as denial of
life and not its affirmation.
G) Eros as essence of being;
1) The struggle: being/becoming; ascending curve/closed circle;
progress/eternal return; transcendence/rest in fulfillment: The logic of
domination struggles with the will to gratification. The struggle is to claim the
reality principle: being as logic/being as alogic of will & joy.
2) Freud’s theory touches this philosophical dynamic. Life seeks
enrichment, but this Eros organizes the death instincts for self-preservation,
which then transform the erotic basis of culture into the logic of domination.
[NB: the history of the metaphysical notion of Eros is yet to be written: [cf.
Foucault]]

Part II: Beyond the Reality Principle:

6. The Historical Limits of the Established Reality Principle: Q: What does a

“new reality principle” mean? Must we take for granted the continued rule of
the performance principle as the reality principle? Or has it created conditions
for a new reality principle?
A) Obsolescence of scarcity and domination: Q: What is the role of
technical reason & technology?
1) Productivity has increased so that interests in domination motivate
repressive organization more than the “struggle for existence.”
2) Technical reason contains both a standard of domination and a vision
of a higher form of reason; receptivity and enjoyment (a subjectivity that comes
to rest in a mode of being that absorbs all otherness).
B) Hypothesis of a new reality principle: Q: What is this hypothesis?
1) Freud’s theory of the instincts treats the performance principle as the
absolute ahistorical reality principle and the Eros/Thanatos dynamic as final.
2) If the performance principle is historically constituted, then if it were
made obsolete, then new organizations of the instincts would be possible and
surplus repression could be eliminated.
3) But such a possibility must be “read off” the historical conditions, by
means of a critique of the performance principle.
10

C) The instinctual dynamic toward non-repressive civilization: Q:

What is the argument for historicity of the reality principle?
1)The conflict between the reality and pleasure principles is not
necessarily inevitable, because repressive organization is due to factors that are
not “natural” but arise in specific historical conditions (as Freud accepts). This
distinguishes between biological and sociological struggles, which while both are
historical the latter are more relative and change faster.
2) Freud’s denial of possible liberation assumes that scarcity is as
permanent as domination. This begs the question, and the possibility of
decontrolling instinctual development needs consideration.
3) The death instinct seems to be the barrier to the possibility of non-
repressive civilization. The death instinct is rooted in the strong tendency of
early life to relieve tension by returning to inanimate condition, external forces
lengthen the detour to death.
4) Different dynamics of the instincts are historically acquired when
exogenous factors intervene, e.g. unrelieved tension in the beginnings of organic
life generating the death instinct which relieves tension viz. regression, secondly
the struggle for existence enforces repression of sex instincts and transformation
of the death instinct into labor and morality, eventually to weaken Eros and
strengthen aggression.
5) The historically acquired nature of the instincts changes if the
fundamental exogenous causal factors change. As conditions change, scarcity
and domination become obsolete while their principle is retained.
D) Problem of verifying the hypothesis: Q: What is the test?
1) The derivatives of the death instinct work only when fused with the
sex instincts. Changes in libido will then alter the death instinct.
2) The possibility of non-repressive civilization must be tested against
the possibility of the non-repressive development of libido in mature culture.

7. Phantasy and Utopia:

A) Phantasy versus reason:
1) Unconscious mental processes can’t provide standards for making a
non-repressive personality. But, phantasy is both conscious and relatively free
from the reality principle (since it is not dependent on real objects). It links the
unconscious (sexuality) with art, consciousness and reality.
2) The reality principle guides the ego re: the useful and splits off
(manipulative) reason (= judgment, truth, rationality) which interprets reality
dividing good(useful)/evil, from phantasy which becomes useless, powerless,
untrue - play.
B) Preservation of the “archaic past”:
1) Phantasy retains pre- individual structures and memory of the life of
the genus & image of the unity of the particular w/universal under the pleasure
principle. The ego develops as an individual and conflicts w/genus.
2) The performance principle subdues both instincts through the conflict
between individual & genus - individuation under the reality principle uses
libidinal energy which tries to cancel this individuation and reunite w/archaic
past.
11

C) Truth value of phantasy:

1) The truth value of phantasy lies in overcoming antagonistic human
reality. Envisioning reconciliation of individual w/whole; happiness w/reason;
desire w/realization (i.e. this vision can and must become real).
2) Phantasy takes form in art, which realizes in perception and
comprehension the unity of sensuousness and reason and acts to critique the
performance principle and domination.
3) Art opposes institutionalized repression and the image of freedom by
the negation of unfreedom, but unfreedom must be represented by an
appearance in and of something real. Since art is linked w/pleasure (enjoyment),
art deprives that reality of its terror (e.g. surrealism & atonality, art survives on
cancelling its traditional forms)
D) The image of life without repression and anxiety:
1) For Freud the image of freedom is one of an unrecoverable past. So
the idea of a non-repressive reality principle is a regression. so Freud denies
future freedom [NB: Jung develops the most reactionary tendencies in Freud and
he eliminates critique.]
2) Imagination can presage future freedom and happiness. Surrealists see
this and try to make dreams real w/o compromise: the Great Refusal of present
reality.
E) Possibility of real freedom in a mature civilization:
1) The reality principle relegates real possibilities to utopia. This is
essential to ideology of the performance principle.
2) This projects a third turning point adapting archaic mental structures
to new external conditions: it may happen w/mature civilization by conscious
rational subject.
3) Scarcity may still be a barrier to universal gratification, but that
doesn’t undermine the goal of eliminating surplus-repression: (a) archaic non-
repressive distribution of scarcity (matriarchy?), or (b) rational organization of
understand society that has conquered scarcity. (a) & (b) --> no surplus
repression and eliminate work.
F) Need for a redefinition of progress:
1) Reduction of working day is the first prerequisite of (b), and so is
decrease in standard of living in advanced civilizations. Arg: freedom
conditional on standard of living serves the entrenchment of repression.
Standard of living as material goods vs. as satisfaction of basic needs and
freedom from guilt and fear. This is progress redefined beyond the performance
principle.
2) Objection (Freud): civilization would disintegrate w/o privation and
repression, because (a) free sexuality is hostile to work, (b) work uses sexual
energy, (c) privation sustains social organization.
Reply: repression is mostly surplus repression due to specific social
organizations. Hence erotic liberation would create lasting work relations.
3) This reply assaults the sacred cow of productivity & efficiency, which
contradicts the pleasure principle and becomes an end-in-itself. But labor can
release time and power for free play. Negating the performance principle de-
realizes technical rationality and promotes a new rationality of gratification (≠
leisure as consumption which are values of the performance principle) which
would change the Eros and Thanatos dynamic and therefore change human
existence.

8. The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus:

A) Archetypes of human existence under non-repressive civilization:
1) There is a long history which says that the truth content of art and
imagination gives standards that surpass [useful] reason has not born any fruit
re: mature culture.
2) Prometheus as archetype: he produces culture out of trickery and at
the price of endless pain. Women, Pandora, are viewed as a curse, not as joy.
B) Orpheus and Narcissus versus Prometheus:
1) Orpheus and Narcissus (& Dionysus) offer images of joy and
fulfillment, song, generosity, peace, absorption of death, liberation from time &
“order”, but have not become cultural heroes. [cf. quotes esp. p. 164]
2) Against Prometheus, these images are unreal and impossible, poetic
call to life and commitment to the memory of death.
C) Mythological struggle of Eros against the tyranny of reason -- against
death:
1) O & N w/o moral message, they are real in being-there not a use.
They reconcile human and natural, subject and object. O’s song pacifies the
animal world, moving it to joy in love and care. N symbolizes sleep and death,
but also lives by Eros (he doesn’t know it is his own image!!), through the
Nirvana principle, and lives on as the flower N.
2) Even Freud’s notion of narcissism integrates the ego and the external
world and so may presage a new reality principle by libidinal cathexis
(investment) of the objective world. Sublimation may change sexual ego aims to
objects via primary narcissism, suggesting possible non-repressive sublimation
which extends rather than deflects the libido.
D) Reconciliation of man and nature in sensuous culture:
1) O-N images: Great Refusal of separation from libidinous object/
subject aiming at reunion. Orpheus creator poet who establishes a higher order
w/o repression (combines art, freedom & culture).
2) Orpheus torn to bits by crazed women: he rejects normal reproductive
Eros for play = work and song = language. Narcissus lives in beauty and
contemplation. A new reality principle is found in the aesthetic.

9. The Aesthetic Dimension:

A) Aesthetics as the science of sensuousness:
1) The etymology of “aesthetic” unites pleasure, sensuousness, beauty,
truth and freedom.
2) Kant connects theoretical reason, which constitutes nature under
causal laws, w/practical reason, which constitutes freedom under moral laws.
Since the autonomous laws of freedom are meant to have an effect in the causally
closed realm of nature, judgment mediates these via pleasure/pain.
B) Reconciliation between pleasure and freedom, instinct and morality:
1) Kant’s aesthetics connects aesthetic re: sense w/aesthetic re: beauty &
art. Pleasure of the sensuous is the center of the mind mediating freedom and
nature symbolically, since no sense can realize the idea of freedom.
 For Kant the beautiful is delight that pleases (i) w/o interest (ii)
universally w/o a concept (iii) form of finality w/o an end (iv) apart from a
concept is known as a necessary delight.
2) Orpheus and Narcissus are symbols of creative receptivity & union of
humans and nature in aesthetic attitude of beautiful order and play = work. For
this to serve as a reality principle the aesthetic must be valid for both
sensuousness and morality.
3) Aesthetic dimension: sensuous (not conceptual) receptivity,
disinterested pleasure in the pure form of the object. Representation of pure
sensuous form is work of the faculty of imagination: subjectively universal and
necessary for any perceiving subject, i.e. principles valid for an objective (non-
repressive) order purposiveness w/o purpose = form of beauty, and lawfulness
w/o law = form of freedom. Both give pleasure in the free play of human
potentials, i.e. aesthetic judgment suspends links between object and
Understanding and Reason, the object appears as just being-there. Hence,
aesthetic conformity to law links nature/freedom pleasure/morality, suggesting
the strengthening of sensuousness as a means to liberation from the repressive
domination of useful reason.
C) Aesthetic theories of Baumgarten, Kant, and Schiller:
1) Schiller aimed at remaking culture under the liberating force of the
aesthetic as the possibility of a new reality principle. Sensuousness had been just
the raw material for cognition in prior epistemology; its cognitive contents were
denigrated esp. free creative and reproductive imagination where objects could
be given w/o being present. Aesthetics changed this.
2) Aesthetics promotes an order of sensuousness against the order of
useful reason. Via play aesthesis would harmonize feeling and reason. Beauty is
the perfection of sensuous cognition, so the science (and order) of sensuousness
becomes the science (and order) of art. Sensuousness con(with)-fused the
cognitive w/the appetitive function of the senses, thereby relegated the senses to
passive cognition unsuitable for a reality principle w/o subjection to concepts.
The roots of art in pleasure have been repressed by finding gratification in the
pure form of the object and confining free play to art relegates it to the unreal
and unengaged with human existence.
3) Civilization separates means from ends alienating labor, fragmenting
human being. It has subjugated sensuousness to reason & made sensuousness
barbarous instead of making reason sensuous and sensuousness rational. Only a
new mode of civilization can reconcile these thru a third, the play, impulse.
D) Elements of a non-repressive culture:
1) The play impulse is the play of life itself (not playing with something)
beyond fear and free of all external compulsion. This occurs when reality loses
its seriousness and interest in display and appearances. This is freedom in
reality (not merely inner freedom). Such freedom would be irresponsible if play
only occurred in an otherwise repressive world, i.e. if not universal (where
abundance replaces need).
2) Aesthetic education aims at freedom based on sensuous grounds and
sensuousness altered to an order of freedom under self given laws. Nature
would be contemplated, neither dominating nor dominated, freely expressing
the inner life of objects. Human activity would be display neither passive
suffering, nor servitude.
 3) Time implies finitude, opposing lasting pleasure. A non-repressive
civilization, through liberating play, must abolish time in time, reconcile being
and becoming, identity and change.
4) Play threatens to explode the social structure: a non-repressive
society reconciles pleasure and reality principles, it includes:
(a) the transformation of labor into play (production into display)
and presupposes freedom from want.
(b) Self sublimation of sensuousness & de-sublimation of reason.
(c) The abolition of time.
E) Transformation of work into play:
1) Imagination preserves non-repressive objectives which can be fused
with the rationality of mature civilization by the intermediary of play. Orpheus,
the singing god living to defeat death, and Narcissus uniting his existence
w/nature in contemplation symbolize unity of display and beauty in play.
2) The precondition of a non-repressive order is abundance; so the
idealist and materialist critiques agree: non-repressive order is only possible in
mature civilization, freedom is form of the new mode of existence beyond
necessity (not freedom as performance principle). Possession of means to life is
(heteronymous) precondition not content of freedom. Play and display (useless
and unproductive) cancel the repression and exploitation in labor and leisure &
also cancel their higher values, de-sublimating reason. Reunion via play may
take these values back into and transform the sensuous organic structure of
human existence.

10. The Transformation of Sexuality into Eros:

A) The abolition of domination:
1) Social instantiation of a non-repressive reality principle would entail a
regression from the level of civilized rationality and relapse into barbarism.
2) But, given success of mature culture in the struggle for existence and a
free society and guided by a new rationality, non-repressive society could order
the world with fully developed knowledge.
B) Effects on the sex instincts:
1) Non-repressive order is possible only if sexual instincts, under new
conditions can generate lasting erotic relationships and a libidinal rationality.
2) Now, work constrains libido and uses much of its energy for socially
useful acts, but with the release of free time libido would exceed its limits.
3) Sexuality was sublimated to love and morality was mobilized against
using the body as a means to pleasure, while reification applied increasingly to
the social body at work. A non-repressive reality principle would tend to reverse
these trends; resexualizing the body (reinvesting the entire body w/pleasure)
and orienting labor to gratification of needs.
C) “Self-sublimation” of sexuality into Eros:
1) This process transforms libido spreading it over private & social
relations. Development of libido within performance principle institutions
explodes suppressed sexuality in sadomasochistic orgies, prison and
concentration camp guards strengthening constraints. But, free development of
transformed libido beyond these institutions would transform them too.
Eroticizing bodies, time, and integrating sexuality in a larger order.
 2) Such self-sublimation of sexuality would transform the perversions
which would no longer manifest themselves within perverse human existence.
(Oedipal wish is overcome naturally) Self-sublimation of sexuality implies the
eroticization of the whole organism.
D) Repressive versus free sublimation:
1) Eros enlarges the sexual instinct and modifies the concept of
sublimation. Sexual sublimation changes libido into cultural uses, by means of
the already socially preconditioned pleasure principle.
2) In contrast aim inhibited sexual impulses presage the possibility of an
inherent trend of the libido toward cultural expression w/o repressive
modification, and so presage the possibility of non-repressive sublimation, if
fully developed, w/o desexualization.
E) Emergence of non-repressive societal relationships:
1) If sublimation can proceed for not against the instincts this must not be
individual and so neurotic, it must occur on the social level. So the subject can be
culture-creating & self realizing, under a liberated mature civilization.
2) Eros could then be extended beyond the material to the spiritual
sphere, as suggested by the aesthetic idea of sensuous reason.
F) Work as the free play of human faculties:
1) Eros, as a cultural drive, aims at prolonging life and pleasuring the
whole body. To do this it must achieve a higher unity of people in work
relations which are at the same time libidinal relations.
2) Scarcity does not sufficiently explain instinctual constraints, nor does
it undermine the possibility of non-repressive libidinous culture. Even Freud
recognizes that work contains a libidinous component.
3) Play gratifies in itself, while work aims at self-preservation. A change
in instinctual structure is a change in the aim of activities regardless of their
content. So the same act can be play without losing its useful content. So altered
social conditions could create an instinctual base for transforming work into
play.
G) Possibility of libidinous work relations:
1) Libidinal work applies to “maternal” cultures in the past and could be
realized in the future w/ changes in social attitudes esp. to nature. Utopian
socialists (Fourier) almost see the dependence of freedom on non-repressive
sublimation, but still retain social organizations of repressive administration.
2) (Assuming a “mastery instinct,” a drive to alter the environment, is incoherent since
it destroys the structural dynamic of the instincts, and makes nonsense of the reality
principle)The performance principle marginalizes libidinous work as hobby, play
and directly erotic situations. Even alienated labor can contain pleasure in a “job
well done.” But, pleasure in external reward or in contributing one’s part to the
functioning of the apparatus in not instinctual gratification. Efficiency as
pleasure glorifies dehumanization [cf. quote p. 221].

11. Eros and Thanatos:

A) The new idea of reason: rationality of gratification:
1) Increasing alienation of labor increases potential freedom by
distancing people from the realm of necessity. This releases time for free play
which generates new forms of work and discovery which reshape the relations
between reason and instinct. Life instincts evolve a sensuous order and reason is
sensualized in work (a rationality of gratification, not just in art). Forming an
eroticized community, the pleasure principle extends to consciousness.
2) The question remains: how under the repressive rule of the
performance principle, hierarchical authority, and the illusory freedom of
repressive desublimation (which makes repression so effective that its removal comes to
seem totalitarian) can civilization freely generate freedom? The tradition of an
educational dictatorship of the elite has failed, since anyone can verify the
distinctions between rational and irrational authority/repression and surplus
repression if not diverted by ideology & the culture industry. The conditions of a
free society are a matter of reason.
B) Libidinous morality:
1) Instinct is beyond good and evil; a distinction required by a free
society, e.g. that sex instincts are not guided by reciprocity argues against the
possibility of self-sublimation. Can Eros manifest an element of self-restraint?
Freud suggested that obstacles might promote pleasure [seduction?]. Prolongation
heightens pleasure and distinguishes it from mere satisfaction of desire. This has
served domination but could create conflicts with libidinal value as an element of
freedom.
2) Libidinal morality is also possible because the superego does not
merely serve the reality principle it also allies with the id. identifying with the
mother, recalling the early narcissistic ego which was integrated with the
environment and opposes the hostile father who eventually triumphs by
protecting the ego against annihilation in the mother. But in mature culture,
beyond the reality principle, the maternal image can promise a free future.
C) The struggle against the flux of time:
1) The fact of death seems and the negativity of time seem the final
obstacle to non-repressive development, since timelessness is pleasure’s ideal.
the ego introduces painful repressive elements in its anticipation of death. The
flux of time serves social repression as its most basic means of banishing freedom
to utopia.
2) Forgetting is necessary to life, but also sustains submissiveness and
renunciation, to forget is to forgive even the forces of enslavement w/o defeating
these forces. Memory, which is the source of slave morality of contract and
obligations, can also serve to remember pleasures and freedom. Non-repressive
sublimation requires the release of memory’s freeing power, by recapturing lost
time [Proust].
3) But this memory is artistic and unreal if it cannot act historically. Time
allied with law and order consigns pleasure to utopia and justifies repression in
the struggle w/death & requiring security as highest value.
D) Change in the relation between Eros and death instinct:
1) This seems to ally the death instinct with the unreasonableness of
striving for halting time and conquering death, but the death instinct, under the
Nirvana principle, tends toward a state w/o need and reduced tension. w/o
surplus repression, Eros would absorb the aim of Thanatos in relieving pain
transforming the nature of the instincts.
2) It is possible that instead of repressive civilization pacifying guilt over
unnecessarily painful lives and deaths, that death can become a token of freedom
if life is both fulfilling and will continue to be fulfilling and we can die without
anxiety in a rationally and painlessly.
Epilogue: Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism:
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Julia Shore, The Overworked American