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Twayne's Masterwork Studies #171
Civilization and Its Discontents: An Anthropology for the Future
Readings focus on the central motifs that form the basis of Freuds mostmisunderstood work. Essay topics include Freud and the unconscious, eros and death, ethics and reason.
158 pages, Hardcover
First published February 12, 1999
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August 27, 2025
In Anthropology of the Future, Parisi offers a bold reinterpretation of Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, framing it as a cornerstone for a new anthropology of humanity, a nod to Thomas Mann’s assessment. Far from the intellectual diversion Freud reportedly deemed it—an afternoon’s musing—this work emerges in Parisi’s hands as the culmination of Freud’s lifelong probe into the human condition. Across six key chapters—“The Instincts,” “The Unconscious: Dynamic Conflictual Transformative,” “Ethics and the Place of Reason,” “The Oceanic Feeling: Freud on Faith and Love,” “Women, Femininity, and the Importance of Ideology,” and “An Anthropology for a Wiser and Freer Humanity?”—Parisi navigates Freud’s instinctual dualism, psychic tensions, ethical vision, and gender dynamics. The result is a provocative synthesis that bridges Freud’s legacy with modern thought, though I extend his analysis with my own proposals: a silver rule for morality and an evolutionary update to his gender narrative.
The cover art, Thomas Cole’s 1833 The Titan’s Goblet, feels uncannily apt: a divine relic abandoned in a valley of madness, mirroring Freud’s eros elevated above the instinctual aggression of thanatos. At the core of Parisi’s exploration, detailed in “The Instincts,” is Freud’s theory of drives, distinct from the fixed instincts of ethologists like Konrad Lorenz or the environmental behaviorism of B.F. Skinner. Eros (life) and thanatos (death) are teleological, sparked by disrupted equilibrium rather than rote responses. Eros, directed outward, binds individuals into families, nations, and ultimately humanity, while thanatos, turned inward, stokes the aggression and guilt civilization demands. Parisi positions Freud closer to Norman Brown’s expansive eros—a life-affirming force—than to the nihilistic pull of thanatos and the nirvana/constancy principle, an innate drift toward nothingness. This biological bent, laced with a teleology akin to Aristotle’s yet irrational and conflictual, resists the entropic fate of a cosmic “big freeze.”
Parisi’s dive into “The Unconscious: Dynamic Conflictual Transformative” reveals Freud’s psychic landscape, where id and ego wrestle partly in shadow, their conflicts driving transformation. Here, drives mark humanity’s uniqueness—not in their presence, but in their malleability. This fluidity challenges Jung’s “pansexualist” jab, a theme Parisi expands in “The Oceanic Feeling: Freud on Faith and Love.” Eros transcends mere sexuality, becoming love as desire for a lost object, resonating with Romain Rolland’s oceanic unity. Freud denied feeling it himself, yet Parisi sees it as the humanistic pulse of his work. Tied to the ego’s penetration into the id, it echoes the Oedipal complex—an Edenic fall, a primal crime replayed in childhood, setting humans apart from beasts. This link tests Freud’s positivist stance, lending psychological weight to faith beyond narcissism, though he spurned religion as an opiate of submission, crowning eros a secular “god” of connection.
This tension between materialism and a psychosomatic mind—forged under Franz Brentano and early work with Charcot and Breuer—threads through Parisi’s analysis. Freud’s scientific ambition, evident in his 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology, collides with his speculative leanings, a duality fueling critique: unscientific, and complicit in obscuring childhood abuse via the abandoned seduction theory. In “An Anthropology for a Wiser and Freer Humanity?,” Parisi concedes these flaws but defends Freud’s “broadly empirical” approach, echoing Brentano. Unfalsifiable by Popper’s measure (per Fisher and Greenberg’s 1977 review), psychoanalysis is a “thematic commitment” (Gerald Holton), sparking research over rigid proof.
Gender animates “Women, Femininity, and the Importance of Ideology,” where Freud’s bisexual constitution and polymorphous sexuality defy strict dualism. Parisi credits him with distinguishing sex from gender, a springboard for feminists like Nancy Chodorow and Juliet Mitchell, who pivot to the pre-Oedipal mother-child bond, recasting eros as feminine. Parisi calls this ideological, but I see it aligning with universal eros—or even Christian agape, as in the Catholic Holy Family, where the son and sinless Mary redeem Adam’s fall. Freud’s Lamarckian lens feels dated so I propose instead an evolutionary update: sexual selection and group dynamics (nodding to Sarah Hrdy) along with neoteny (retention of youthful traits into adulthood), by prolonged development rather than strict recapitulation, could trace humanity’s shift from primate polygamy to monogamous cooperation, with women curbing infanticide and violence, softening Freud’s masculine aggression frame.
Ethics surface in “Ethics and the Place of Reason,” where Freud’s human nature—functional, developmental, conflicted—mirrors Aristotle’s eudaimonia, favoring work and love over pleasure. The golden rule (“love thy neighbor”) buckles under Freud’s doubt, strained by guilt and distance. Here, I suggest the silver rule of Hillel, Confucius, and Hobbes—“do not do unto others what you do not want done”—as a better fit, balancing duty and self-interest at least for public-legal duty. This duality reflects Parisi’s aim: a wiser, freer humanity, neither utopian nor despairing.
Critics—unfalsifiability, ethical lapses, abuse debates—persist, but Parisi contrasts Freud with behaviorism (biology-blind), sociobiology (gene-bound), and cognitive theories (overly rational). Neuroscience and pharmaceutical “soma” solutions loom, yet Freud’s psychic-somatic bridge holds firm, preserving love and death as real forces. Ultimately, Anthropology of the Future casts Freud as a misanthropic visionary, a conflicted anthropology yet still vital. Parisi’s refusal to whitewash Freud or his foes yields a scholarly, imaginative weave. Though Lamarckian traces jar in a neo-Darwinian era, the book provokes anew, bolstered by my silver rule and evolutionary reframing, inviting us to grapple with Freud’s uneasy truths.
The cover art, Thomas Cole’s 1833 The Titan’s Goblet, feels uncannily apt: a divine relic abandoned in a valley of madness, mirroring Freud’s eros elevated above the instinctual aggression of thanatos. At the core of Parisi’s exploration, detailed in “The Instincts,” is Freud’s theory of drives, distinct from the fixed instincts of ethologists like Konrad Lorenz or the environmental behaviorism of B.F. Skinner. Eros (life) and thanatos (death) are teleological, sparked by disrupted equilibrium rather than rote responses. Eros, directed outward, binds individuals into families, nations, and ultimately humanity, while thanatos, turned inward, stokes the aggression and guilt civilization demands. Parisi positions Freud closer to Norman Brown’s expansive eros—a life-affirming force—than to the nihilistic pull of thanatos and the nirvana/constancy principle, an innate drift toward nothingness. This biological bent, laced with a teleology akin to Aristotle’s yet irrational and conflictual, resists the entropic fate of a cosmic “big freeze.”
Parisi’s dive into “The Unconscious: Dynamic Conflictual Transformative” reveals Freud’s psychic landscape, where id and ego wrestle partly in shadow, their conflicts driving transformation. Here, drives mark humanity’s uniqueness—not in their presence, but in their malleability. This fluidity challenges Jung’s “pansexualist” jab, a theme Parisi expands in “The Oceanic Feeling: Freud on Faith and Love.” Eros transcends mere sexuality, becoming love as desire for a lost object, resonating with Romain Rolland’s oceanic unity. Freud denied feeling it himself, yet Parisi sees it as the humanistic pulse of his work. Tied to the ego’s penetration into the id, it echoes the Oedipal complex—an Edenic fall, a primal crime replayed in childhood, setting humans apart from beasts. This link tests Freud’s positivist stance, lending psychological weight to faith beyond narcissism, though he spurned religion as an opiate of submission, crowning eros a secular “god” of connection.
This tension between materialism and a psychosomatic mind—forged under Franz Brentano and early work with Charcot and Breuer—threads through Parisi’s analysis. Freud’s scientific ambition, evident in his 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology, collides with his speculative leanings, a duality fueling critique: unscientific, and complicit in obscuring childhood abuse via the abandoned seduction theory. In “An Anthropology for a Wiser and Freer Humanity?,” Parisi concedes these flaws but defends Freud’s “broadly empirical” approach, echoing Brentano. Unfalsifiable by Popper’s measure (per Fisher and Greenberg’s 1977 review), psychoanalysis is a “thematic commitment” (Gerald Holton), sparking research over rigid proof.
Gender animates “Women, Femininity, and the Importance of Ideology,” where Freud’s bisexual constitution and polymorphous sexuality defy strict dualism. Parisi credits him with distinguishing sex from gender, a springboard for feminists like Nancy Chodorow and Juliet Mitchell, who pivot to the pre-Oedipal mother-child bond, recasting eros as feminine. Parisi calls this ideological, but I see it aligning with universal eros—or even Christian agape, as in the Catholic Holy Family, where the son and sinless Mary redeem Adam’s fall. Freud’s Lamarckian lens feels dated so I propose instead an evolutionary update: sexual selection and group dynamics (nodding to Sarah Hrdy) along with neoteny (retention of youthful traits into adulthood), by prolonged development rather than strict recapitulation, could trace humanity’s shift from primate polygamy to monogamous cooperation, with women curbing infanticide and violence, softening Freud’s masculine aggression frame.
Ethics surface in “Ethics and the Place of Reason,” where Freud’s human nature—functional, developmental, conflicted—mirrors Aristotle’s eudaimonia, favoring work and love over pleasure. The golden rule (“love thy neighbor”) buckles under Freud’s doubt, strained by guilt and distance. Here, I suggest the silver rule of Hillel, Confucius, and Hobbes—“do not do unto others what you do not want done”—as a better fit, balancing duty and self-interest at least for public-legal duty. This duality reflects Parisi’s aim: a wiser, freer humanity, neither utopian nor despairing.
Critics—unfalsifiability, ethical lapses, abuse debates—persist, but Parisi contrasts Freud with behaviorism (biology-blind), sociobiology (gene-bound), and cognitive theories (overly rational). Neuroscience and pharmaceutical “soma” solutions loom, yet Freud’s psychic-somatic bridge holds firm, preserving love and death as real forces. Ultimately, Anthropology of the Future casts Freud as a misanthropic visionary, a conflicted anthropology yet still vital. Parisi’s refusal to whitewash Freud or his foes yields a scholarly, imaginative weave. Though Lamarckian traces jar in a neo-Darwinian era, the book provokes anew, bolstered by my silver rule and evolutionary reframing, inviting us to grapple with Freud’s uneasy truths.
Displaying 1 of 1 review