Download Civilization and its Discontents

Freud, Nietzsche and the Challenge to Positivism
(Powerpoint and handout will be on the website)
Mankind does not represent
a development toward
something better or
stronger or higher, in the
sense accepted today.
“Progress” is merely a
modern idea, that is, a false
idea.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Preface
to The Antichrist (1888)
I have been careful to refrain
from the enthusiastic
prejudice that sees our
civilization as the most
precious thing we possess or
can acquire, and believes that
its path will necessarily lead
us to heights of perfection
hitherto undreamt of.
Siegmund Freud, Civilization
and its Discontents (1930)
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche at Shulpforta
Jacob Burckhardt
Richard Wagner
Lou Salomé, Paul Rée, and Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, 1899
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche welcomes Adolf Hitler to the
Nietzsche Archive, 1933
Friedrich Nietzsche, draft of a letter to Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche, December 1887
In the meantime I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr.
Förster has not yet severed his connection with the antiSemitic movement. [...] The separation between us is thereby
decided in really the most absurd way. Have you grasped
nothing of the reason why I am in the world? [...] Now it has
gone so far that I have to defend myself hand and foot against
people who confuse me with these anti-Semitic canaille; after
my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more
recently have given the impetus to this most dire of all
confusions. After I read the name Zarathustra in the antiSemitic Correspondence my forbearance came to an end. I am
now in a position of emergency defense against your spouse's
Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully
my ideal!!
Socrates
(c. 470–399 BC)
Sigmund Freud
Freud’s Birthplace
Josef Breuer and his wife
Bertha Pappenheim (‘Anna O.’)
Jean-Martin Charcot
Sigmund and Martha Freud
Freud’s Couch
Alfred Adler
Carl Jung
Freud and Jung at Clark University, 1909
Freud at his desk