Civilization and Its Discontents

I was directed to this work by listening to an episode of France Culture's Chemins de la philosophie: L'universel, à l'épreuve du mal.

I won't go into the details but Kristeva was talking about the attitude contemporary society should adopt towards the conept of "evil", given the spreading of what has come to be called polulism. Freud, looking out from the basic economy (not money but the management of forces in the mind) of the libido and death drives gives us a very raw vision of society and it's attempt to organize and maintain a semblance of cohesion. I'm very surprised that a work that, to me, seems so rich in consequences and potential has not been looked into by others.

It's true what they say, Freud is a very good read.

I started to read just only the first chapter and for what read, only for that lonely first chapter... I would say that Freud describes exactly the same problem as ever... there will always be people that would not adapt to the civilization...

Not much for answers, a smattering of cautious and cautionary analysis. Freud definitely comes around to the view that humanity has a destructive instinct at heart, tempered in society by self-guilt. "[T]he sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization [...] the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt."