Reading Questions, Civilization and Its Discontents
Chapter 1
1 How does Freud explain the religious impulse? Why, according to him, are we inclined to believe in a deity?
2 His unnamed friend, who read Freud’s earlier book, has a different idea about the source of the religious impulse. What is it?
3 What are the ego and the id, and how are they related? How is the ego formed? What’s the ego’s usual relation to the external world? What’s the “reality principle”?
4 What point is Freud making by describing Roman archeology? How is this point tied to Darwinian thinking?
5 What is the chapter’s ultimate conclusion about the suggestion that “oceanic feeling” explains religion?
Chapter 2
1 At the chapter’s beginning, we get a forceful statement of Freud’s view of religion. Why does he use the words “painful” and “humiliating”?
2 Why does Freud quote Goethe, and what is the gist of the passage he quotes?
3 What three kinds of “palliative measures” does Freud say we seek in order to deal with life’s difficulties?
4 Explain this sentence’s meaning: “We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things” (53).
5 What are the sources of suffering, and what can humans do to combat these?
6 What are the particular problems with “the way of life that makes love the center of everything”?
7 If, as Freud says, we can’t become permanently happy, what is available to us? What does he mean by the metaphor of the cautious businessman (64)? And what then is the problem he identifies with religion at the chapter’s end that limits its usefulness?
Chapter 3
1 In the opening paragraphs of this chapter, Freud notes a paradox: civilization is responsible for our misery. This is counterintuitive, since civilization is defined in terms of all the ways humans have learned to mitigate suffering. What does he mean, then?
2 Freud’s footnote about early humans’ interaction with fire (73-74): what is he arguing? Is it plausible?
3 Among a number of characteristics of civilization, Freud places regulation of human interaction as the most important: the will of the group takes precedence over the rights of the individual. What does he argue is the effect of this development on human happiness?
Chapter 4
1 What is Freud’s theory of the origins of culture (first expounded in an earlier book, Totem and Taboo)? If you know the Greek myth of creation, consider it in light of Freud’s postulation here.
2 What are Eros and Ananke? Explain how they are the “parents of human civilization.”
3 If, in search of pleasure, you make “genital erotism” the center of your life, what risk do you run? What development from this state will enable greater security?
4 Freud registers two objections to the state of “universal love of mankind and the world.” What are they?
5 How are women in opposition to civilization?
6 What is Freud getting at in suggesting that “civilization behaves toward sexuality as a people . . . does which has subjected another one to its exploitation”?
Chapter 5
1 Freud’s rumination on the ideas of loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself and loving your enemies: on what basis does he critique these ideas?
2 Pointing to the ineradicable fact of human differences, Freud says, “So long as these undeniable differences have not been removed, obedience to high ethical demands entails damage to the aims of civilization, for it puts a positive premium on being bad.” Explain that.
3 The opening pages of this chapter build toward Freud’s assertion that humans are “creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness”; man is revealed to be “a savage beast to whom consideration towards his own kind is something alien.” Does he persuade you that this is true?
4 What’s meant by the phrase, “the narcissism of minor differences”?
5 At the end of the chapter, there’s a jab against American political ideology? What is it?
1 This chapter argues the need to revise psychoanalytic theory to accommodate the idea of an aggressive instinct, leading to the statement that “besides the instinct to preserve living substance and to join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and to bring them back to their primeaval, inorganic state . . . as well as Eros, there was an instinct of death.” Earlier in this book, the balance of opposing forces was said to be between Eros and Ananke. Which feels more right to you?
2 The chapter’s last paragraph contains the whole book’s thesis. What does the last sentence mean?
Chapter 7
1 The second paragraph: “What means does civilization employ in order to inhibit the aggressiveness which opposes it?” How does Freud answer this?
2 How does Freud explain the origins of guilt?
Chapter 8
1 A heightening of the sense of guilt leads to what, according to Freud? What is his point about the way young people were educated about sex in his era?
2 The idea of guilt is broadened in the opening pages of this chapter—what are other terms Freud uses to describe this sensation?
3 Although Freud argues that the process of development of civilizations and human beings is similar, he does note an important distinction. What is it?
4 “We are led to make two reproaches against the super-ego of the individual,” Freud says. What are they?
5
One of the most influential passages of this work:
“under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of
civilization—possibly the whole of mankind—have become neurotic.” What’s the
cure for this, according to Freud?