A Dialogue Between (Sigmund) Fre(u)d and Theo(dor Adorno)

The following is a dialogue between a character representing Freud's beliefs about the relationship between society and our psychic life and a character representing Adorno's beliefs on the same thing. Neither character should be read as directly representing the thinker in question, as I am not really that familiar with either. They are only vehicles for discussing a point I have been thinking about while reading Adorno's Minima Moralia. My first foray into the dialogue form, which I have been meaning to do for a while. Probably of limited interest to most, but I had fun...

Fred: ...and that's why I think that the formation and maintenance of society will always require us to substantially curb our instincts and desires. Let me summarise: repression and renunciation of our instinctual life, of our ego, is a condition for the possibility of society at all because of the constitutional inclination of humans towards egoism. Society enforces such repression through the promise of love, the threat of punishment (external authority), and the instilling of guilt in the individual (internal authority). These things are actually good, to some extent. We should align ourselves with the higher social goal of forming a great and successful human community, which requires the renunciation of our instincts and desires rather than the selfish pursuit of our own pleasure. However, this means that, in most cases, the formation of social groups means the aim of happiness for the individual necessarily falls by the wayside. Indeed, I would go further. It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be most successful if no attention had been paid to the happiness of the individual at all. This is not as bad as it sounds, though. In individual consciousness, we each act according to the reality principle. The idea is simple: in order to gain some great future pleasure, we defer the gratification of immediate pleasures. Such a principle is constantly at work in our decision-making, and the choice to maintain a society at the expense of our happiness is analogous to this. We put aside our immediate well-being for the sake of something greater than us, society.

Theo: Are you serious about this last bit?

Fred: What do you mean?

The Phenomenological Papers I: Two Sites of Self-Consciousness

This is an old essay that I never published here for some reason and have just substantially revised, though without changing the ideas, which I am not totally happy with now. However, I do think some of them are salvageable and even important. I call this series The Phenomenological Papers because it is one of three essays I have written on similar topics that I will be posting over the next couple of months.

A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, Know what thou canst work at. 

— Diogenes Teufelsdröckh

I. There are two ways of achieving self-consciousness. The first is recognition, through other people. The second is work, through creating something that you feel yourself to be the author of. Thus, the former is the route to self-consciousness through beings like us, animate objects, and the latter is through beings not quite like us, inanimate objects. We can gain self-consciousness through persons and things.


II. What is self-consciousness? Roughly, it is the knowledge of our own individual existence. Now, I could mean this in the trivial sense that we all know we exist. However, this knowledge is without content. I call this formal knowledge. True self-consciousness is not something trivial and without content. Rather, it is knowledge that is actual and embodied. I call this concrete knowledge. Here is an example of this distinction.