Structuralism and Hermeneutics / Friedrich Nietzsche

This week's lecture is on Friedrich Nietzsche and understanding aspects of morality that involve man's desire to control ones desire. The irrationality of emotions at its best.

When it comes to critical thinkers, philologists that analyse morality, religion, philosophy, classical culture and science, Nietzsche is one of my favourite ones, and his use of irony driven by anger made his writings a remarkable work.

The lecture focused on the concept of morality seen through the '7 deadly sins'. Lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, wrath, pride and envy. This early Christian interpretation of moderate education for the masses was very criticised by Nietzsche who found Christianity a insult to human kind, a limiting doctrine that was designed to eradicate man's passions and true potential.

It is believed that Nietzsche was an atheist, some scholars believe he had a different concept of divinity, a worshipper nonetheless but to another alternative to god. Perhaps to himself.

"God is dead" 

This is a concept used by Nietzsche several times, elaborated in particular throughout The Antichrist, a brief but powerful thesis against religion.

His beliefs navigate the proposition that the universal concepts human kind once saw as an objective truth were disappearing, the values imposed by religion were in the verge of extinction and it would lead (at least what he hoped for) was an era of multiple understanding, more personal development that did not focus on preconceived ideas of morality such as Christianity, a concept known as perspectivism.

Nietzsche as a nihilist, he believed that human kind had to exploit their inner most desires and let them take control of their rationality. Anger was a powerful source of energy that drove man to reach higher potentials, this would allow one to get to the 'will to power', and understanding of life beyond adaptation or survival.

The 7 deadly sins or Capital Vices were taught to educate masses into an objective truth that would condition them into a more 'civilized' behaviour, channelling them into a respectful life that eventually leads you to heaven. 

Nietzsche was fond of their exploitation and their manipulation to achieve ones very ambitions and this is noticeable throughout his work. The Antichrist has very powerful sentences that wish to educate the readers into a different perspective.

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome. "

Psychoanalisis & Irrationality / Sigmund Freud & Phylosophy of mind

Sigmund Freud is probably one of the most remarkable pseudo-scientists of the late XIXth and XXth century. His work revolutionised fields like neuroscience, psychotherapy or psychoanalisis and which theoretical legitimacy dwells among the work of modern scholars.

Like all scientists, Freud was an interpreter of sources and origin, unfortunatelly for him his intregue drove him to search for the origin of a dark and mysterious world which is the human psyche.

His research experimented a lot with dreams and hypnosis and in 1899 he published 'The Interpretation of Dreams' which basically talks about the unconciousness, dream fulfillment and secret desire of human kind.

It is important to address that Freud's work is highly vague: His interpretations are rooted to very few, or strictly no empirical scientific evidence whatsoever. Nevetherless, that does not imply that his research was in any way absurd.

I am extremely interested in many of his ideas.

Freud believed that our rationality, our personality and the way our mind work was conditioned entirely by specific situations of our childhood that conditioned us and shaped us into the people we are now. Certain traumatic experiences of variuos degrees, depending on how we decided to deal with them at the time they happened have helped us be nurtured in a specific pattern.

One cannot ignore, John Locke's idea of 'Tabula Rasa' in which our bind in the moment of birth is blank, empty of conditions and awaiting for future experiences (more importantly during childhood) to shape us. A point of view very well sustained by Freud's ideas too.

Psychoanalisis also penetrated into deep desires and sexual selective preferences, among many other controversial but vague interpretations such as man's sexual desire for one's mother, or the female eternal jealoucy based on the fact that they did not have a penis.

Certain topics within 'Freudian' phylosophy I find irrelevant and unecessary to discuss, others on the other hand I find extremely mind boggling and sensible subjects to analyse such as 'psychosomatic' pain, which is based around the idea that certain pain is not physically inflicted but rather a projection in one's mind making us believe the pain is real when its not.

This ideas has been reviewed by hundreds of experts of both east and western phylosophy and have a vast amount of information regarding this topic, which evokes the concept of the understanding of mind so far, as practically in its infant state, for I believe that we have seen nothing more than the tip of an Iceberg that expands several hundreds of feet down into an abyssmal and dark ocean of conciousness.

One of the reasons why I hold Freud's interpretations in a high regard is because he was nothing short of a bald explorer into a very mysterious and alien innerself discovery. Regardless of how mistakenly absurd some of his conclusions may seem.

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I enjoyed this lecture on foundations of psychoanalisis recorded in Spring 2007 at Yale University

 

Psychoanalisis & Irrationality / L'Age d'Or

We begin this new academic year following an endeavour that we begun the previous one. I'm glad to initiate this year's posts with L'Age d'Or, a 1930 surrealist film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel who wrote the script along with Salvador Dali (a nice touch of picturesque surrealism).

The plot is based around a couple that is in love and constantly has to fight their way through various obstacles imposed by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Its methodology was, and remains extremely controversial.

The movie is filled with 'aggresive' sexual symbolics and criticism to the Church and a repressed, puritanical society. A 'sensored-since-inception' work of art.

Its provocative content varies from a woman that fellates the toes of a religious statue, a man who repeatedly shoots his own son with a shotgun (several times after his death) or kicks a dog several feet up in the air for no reason, to a final scene narrating an orgy similar to Marquis de Sede's 1785 novel '120 days of Sodom' in which a Jesus like character involved in this 'deplorable' situation.

Analysis:

Clearly a shocking work of the 7th art, most certainly deserved its censorship in 1930 and its fairly criticised now. I do not personally believe in censorship, however the 30s did not remotely scrape the new modern liberalism and freedom of speech and literature. Not only the symbolism is violent, but certain scenes themselves that confused the public and outraged the former high-culture, as well as fascist groups that assaulted viewers and destroyed work by the Spanish 'artists' involved.

The repercussions where as severe as anyone would expect.