COURSERA COURSE: THE MODERN AND THE POSTMODERN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY Peer Assessment 4 Respond to one of the two

o following prompts: Freud wrote that art was a palliative measure that helped people cope with suffering. Discuss his view and how it compares with the views of art or aesthetics of one of the following authors: Baudelaire, Darwin or Nietzsche. Or Describe how two of the following thinkers make use of memory of history in their work: Baudelaire, Nietzsche or Freud.

THE USE OF MEMORY OF HISTORY IN NIETZSCHE AND FREUD Mario Ramos Salas

Undeniably, the fact that the human experience is conditioned by time has been a major philosophical and artistic concern. How futile and fragile does our life seem to be; how tragic that even though we are vigorous today, tomorrow degradation will claim our bodies. To put it in Baudelaires own words How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering 1 and it is precisely this notion of suffering from remembrance that will be the core of this essay, in light of the views of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Even though the fields of expertise of both thinkers diverge significantly their considerations regarding the subject of memory and the role it plays in history brings them closely together. They recognize the existence of a struggle between two opposite forces: namely, the conflict between memory and forgetfulness. Early on his second essay On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche describes forgetfulness as an apparatus of suppression serving as a guardian or doorkeeper of mental order enabling the

Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil.

organism to perform its nobler functions. Thus, he asserts that there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness 2. This capacity for forgetfulness, nevertheless, could be suspended by the opposite human capability of holding promises which, necessarily, requires the creation of memories in order to be able to respond for the acquired commitment. In doing so the sovereignty experienced by the human being over his own self becomes his prevailing instinct. In this sense, Nietzsche claims that: [t]he proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom and power over himself and his destiny, has penetrated him to his lowest depths and become an instinct, his dominant instinct 3. And said instinct he calls his conscience. However, Nietzsche claims that the concept conscience, which we meet here in its highest, almost disconcerting form, already has a long history and metamorphosis behind it 4. Consequently, he argues that in order to create memory in the forgetful human being cruelty and violence where of the upmost importance. Memory, though said violent measures, serves the end of creating moral values which are implanted and imprinted on the individuals mind. Throughout history, then, the individual has been bound to renounce to its more powerful desires; namely, the desire of experiencing pleasure through the suffering of others in order to enjoy the advantages of societal life. Similarly, Freud asserts in his analysis that the individual in society is strictly repressed and forced to a renunciation of its more primal desires but, nevertheless, his considerations takes us to a different pathway: that is to say, the intertwined relationship between the configuration of the psyche of the human being and the development of civilization. According to Freud the structure of the human psyche is characterized by the fact that the past in mental life may be preserved; that is to say that past experiences, past desires, may persist throughout the development of the human psyche in some fashion. He claims that in mental life nothing which has been once formed can perish that everything is somehow preserved and that in suitable circumstances (when, for instance, regression goes back far enough) it can once more be brought to light 5. As a parallelism with Nietzsche, for Freud, unfulfilled desires and the renunciation of instincts are features that are found both in the configuration of the individual and society. They both agree in the fact that the human being has a natural disposition for aggressiveness, which entail
2

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals. Ibid. Ibid. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents.

the existence of powerful instincts that are denied through societal life. In this sense, Freud claims that the the instinct is diverted towards the external world and comes to light as an instinct of aggressiveness and destructiveness Conversely, any restriction of this aggressiveness directed outwards would be bound to increase the self-destruction, which is in any case proceeding 6. Thus, since the individual needs to renounce to this death instinct in Freud or to this will of power in Nietzsche, such aggressiveness is turn inwards, inflicting its adverse consequences to the self. Said unfulfilled, repressed, desires and their persistence in the human psyche as well as in a generalized manner in society are consequences of the historical memory of the human being for both authors. Thus, it can be concluded that memory as an illness, as a primordial source for human suffering, is a common view shared by Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.

Ibid.