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Alessandro Luciano
4.21.2015
Intellectual History Paper
Prof. Marci Shore,
TA: Charles Walden
Suspicion and False Consciousness in Marx, Nietzsche and Freud
I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so certain and
of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could
be alleged by the skeptics capable of shaking it, and I concluded that I
might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy
of which I was in search.
Discourse on the Method, Ren Descartes
If one had to choose a maxim for a proem to the history of modern
philosophy, that would unquestionably be Descartes legendary cogito.
The French philosopher, who has doubted the things of the world to the
extreme, realizes that despite such absolute doubt, consciousness is
present to itself. Not only is consciousness present to itself it
guarantees the existence of a neutral independent subject, becoming
the cornerstone and first principle of philosophy. In the Cartesian
framework, meaning and consciousness of meaning coincide
(Ricoeur 33). The unprecedented and unsettling dissociation between
meaning and consciousness of meaning is the first fundamental step
into modernity.
Moving beyond the Cartesian suspicion on the outside world,
modern and postmodern philosophers begin to doubt the

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trustworthiness of consciousness itself. This new form of doubt is not
merely skeptical. Its ambition is to create a novel hermeneutic, which
instead of evaluating opposing interpretations of the world attempts to
decipher consciousness itself. Its protagonists, whom Ricoeur famously
appoints as the masters of suspicion come from different
backgrounds and have diverging if not conflicting philosophical
methods. These masters are Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, three
protagonists born in the 19th century whose lives are both
chronologically and geographically adjacent. Despite their differences,
they have in common a general belief in truth as lying and in
consciousness as essentially delusional or false (Ricoeur 32). In this
essay, I will discuss the methods of suspicion and resulting false
consciousness identified by each of the three philosophers. I will show
that Nietzsches critique of consciousness is more fundamental,
applicable and psychologically sound than Marxs and Freuds.
Before delving into each philosophers peculiar method of
suspicion, it is necessary to clarify the concept of false
consciousness. The term was coined by Engles, Marxs close friend
and political collaborator. In a letter dated May 1893, Engles writes:
Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker
consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real
motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it

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would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines
false or apparent motives.1 (emphases added)
Despite its elaborations by identity politics and feminist theory, the
general definition of false consciousness that Engels hints to here
suffices. False consciousness is the distortion of the real motives of
ones thoughts and decisions. Importantly, the real motivations are
hidden (or, in Freudian terms, subconscious) to the subject himself.
This unawareness of the subject is common to the philosophies of
Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.
In Marxist theory, false consciousness is linked to and participates in
the concept of ideology. Though Marx never defines the term
ideology, he discusses it most extensively in The German Ideology.
Here, he employs historical materialism (i.e., an analysis of history,
society and culture as determined by economic relations) to define the
relationship between the base the means and relations of
production and the superstructure, which includes culture, religion,
philosophy, politics, art, law, and everything unrelated to production.
For Marx, the base shapes and maintains the superstructure, which in
turn preserves the base. Therefore, The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas, [which] are nothing more than the ideal
expression of the dominant material relationships (Marx 64). The

1 Marx and Engels Correspondence, Donna Torr, International

Publishers (1968)

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economic circumstances of the ruling class produce an ideology, which
in turn determines the ruling class principles and behavior as a whole.
In this framework, the American Dream could be interpreted as
the product of the economic relations that enabled an elite of
successful citizens to enjoy material privileges. Such ideology is then
propagandized in order to mask the social stagnation and inequality
engendered by capitalism and thus preserve the economic base.
Importantly, the successful elite who gave birth to this ideology is
completely unaware of its falseness and instrumentality. By extending
this critique to all realms of knowledge, Marx interprets the entire
cultural production of a society as a product of its economic relations.
The power of Marxs theory is its materialism: Marx never appeals to
vague or metaphysical propositions in order to make his point, and
relies solely upon an empirical analysis of the economic system.
In this respect, Freud is Marxs antithesis. To the collective,
historical and empirical analysis that Marx carried out, Freud opposes
an individual, ahistorical and unconscious investigation. The Freudian
subject has a tripartite psyche that must balance through the Ego the
impulses of the Id and the repressive drives of the Superego. The
unconscious is the seat of all mental processes, whose information
concerns what is most intimate in ones mental life, everything that
[] one must conceal from other people and [] that one will not
admit to oneself (Freud 21, 25). Thus, similarly to Marxs case, the

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Freudian subject does not admit his true consciousness to himself. To
Marxs assertion that consciousness, be it on a collective or individual
level, is determined by ones socio-economic status, Freud opposes the
notion that the force which shapes most of our psyche and culture is
the sexual impulse. Such impulse is sublimated into art and work
through the repressive structure of civilization, which can only
guarantee its own survival if it keeps sexuality in check (Freud 27). The
fact that civilization and the exigencies of life require sexuality to be
controlled results in a collective denial of the validity of psychoanalytic
research, which is seen as aesthetically repulsive and morally
reprehensible (Freud 27).
Along these lines Freuds concludes that:
Society makes what is disagreeable into what is untrue. It
disputes the truths of psychoanalysis with logical and factual
arguments; but these arise from emotional sources and it
maintains these objections as prejudices against every attempt
to counter them. (Freud 28)
As in Marx, the motives for such false consciousness stem from the
interests of a biased party: accepting psychoanalysis is disagreeable
because it is noxious to the preservation of a seemingly stable and
uniform faade of society. Freud and Marx are fundamentally united by
this conviction that the preservation and desire for power generates a
false consciousness in the interested party. Yet if there is a philosopher

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who has discussed power most explicitly in the context of
consciousness, that philosopher is Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsches starting point is radically different from Marxs and
Freuds. Whereas the latter concede some form of individual or
collective neutral independent subject, Nietzsche does not. Marx writes
so that the proletariat may obtain true class-consciousness and opt out
of the false consciousness that the bourgeoisie would want to impress
on it. Freuds psychoanalysis has no other aim than overcoming the
power of unconscious trauma and neuroses so as to free the subject
from its psychic burdens. Nietzsche, instead, does not postulate the apriori existence of an independent subject: instead, he argues that a
belief in any kind of neutral independent subject is a form of false
conscience (Nietzsche 48). His critique of what I hereby term false
conscience (though false might be better substituted by
inauthentic so as to drop the truth claim inherent in false) is
embedded in a critique of Christian morality, which is finds it
development in A Geneaology of Morals.
Here Nietzsche ventures into a genealogy of good and evil, i.e.,
a history of good and evil as concepts. He finds that everywhere the
concept of noble, aristocratic in a social sense began to mean
good, whereas its opposite, plebeian, low was transformed into
the concept of bad. Yet, with Judaism and Christianity, the
aristocratic value-equation is inverted:

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The wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly
alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are
pious, alone are blessed by God, blessedness is for them alone
and you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary the evil, the
cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity.
(Nietzsche 31)
Christian morality, for Nietzsche, emerges from weakness and hatred
towards the aristocratic type. This is what Nietzsche calls
ressentiment, which is the essence of false conscience: Christian
morality always needs a hostile external world in order to exist. It is
because of Christianity that the western philosophical tradition clings
to the idea of neutral independent subject; for Nietzsche, this idea is
prompted by an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation in
which every lie is sanctified (Nietzsche 48).
In more general and succinct terms, Nietzsche argues that our
conscience is not shaped by principles to which we subscribe as
neutral subjects (when, for example, we adhere to a certain religion,
philosophy or political movement). Rather, first comes our action in the
world, and then the fabrication of those principles that allow us to
continue acting in accordance to our will and instinct. This fabrication
takes place within the dialectic of weakness and power: values are
fabricated in order to render the fabricator more powerful. Thus, for

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example, Christian morality elevates to a new level of power the weak
who have fabricated it.
Why is the Nietzschean view the most convincing? First of all,
because it anticipates the 20th centurys critique of the neutral subject.
Modernists and postmodernists begin on the Nietzschean premise that
after the death of God, there is no more reason or possibility to believe
in a neutral subject. In this sense, the philosophy of Nietzsche takes
the death of God to its full consequences. Moreover, the Nietzschean
suspicion on the subject and analysis of the false consciousness is not
in contrast to those of Marx and Freud; rather, it pushes them a step
further while grasping their fundamental essence. False or
inauthentic consciousness born out of an innate compulsion to
increase ones power can be extended to society as a whole thus
aggregating individual power into the power struggles of social classes
and to ones sexuality, where dominance and the power to obtain
pleasure are key impulses according to Freudian theory. In this sense,
Nietzsches framework can be specified to describe at least partially
Marxs theory of ideology and Freuds theory of sexuality.
I find Nietzsches worldview particularly appealing because it is
the one that takes with utmost seriousness the death of God. In the
absence of God, it is impossible to conceive of a neutral subject who
can subscribe a priori to a certain philosophy. Moreover, Nietzsches
analysis of the false consciousness is grounded on the only thing that

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is left after the death of God: power relations. Finally, his philosophy
seems to me as more fundamental than Freuds or Marxs as it is
possible to extend Nietzsches dialectic of power to society and the
psyche, while it is much more challenging to infer from Marxist and
Freudian theory the kind of fundamental philosophy of power relations
elaborated by Nietzsche.
Nevertheless, I see two main difficulties in subscribing to
Nietzsches philosophy as hereby explained. First of all, I find power
to be an unsatisfactory reason to live. Although it is true that power is
all that is left after the death of God, living to increase my own power
is existentially unacceptable: it is like living to fuel an engine in an
empty universe. Power for powers sake does not attract me. Perhaps
this is symptomatic of my doubt upon the very idea of death of God
and of my hopes that such death has not occurred once and for all. My
second complaint is less personal and more intrinsic to Nietzsches
argument. If one creates principles and morals based upon ones acts
in the world, i.e., retroactively, doesnt a set of principles and ideas
such as Nietzsches own philosophy belong to the same category of
fabricated worldviews as the Christian one does? In this sense,
Nietzsches argument seems to bite its own tail.
Modernity begins when the Cartesian doubts on the things of the
world are brought back to the subject as doubt on consciousness.
Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, the three masters of suspicion, criticized

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the trustworthiness of human consciousness respectively from a
psychological, a socioeconomic and an existential/perspectivist point of
view. Amongst the three, Nietzsche stands out for having elaborated
the most fundamental, applicable and psychologically sound argument.
It is time for us to either do away with the neutral subject completely
or to question the death of God in the first place: only then will it be
reasonable to wholly subscribe to worldviews that require a neutral
subject such as Marxism or Freudian psychoanalysis.

Works cited:

Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: an Essay on Interpretation. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Print.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, C J. Arthur, Karl Marx, and Karl Marx.
The German Ideology. New York: International Publ, 1970. Print.

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Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, and Peter Gay. Introductory
Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. New York: Norton, 1989. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W, Alexander Tille, William A. Haussmann,
John Gray, and Friedrich W. Nietzsche. A Genealogy of Morals. New
York: Macmillan, 1897. Print.