Honors Midterm Spring 2026

Where and why did Machiavelli write The Prince?

He wrote it in exile at his country home in hopes that the Medicis would recognize his skill and ask him to return to his former political office; he wrote it in less than a year

Genre of The Prince

• The mirror of princes

  • gives advice to rulers, it holds up a kind of “mirror” to them and shows them what a good ruler looks like, in the best case, prompting reflection and reform from the ruler

  • goes all the way back to Socrates’ student Xenophon

    • wrote The Education of Cyrus

  • the thinking was that rulers should possess the same virtues that any morally decent human being possessed but to an even greater degree

• It’s also a critique of that genre

How Machiavelli breaks with tradition

• the Machiavellian prince understands that the virtues that exist in private lives - the ones that reflect good souls, the ones that determine where individual souls will spend eternity- don’t translate into politics

• a Machiavellian prince must be willing to exercise immorality and to get his hands dirty; and in extreme cases bloody

• order and stability have to be made or created and they have to be actively maintained

  • you can’t do this by being Mr. Nice Guy

• there’s a divide between personal and political morality

• doesn’t show the prince how to truly be virtuous, rather how to appear virtuous

  • what tradition regards as virtue is actually harmful to a prince, but having the appearance of traditional virtue can be quite useful

What is never mentioned in The Prince?

• conscience

  • doesn’t want politicians worrying about the eternal consequences for their souls

• natural justice

• natural law

• anima (Italian for soul)

The two lenses through which we can read The Prince

1. fragmentation

   1. both the context and motivation for The Prince

   2. Italy had become quite decentralized - split into 5 major regions which often quarreled with and undermined one another

   3. this enabled other countries, including France and Spain, to overrun Italy

   4. Italy was slow to modernize

   5. Machiavelli wants the Medicis to unify Italy

2. resilience

   1. one of Machiavelli’s goals of writing this is to emphasize the need and show the way to the reunification of Italy under the leadership of a strong and powerful Machiavellian prince

3 overarching themes in The Prince

1. Machiavelli’s novel approach to politics

   1. the moral or ethical standards that guide private life don’t apply or transfer into the political realm

   2. raises the question of if Machiavelli is a “teacher of evil”

2. founders and redeemers

   1. founders are necessary to bring states into being out of a condition of lawlessness that precedes them - often through violence

   2. but over time, states stray from the vision of their founders and must be redeemed by a redeemer figure

      1. Italy needs a redeemer - The Prince presents itself as a manual for this redeemer

         1. Machiavelli hopes to hasten the arrival of the redeemer by writing this

   3. the art of being a Machiavellian prince

      1. includes the ability and willingness to use violence when the existence of the state is threatened, to manipulate appearances, to instill fear while avoiding hatred, and to knowledgeably and methodically acquire other states, among other qualities

Who is The Prince dedicated to?

• Lorenzo de Medici

• The Prince is Machiavelli’s peace offering to Lorenzo. He wants back into the game

  • he’s trying to impress Lorenzo with his knowledge of politics and he presents himself as a kind of tutor to Lorenzo

Politics as landscape

• the prince is like a mountain up above

• the people are like the plains down below

• only the people know whether the prince’s policies are benefitting them

  • the prince needs someone “down below” to bring him updates about the effects of his policies - Machiavelli wants to be that guy

How Machiavelli sticks and breaks with tradition in chapter 1

• like all political philosophers, he classifies different kinds of political rule

• but, when he classifies different types of government, he says nothing at all about justice

• replaces what ought to be with what is

hereditary principalities

• a prince eventually takes the throne he inherits from his father, who inherited it from his father, and so on

• as long as the prince doesn’t rock the boat by introducing too many innovations, the hereditary prince should be able to maintain power

• prince should avoid being hated

newly conquered principalities

• are hard to maintain

• difficult to govern but especially when the languages and customs of the acquirer differ from those of the acquired

• Machiavelli advises new princes ruling over recently annexed lands that have a somewhat different language but similar customs to eliminate the bloodline of the former, deposed prince (regardless of age); also says don’t alter their laws or taxes

  • people don’t really care who the prince is; they care about the effect the prince’s policies have on their daily lives

• the real difficulties arise when a prince acquires a state with different languages, customs, and orders

  • he advises this prince to go live there, so he will see disorders when they are small and easily squashed

    • sending colonists is even better - take a portion of his newly conquered subjects’ houses and property and redistribute that to the colonizers

Machiavelli’s view of acquisition

• acquisition isn’t right or wrong, rather the deciding factor for him is success

• acquisition is natural for all humans

  • humans will inevitably come into conflict with one another, showing why we need government to secure our lives and property from our fellow citizens who would seize them

  • states will inevitably fight wars to conquer others and dispossess them

servants

help the prince govern but are under the thumb of the prince and serve at the prince’s pleasure and whim (absolutism)

• tough to conquer but easy to control if you can conquer it - if you can oust the prince, the people are used to being ruled by a single prince and following orders

barons

have their own mini-kingdoms filled with loyal subjects (feudalism)

• it’s easy to dethrone the prince by allying with the jealous and ambitious barons but it’s hard to maintain power once you have it because the ambitious barons will start scheming to replace the new prince almost the minute he takes the crown

Machiavelli’s view of republics

acquiring a republic and maintaining one’s rule over it over time is much more difficult than acquiring a principality because republics are used to living by their own laws and being free, and even if a prince can conquer them, they will never forget that they were once free

• one sure mode of securing a republic is to eliminate them; destroy it

• could be seen as telling princes not to conquer republics - a good thing

4 founders mentioned by Machiavelli in chapter 6

1. Moses - the founder of the Jewish people

   1. starts by saying Moses is different than the others

   2. he could be suggesting that Moses is in fact no different from the other founders

      1. if he is like all the others, did he invent his own backstory like Romulus, including the part about talking to God on Mt. Sinai, perhaps to give greater legitimacy to his rule

   3. drains him of his religious significance

2. Cyrus - founded the Persian Empire

3. Romulus - founder of Rome

   1. he is saying that the story of his birth (that he was raised by a she-wolf) is a good story, one that befits a founder - doesn’t say he thinks it’s true

4. Theseus - founder of Athens

• they took the matter (the cards that they had been dealt in a material sense) and they shaped this matter, giving it a form

  • the mind and will of the founder can form or shape things

  • by matter, he means enslaved, discontented, or dispersed people - they’re willing to follow a leader who promises to improve their unhappy condition

• had to use force and be willing to get their hands dirty

• founding is the supreme political act

refoundings

there will come a point where people no longer believe in the founder’s vision. this happens when people drift over time away from the founder’s vision. the matter which the founder formed starts to lose its shape

• Moses with the Israelites

• also happens by force

chapter 7: Cesare Borgia and Remirro de Orco

• Cesare Borgia (Duke Valentino)

  • Machiavelli knew him personally and admired him

  • his father was Pope Alexander VI (who was ruthless)

    • he was an illegitimate child

  • inherited a territory called Romagna

    • it was disordered and anarchic (gangs robbed people and beheaded them and criminals fled there, followed by the bounty hunters who were chasing them)

  • not a criminal to Machiavelli

• Remirro de Orco

  • who Borgia employed to help bring order to the Romagna, by employing rough, violent, and bloody tactics without due process

• you only get well ordered government after lots of violence

• not only did Cesare make de Orco the face of the violent campaign to restore order, but he killed de Orco after de Orco had done the dirty work, so that he would appear as a hero and protector of the people

• is it morally permissible to use evil as means to obtain a good end?

chapter 8: criminal princes

• don’t have the art of entering into evil

• A Machiavellian prince isn’t supposed to be evil all the time, only when necessary

• acquired power but not glory

• Agathocles

  • assembled the senators and had them killed

  • got his hands dirty without cause (only for his own power)

    • Syracuse was already a functional government

• Liverotto

  • like Agathocles, he destroyed a republic so that he could be the tyrant and have all the power to himself

  • but he’s worse because he kills his own uncle - who adopted him and provided for his every need

    • committed this crime solely in order to obtain power; he saw being under someone else’s power as a sign of servility

cruelties well used

done all at once and done to promote the common good as much as possible

cruelties badly used

• aren’t done all at once but are dragged out and even increase over time

• seek to benefit the ruler, not the subjects, which harms the ruler’s authority

mercenaries

• are almost worthless

• fight for a paycheck, not for love of country, and thus they won’t fight courageously

• if there should happen to be an effective mercenary captain, he becomes a threat to the prince

• Italy at the time used mercenaries - the only sin they need to atone for is not knowing how to fight and relying on mercenaries - God had nothing to do with Charles VIII seizing Italy

auxiliaries

• troops you borrow on loan, even worse than mercenaries

• some can actually fight, but they’re loyal to their own country or captain, not to the prince

your own arms

• best situation is for a prince to fight with his own arms

• he also means strategies, especially ones like force and fraud

• a prince should train his own people to fight

• there are always exceptions to the rules

• David did this (in Machiavelli’s opinion)

  • relying on God means relying on someone else’s arms, so Machiavelli drains David of his religious significance

prudence (Machiavelli)

the intellectual capacity that enables a prince to know whether or not to apply a rule to a given situation

the kinds of books a prince should read

• all histories, particularly histories that show how excellent men conducted themselves in war

  • should imitate the actions of those they read about, which is what previous conquerors and founders did

  • to help them get ready for their next war

• there’s no theology or philosophy

  • doesn’t want the prince to be concerned with his soul and its supposed eternal destination

the effectual truth

• princes who follow what the tradition regards as virtue will find their states ruined, whereas princes who follow what the tradition regards as vice can attain security and well-being, for themselves and their subjects. In certain situations, what is virtuous for Machiavelli will be things that the tradition regarded as immoral

• focusing on the is, rather than the ought (like Plato)

the one and only time that the end justifies the means (for Machiavelli)

when the continued existence of the state is threatened

liberality

generosity

• if a prince is too generous, he will have to raise taxes, which will make him hated (something that should be avoided)

• a prince should share his loot with his soldiers

  • violence and dispossession becomes the foundation of generosity

  • he’s unconcerned with how the prince obtained his loot

  • only by first being unjust towards foreigners is a prince able to be generous with his own subjects

    • the foundation of virtue is vice

parsimony

stinginess

• a prince must me stingy to avoid needing to tax his subjects too rigorously

is it better to be feared or loved

it’s safer for a a prince to be feared than loved

• fear is more dependable because it is held by a dread of punishment that never forsakes the prince

  • must ensure that the people’s fear doesn’t turn into hatred

    • a prince must keep his hands off his subjects’ property

      • property is more important than family and blood to human beings

• a prince can’t rely on his subjects’ professions of love

  • love is fleeting

Hannibal

For Machiavelli, the foundation of Hannibal’s admiral actions was his cruelty, without it he could never have maintained order in his army and kept his soldiers in line (his other virtues would have no effect)

man and beast

• you have to be able to rule humanely (man)

• have to be able to turn into a beast when necessary

  • he will have to switch between being a lion (power) and a fox (cunning)

  • princes have to be flexible

    • when circumstances allow a prince to be good, the prince should be good

    • when circumstances change, the prince must know how to enter into evil

      • doesn’t do this unless the existence of the state is threatened

manipulating appearances

the prince has to know how to manipulate appearances

• sight can be exploited and manipulated

• few people are able to touch who the prince actually is

• the prince must be a bit of an actor, and above all, he must appear to be religious

• turns fraud into virtue

fortune

• the enemy of civil order

• a primal source of violence directed against humanity

• can’t be reasoned with

  • a Machiavellian prince must meet fortune’s violence against humanity with violence of his own

• fortune is a river

  • fortune controls half of human actions but the other half is within human control

  • fortune may be resisted to some extent by a Machiavellian prince, provided he has prepared for fortune’s inevitable and violent arrival

• fortune is a woman

  • reminding us that the foundation of all political order is violence

    • the feminine is a source of fear that requires a forceful response

chapter 26 of The Prince (last chapter)

• a call to arms

• calls on Lorenzo to unite Italy and expel the French and Spanish invaders who had pillaged Italy for decades

  • do so by combining his power with Pope Leo X

• Italy needs a redeemer

  • doesn’t turn out to be Lorenzo

  • Italy didn’t unify until 1861

Thomas More

• Lord Chancellor of England

• religious and political martyr beheaded for opposing Henry VIII’s decision to divorce Queen Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn and refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy (Henry VIII as head of the Church of England - Reformation)

  • devout Catholic

• wrote Utopia during ambassadorial trip to the Netherlands

  • where he met Peter Gilles

  • written in Latin

• called “a man for all seasons” by his contemporary Robert Whittington

  • serious and funny

• invented the word Utopia

intellectual and historical milieu of Utopia

• Plato’s Republic

  • communalistic reimagining of society

• monastic communities

  • forbade private property and required everyone to work

• emerging market societies

  • emphasis on education and social mobility over hereditary privilege

• Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages to the new lands

Utopia as a travel narrative

mixture of fiction and reality, blends imagination and fact

Utopia as a dramatic, even comic, dialogue

• building on the techniques of Plato’s Republic

• Dramatis personae: More (Morus), Peter Giles, and Raphael Hythlodaeus

Utopia (meaning)

no place

Raphael

• arch-angel Raphael (guide and healer)

• protagonist, so More can avoid making some of the more radical arguments

• like a sailor but in fact a scholar

• companion of Amerigo Vespucci (adds credibility)

• embodies quite a bit of Thomas More

Hythlodaeus

distributor of nonsense; in our translation Nonsenso

Morus

foolish, stupid

Morus (persona) vs. Morę (author)

negotium

labor

otium

leisure

vita activa

active life

vita contemplative

contemplative life

counsel’s benefits vs. costs (should a philosopher enter the court to counsel a king?)

• Morus:

  • one benefits whole population by counseling a king

  • the necessity to adapt one’s philosophy to circumstances

    • decorum: what is proper to the circumstances or requirements of the case

    • accept human imperfection

• Raphael:

  • slight communal good is less than A LOT OF personal work

  • kings only interested in war

  • royal counselors either too wise or too prejudiced

  • counselors will always flatter

  • there is no room at court for philosophy

    • obligation to speak the truth vs. the need to pander to others’ immoral actions in politics

parresia

truth-telling

Foucault on parresia

• an ethical obligation to tell the truth to others because we can’t know what is hidden from our own eyes

  • we can only properly care for ourselves if others tell the truth about ourselves to us

• parresia vs. flattery/rhetoric

  • parresia: says what the other needs to know, risks endangering yourself/your relationship

  • flattery/rhetoric: only says what the other already knows

• the mirror of princes is an example

  • the counselor tells the prince what he needs to know

  • government of self → government of others

Raphael’s answer about who gets to tell the truth

• the society doesn’t allow everyone to tell the truth

• his proposal: abolish private property

• Morus disagrees: nobody would want to work

  • from Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s Republic

  • Raphael responds: you just have to see for yourself

Capital city of Utopia

Aircastle in our translation

“city of clouds”

River Anydrus

“without water”

Nowater in our translation

Utopos

conqueror of Utopia

• narrative of colonization

Geography of Utopia

• 54 towns

  • with same language, laws, customs, and institutions; look exactly the same

  • probably mirrors the number of shires in England and Wales (plus London) in More’s time

  • Utopian channel - English channel

• Aircastles’ positioning is reminiscent of London

officials and politics of Utopia

• government: representative democracy

• governor elected for life unless he’s suspected of wanting to establish a dictatorship

  • in Latin a princeps - an elected prince

  • how do you control their ambition

• capital crime to discuss public affairs outside the Council

  • no resolution debated on the day it is proposed

    • private interest vs. communal good

occupations in Utopia

• everyone works in farming (part of school curriculum

• each person taught a trade of one’s own

  • both women and men

  • children do the same work as their parents; if they want to do something else, they get adopted into another family

  • no tailors or dressmakers

  • equality vs. lack of choice

• six hour work day, two hour lunch break, eight hours of sleep

• free time spent on education/intellectual pursuits

  • public and voluntary education - except those picked out for academic training

  • available to men and women

• no priests, landowners, or beggars

in utramque partem

arguing both sides

• have to do this to see the whole picture

• see how an element can be desirable and undesirable at the same time

the clothing in Utopia

• identical to everyone else’s

• patronizing but not social stratification or chase of fashion

  • can focus on the pursuit of knowledge

social relations in Utopia

• fixed number of households and adults in each household

  • supernumerary adults are moved to smaller households

• a full town: population transferred to an empty town

• if that doesn’t work - colonization!

  • the Utopian ideal hinges upon who is included in and excluded from it

food in Utopia

• need anything from the market: just go ask for it

• food first goes to the hospital, then the dining halls

• then you can take the food home, but no one really wants to because it’s bad form and too much trouble when the meal is already waiting for you

forms of surveillance in Utopia

• at the dining table: young and old members mixed together so the young people will watch their mouths and behaviors

• no unauthorized travels

  • only travel in groups

  • if caught without a passport: first time - disgrace and punishment; second - slavery

  • free to go anywhere in your own town, but no food unless you work

panopticon

architectural form for a prison

• circular in shape with cells facing the center-guard

• guard’s ability to keep all inmates under constant surveillance

• inmates are unable to know when or whether they are being watched, leading to self-regulation and self-surveillance

  • eventually don’t need guards

money, gold, and silver in Utopia

• utopians don’t use money, but keep them for emergency

• gold and silver are less than iron

  • used for domestic equipment and punishment

    • sign of slavery

    • diamonds and pearls: toys for toddlers

what Utopians study

music, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy

NO astrology

eudamonia

pleasure

• true pleasure = freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind

  • static pleasure (stable) is greater than kinetic pleasure (active, temporary)

  • some immediate pleasures may lead to long-term pain or harm

  • food → diet; drink → hangover; games → miss out on schoolwork

  • ataraxia

real pleasure in Utopia

• any state or activity, physical or mental, which is naturally enjoyable. the operative word is naturally

  • criteria: doesn’t hurt other people, interfere with greater pleasures, or cause unpleasant after-effects

  • physical: bodily pleasure (kinetic) and calm functioning of the body (static)

  • mental: good behavior and clear conscience

slavery in Utopia

• not non-combatant prisoners of war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets

  • not based on race or hereditary

• are Utopian convicts or condemned criminals from other countries “acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing; or working-class foreigners who volunteer for slavery in Utopia

  • their responsibility for becoming a slave: voluntary or misbehavior

marriage in Utopia

• just about legitimate sex?

• bride and groom are shown naked to each other

  • marriage and purchase; female body and buying a horse

  • a society where nothing is private, not even your own body

• strict monogamy; adultery heavily punished

• divorce by mutual consent allowed on grounds of incompatibility

fools in Utopia

have the ability to tell the truth in the pretense of being a fool, speaking outside common morality

• who is the fool in Raphael and More’s conversation

Utopians and war

• don’t go to war unless it’s in self-defense or to liberate a dictatorship

• they are quite tolerant of injuries done to themselves

• to avoid bloody victories, they try to outwit their enemies by:

  • assassination

  • fostering internal discord

  • hiring mercenaries

  • using death squads

religion in Utopia

• different religions but all worshiping “The Parent” - Mythras

  • Persian God

• religious toleration doesn’t extend to atheism

• for More, religion is the foundation for ethics in the society

• individual judgment is less than collective judgment; individual interest is less than public welfare

why does More choose to put Utopia forward and have Raphael claim this is the “ideal society”

• to reveal to us that the reality we assume in our daily existence is also a construction

• to fundamentally question what we consider societal norms:

  • private interests as opposed to public interests

  • societal inequality: rights to education, work, healthcare, etc.

• to force readers into the necessity of choice between snow-white communism and black-sheep ownership

  • while thinking readers know that there exists a third alternative which is being neglected or ignored, which takes into account both man’s weakness and man’s strength

premises of psychoanalysis (the talking cure)

1. desires and behaviors are caused by both conscious and unconscious elements - we will always be mysterious to ourselves

2. early “primal” psychical elements (ex. sexual and aggressive drives) remain active in our newer highly-developed adult psyches

   1. we can never fully escape our childhoods

3. dynamic mutual relationship between internal (both conscious and unconscious) and external worlds

   1. nature and nurture can’t be separated

methods of psychoanalysis

method of interpretation aims to dig under the surface of things to deeper causes

• clinical psychoanalysis: therapeutic working-through a patient’s (analysand’s) problems via dialogue with an analyst. Patient free associates and analyst helps the patient identify patters (ex. slips of the tongue, defensiveness, avoidance) and uncover repressed material

• sociological psychoanalysis: analyzes social phenomena with conceptual tools of psychoanalysis

  • presupposes that “external” social problems are caused by human beings acting according to “internal” psychological impulses

goal of psychoanalysis

alleviation of symptoms (improvement in psychological fortitude; decreased depression, anxiety). Together, they arrive at insights that help the patient heal

Unbehagen

malaise, uneasiness, dissatisfaction, vague “discontent”

Kultur

broader concept than “civilization”, includes science, technology, art, society, etc.

the oceanic feeling

an ever-present sensation of eternity, limitless, unbounded, a purely subjective fact but confirmed by many others, feeling of in-dissolvable bond of being one with the external world as a whole, source of the religious energy seized upon by churches and religious systems, one may rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone

• Freud’s response:

  • I can’t find this feeling in myself at all

  • seems more like an idea than a feeling

• a remnant of undifferentiated ego from the development process from babyhood to childhood

the id

source of unconscious “inherited” drives (ex. sex drive, hunger, fight or flight: the primal within ourselves)

the ego

portion of the id that has undergone development. Main interface with the outside world; the source of our personas/selves (ex. my identity, my traits, unique practical proclivities)

• avoids overwhelming stimuli

• sublimates drives via reality testing and the reality principle

• represses drives and traumatic memories/thoughts into the unconscious

• conscious

the superego

a remnant of the parental influence; the force of social pressure weighing down upon the ego - ensures the ego is controlling the id to not always act on desires spontaneously as they spring up (ex. sense of responsibility to other people’s needs and desires, why we study when we don’t want to)

• unconscious and conscious

the ego - absorbed and distinct

• his/her majesty the baby

  • babies have a phase before the ego develops where they’re just full of desires (pleasure ego)

  • baby recognizes their dependence on others and dis-identifies with painful things; in so doing, they recognize the limits of themselves and develop fledgling egos as distinct from the rest of reality

• originally the ego includes everything but later breaks itself off. our adult ego feeling is only a shrunken residue of a more inclusive and intimate bond between ourselves and the world outside of us

eternal city of Rome

• illustrates the development of the complex human psyche on top of “elementary” parts

• illustrates the persistence of the past in the present represented visually and spatially

powerful deflections

• maintain a close contact to reality

  • scientific activity, tending a garden

substitutive satisfactions

art, fantasy

intoxicating substances

• treat the symptoms, not the cause

  • booze, drugs, sugar, caffeine

program of the pleasure principle

presence of pleasure, absence of unpleasure

• we pursue it with gusto from the unconscious life drive (Eros, encompasses sexual drive and a lust for life)

  • everyone’s eros is different

• the world is organized in a way that this is hard to pursue

• the more you engage in a pleasure-begetting activity, the less pleasurable it will be

3 sources of unhappiness/suffering

1. our bodies (illness, fatigue, etc.)

2. external world (Covid, climate change, rain, etc.)

3. relationships (parents, bullies, breakups, strangers, etc.); most intense

• due to these, we adjust our pleasure principle to allow happiness be more achievable

  • we must re-route eros into activities that are possible and appropriate

reality principle

recognition that fulfilling certain desires and impulses will have negative consequences (stealing all my groceries, touching a hot stove), so we bring the pleasure principle in conformity with the conditions of everyday reality

sublimation

the processes through which we channel the energy of a desire into something acceptable in reality

a good thing, but won’t beget as much pleasure as the sating of crude and primary instinctual impulses

sublimatory mechanisms

• master our drives (yoga, meditation, extreme self-discipline

• displacements; shifting instinctual aims (a scientist’s joy in solving problems or discovering truths)

• illusions; the imagination (enjoyment of works of art, writing a poem) - one of the best

• turn your back on the world; isolation (living in the wilderness, immersing oneself in gaming)

• work; internal mental processes (sudoku, learning a language, acing your assignments) - one of the best

• loving and being loved (romantic and platonic partnerships, helping other people)

• enjoyment of beauty (looking out at Lake Michigan, listening to music)

reality testing

the means through which the reality principle comes about

• infants figuring out the constraints of the world

• imagination is unaffected by this

difference between phantasy and fantasy

phantasy is unconscious; fantasy is conscious

civilization

the whole sum of achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors, and which serve two purposes - namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations

• subjugation of the forces of nature hasn’t made people happier

repression

the suppression of an instinct, the prohibition of the attainment of satisfaction for that drive

• the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations have to struggle

• worse than sublimation

how does society channel libidinal energy away from the private sphere and into society in general

1. identification: appreciation/cultivation of common quality amongst a group (July 4th)

2. aim-inhibited libido: sustained active participation that begets just enough satisfaction to continue (ex. professionals sports and sports bars)

why Freud is skeptical of love thy neighbor as thyself

1. real love isn’t general - it’s something valuable and specific; a sign of preference. You don’t just love anybody and everybody

2. not only does the injunction fail to account for the nature of love as aimed at particulars, but it also seems like my neighbor is hostile to me, and I am hostile to them

thanatos

the death drive; originating in the unconscious id; the opposing force to eros.

• characterized by self-destructiveness (compulsion to repeat and inertia) and destructiveness towards others (aggression)