Freud And Kant's Theory Of Society And Culture

The Psychoanalytic theory which was developed as a therapy and a clinical technique to cure hysteria became a major theoretical framework of Europe to understand and interpret the society and culture in the 20th century. One of Freud’s major contributions to European philosophy and culture was his critique and revision of the Kantian theory of reason. He rejected the Kantian transcendental idea that human mind can completely understand its essence through critical reasoning. Freud instead postulated that the human mind is unknowable as it is governed by unconscious motives and drives. Though there are certain means by which the human mind can be analysed, most of its unconscious domains are impenetrable. Freud developed his Psychoanalysis as a means to understand the relation between the somatic reality of the senses and language. He again postulated that the basic reason for hysteria n individuals is the result of Oedipus complex, an absence of the resolution of childhood sexuality. Freud thus makes his clinical theory a critique of society and culture. Freud’s theory of society and culture are diametrically opposed to Kant’s theory of the progressive rationalization and consequent freedom and maturity of the individual. While Kant argues that the progressive rationalisation would put restraints on individual instincts and passions and consequent liberation of the individual, Freud argues that the society is a very complex structure and that restraints on eros would end in