Deleuze, Freud and the Three Syntheses

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-327
Author(s):  
Henry Somers-Hall
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
The Third

The aim of this paper is to provide a close reading of Deleuze's complex account of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Difference and Repetition. The first part provides a reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle itself, showing why Freud feels the need to develop a transcendental account of repetition. In the second, I show the limitations of Freud's account, drawing on the work of Weismann to argue that Freud's transcendental model mischaracterises repetition. In the third part, I show how Freud's account of the death drive is shadowed by Deleuze's own non-representational transcendental account.

Death, Mastery, and the Origins of Life

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Y. Fong
Keyword(s):  
Origins Of Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle

A close reading of Sections IV and V of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a reading that produces initial articulations of the death drive and the drive to mastery.

‘A Country Beyond the Pleasure Principle’: Alexander Luria, Death Drive and Dialectic in Soviet Russia, 1917–1930

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Lev Vygotsky ◽  
Soviet Russia

Alexander Luria played a prominent role in the psychoanalytic community that flourished briefly in Soviet Russia in the decade following the 1917 October Revolution. In 1925 he co-wrote an introduction to Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle with Lev Vygotsky, which argued that the conservatism of the instincts that Freud described might be overcome through the kind of radical social transformation then taking place in Russia. In attempting to bypass the backward looking aspects of Freud's theory, however, Luria and Vygotsky also did away with the tension between Eros and the death drive; precisely the element of Freud's essay they praised for being ‘dialectical’. This article theoretically unpicks Luria and Vygotsky's critique of psychoanalysis. It concludes by considering their optimistic ideological argument against the death drive with Luria's contemporaneous psychological research findings, proposing that Freud's ostensibly conservative theory may not have been as antithetical to revolutionary goals as Luria and Vygotsky assumed.

Schopenhauer and the Unconscious

2020 ◽  
pp. 496-516
Author(s):  
Stephan Atzert
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Arthur Schopenhauer ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Sabina Spielrein

This chapter explores the gradual emergence of the notion of the unconscious as it pertains to the tradition that runs from Arthur Schopenhauer via Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer to Sabina Spielrein, C. G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud. A particular focus is put on the popularization of the term “unconscious” by von Hartmann and on the history of the death drive, which has Schopenhauer’s essay “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual” as one of its precursors. In this essay, Schopenhauer develops speculatively the notion of a universal, intelligent, supraindividual unconscious—an unconscious with a purpose related to death. But the death drive also owes its origins to Schopenhauer’s “relative nothingness,” which Mainländer adopts into his philosophy as “absolute nothingness” resulting from the “will to death.” His philosophy emphasizes death as the goal of the world and its inhabitants. This central idea had a distinctive influence on the formation of the idea of the death drive, which features in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Precarious life

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Miriam Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Germ Cell ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Perfect Model ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

In …Pleasure Principle, Freud juxtaposes his discussion of the life and death instincts in “elementary organisms” to the tragic drama he sees enacted in his grandson’s fort-da game. Freud’s insights into the death drive are given an added tragic dimension in Lacan’s reading of Oedipus at Colonus. Here Lacan establishes the anti- or even post-humanist credentials of tragedy by insisting that it is the death of the subject which is Sophocles’ ultimate preoccupation. By placing Greek tragedy’s confrontation with the death drive in dialogue with the instincts of the “germ-cell”, the chapter demonstrates how psychoanalysis offers a perfect model for understanding antiquity’s contribution to posthumanism.

How Are We to Read Beyond the Pleasure Principle?

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-264
Author(s):  
Monique David-Ménard
Keyword(s):  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Post Card ◽  
Clinical Phenomenon

This paper considers Freud's 1920 text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in light of Jacques Derrida's critical commentary on it in The Post Card. Against the deconstructive reading that highlights the performative aspects of Freud's speculative remarks, David-Ménard reads Freud's theory of the death drive as an epistemological and experimental hypothesis necessary for giving an account of the complexity and diversity of the clinical phenomenon of repetition in psychoanalysis. Though the death drive never appears locatable as such in the various examples given by Freud, it is nonetheless accessible in the constellation of differences produced by traumatic dreams, children's games, etc.

Listening for “The Silence of the Night”: Reading Kevin Hart’s “The Voice of Brisbane”

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lachlan Brown
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Cross ◽  
John Of The Cross ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Yves Bonnefoy

AbstractThis essay undertakes a close reading of Kevin Hart’s poem “The Voice of Brisbane” alongside three pertinent voices. The first voice belongs to Yves Bonnefoy and concerns his translation of the French termévidence. Taking into account Hart’s own admiration of Bonnefoy, this essay contrasts the kinds of experiential and poetic claims that the two poets make. The second voice belongs to St. John of the Cross. Hart’s poem owes much to the kinds of mystical meditation that St. John advocates. The third voice belongs to Synesius of Cyrene, a fifth-century Platonist and bishop, whose poem “Awake My Soul” bears an uncanny resemblance to the pattern of Hart’s work.

scholarly journals Vida e morte em Fechner e Freud

2021 ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
ANDRÉ SANTANA MATTOS
Keyword(s):  
General Principle ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Physical Principle ◽  
Common Point ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
General Conception ◽  
The Common

 As concepções de vida e morte de Freud e de Fechner se entrelaçam no momento em que o primeiro, em Além do princípio do prazer (1920), aclimata ao seu arcabouço teórico o princípio fechneriano da tendência à estabilidade, tomado a partir de então como um princípio mais geral ao qual se subordina o princípio da constância (ou princípio do Nirvana). O princípio de Fechner, contudo, é destacado por Freud de uma obra publicada em 1873, onde seu autor o formula como um princípio físico que se insere em uma concepção geral sobre a vida — sobre a sua origem e o seu desenvolvimento, mas também o seu ocaso —, concepção que difere sobremaneira da visão científica usual, à qual Freud se filia. No entanto, a visão sobre a vida e a morte dos dois autores conflui a partir do ponto em comum representado pelo princípio da tendência à estabilidade, que, em Fechner, leva os organismos progressivamente ao estado inorgânico e, em Freud, parece poder ser entendido como o fundamento da pulsão de morte, que naturalmente se esforça por alcançar este mesmo fim.Palavras-Chave: Freud. Fechner. Vida. Morte. Life and death in Fechner and FreudABSTRACTFreud's and Fechner's conceptions of life and death are intertwined when the former, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), acclimatizes to his theoretical framework the Fechnerian principle of the tendency to stability, taken from then on as a more general principle to which the constancy principle (or Nirvana principle) is subordinated. Fechner's principle, however, is highlighted by Freud from a work published in 1873, where its author formulates it as a physical principle that fits into a general conception of life — about its origin and its development, but also the its sunset — a conception that differs greatly from the usual scientific view, to which Freud adheres. However, the vision of life and death of the two authors converges from the common point represented by the principle of the tendency to stability, which, in Fechner, leads organisms progressively to an inorganic state and, in Freud, seems to be understood as the foundation of the death drive, which naturally strives to achieve this very end.Keywords: Freud. Fechner. Life. Death.

scholarly journals Al-Ghazālī and Descartes on Defeating Skepticism

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 133-148
Author(s):  
Saja Parvizian ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Cosmological Argument ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
The Third ◽  
Meditations On First Philosophy ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Key Features

Commentators have noticed the striking similarities between the skep­tical arguments of al-Ghazālī’s Deliverance from Error and Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. However, commentators agree that their solutions to skepticism are radically different. Al-Ghazālī does not use rational proofs to defeat skepticism; rather, he relies on a supernatural light [nūr] sent by God to rescue him from skepticism. Descartes, on the other hand, relies on the natural light of reason [lumen naturale] to prove the existence of God, mind, and body. In this paper, I argue that Descartes’ solution is closer to al-Ghazālī’s than commentators have allowed. A close reading of the cosmological argument of the Third Meditation reveals that there is also a type of divine intervention em­ployed in the Meditations, which helps Descartes defeat skepticism. This reading may buttress the case made by some that al-Ghazālī influenced Descartes; but more importantly, it requires us to rethink key features of Descartes’ epistemology.

scholarly journals Beyond the Entwurf: (A Preliminary) Project for a Scientific Death Drive

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
MLA Chernoff
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Molecular Processes ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Scientific Rigour ◽  
Jean Laplanche

This paper explores the conceptual thresholds of psychoanalysis as they have been laid out over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, specifically focusing on the tensions between Sigmund Freud and two of his many heirs, viz., Jean Laplanche and Jacques Lacan. First, I extricate Freud's visionary text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), from Laplanche's condemnation of the text as either whimsically metaphyical or simply a return to Freudian seduction theory. I argue that neither categorization has the capacity to contain the argumentative force of Beyond. Second, by attending to Lacan's theorizations of the philosophy of science apropos of psychoanalysis, I speculate on the possibility of a psychoanalytic future, one that incorporates scientific rigour into its theories practices. By accounting for the materiality of the death drive (through Timothy Morton's object-oriented interpretation of molecular processes), I show how the death drive was never necessarily metaphorical and thereby acts as an discourse-altering facet of psychoanalysis in a way that neither Laplanche nor Lacan could have anticipated.

scholarly journals Psychoanalysis, thermodynamics and the matter of scarcity: A genealogy of Freud's death drive hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Massot
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Laws Of Thermodynamics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Second Industrial Revolution

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud introduced the death drive hypothesis, according to which “the aim of all life is death”. I trace the genealogy of this hypothesis in order to understand it as a moment in the history of modern Western societies. First, I present Freud's metapsychology, and in particular its “economic” dimension, the death drive being central to this dimension. Secondly, I retrace the history of the concept of energy and of the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics in the nineteenth century. Energetics and thermodynamics are shown to have been important to the Freudian economic dimension. Further, I show that for nineteenth-century scientists, the concern for energy reflected a socio-economic preoccupation with the matter of scarcity. Lastly, I argue that Freud's relationship to energy, as expressed in the death drive hypothesis, also reflected a certain relationship of Western countries to scarcity in the era of the second industrial revolution.<br>

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