Presentation:
brainwashing:
Washing from the brain the voice of the Father, i.e. negating the "guilty conscience."
Diaprax
(CHART)
The dialectic process and praxis
("Theory and Practice": thought, i.e. dissatisfaction with authority, being put into social action)
Justification is either established by God (according to His righteousness) or by man (according to his carnal nature, sensuousness).
It can not be established by both.
Man must either evaluate his thoughts and actions according to God's words (as Jesus did)
or evaluate God's word according to his thoughts and actions (as the women in the garden in Eden did).
"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;" 2 Corinthians 10:4
Proverbs 3:5
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."
"Trust in the Lord"―"Cursed is the man who trust in man and maketh flesh his arm," Jeremiah 17:5
"with all thine heart;"―"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9
"For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man." Mark 7: 21-23
"… and lean not unto thine own understanding."―"There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Proverbs 14:12
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Genesis 6:5
". . . for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; . . ." Genesis 8:21
"In all thy ways acknowledge him," Proverbs 3:6a
"Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." Mark 8:36-38
"and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:6b
"O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Jeremiah 10:23b
Isaiah 55:8, 9
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Luke 16:13
God's way of thinking (Patriarchal Paradigm):
"I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." "For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me commandment what I should say, and what I should speak." John 3:30; 12: 49
"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your father, which is in heaven." "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven." Matt.23:9; 12:50; 7:21
Man's way of thinking (Heresiarchal Paradigm):
"And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." Luke 16:15
Thesis (Tradition): Position, Knowing, "Is" and "Not," Patriarchal Paradigm, Father, "top-down" authority under God.
Righteousness: Preaching, teaching, and chastening: Faith in the Father, belief in what He says as being true, obedience to His commands, without questioning them or his authority, and accepting His chastening for any disobey.
Hebrews 12:5-11 "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."
Antithesis (Transition): Relationship, feelings, "ought," Matriarchal Paradigm, relationship with the Mother, caught between "top-down" authority and "equality" in feelings engendering a "guilty conscience," a "belief-action dichotomy."
Sensuousness: where doubting, questioning, disobedience, permissiveness, and rebellion are engendered because of the persons "feelings" which go counter to, are anathema to (because they are restrained by) the Father's commands, engendering a "guilty conscience" when a person is caught between his behavior (his natural desire to relate with, i.e. be at-one-with the world) and his belief (his desire to obey to His Father, along with his fear of chastening) known as "cognitive dissonance."
Romans 7:14-25 "For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin."
Synthesis (Transformation): Dialectic 'reasoning,' 'justifying' "human nature," i.e. "human relationship" or sensuousness over and against righteousness, with opinion, theory, or "seems to" prevailing in one's actions, Heresiarchal Paradigm, "the children of disobedience," "equality" in man's carnal "human nature," his "natural inclination" to unite with (become at-one-with) the world, where "sense experience" becomes not only the foundation for but also the 'justification' for mans' thoughts and action thereby negating righteousness (negating faith in the Father, belief in His word, obedience to his commands, and acceptance of His chastening of us for our disobedience) as well as the "guilty conscience."
'Reasoning': seduction, deception, and manipulation of people made possible because of their natural desire to relate with (be at-one-with, approving of and being approved by) the world (according to our carnal nature and 'reasoning').
Genesis 3:1-6 "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 1 John 2:15-18
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" Romans 1:18
Hebrews 12:1 beset; Luke 12:5 covetousness; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 4:22- put on holiness Colossians 3:5-
"Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." Ephesians 2:2, 3
"Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience." Ephesians 5:6
"Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." (2 Timothy 2:22-26)
Affections; Colossians 3:2 "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."
"The life which he has given to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force." Karl Marx MEGA I/3
"Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." Colossians 3:9, 10
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." 1 Corinthians 2:9-16
Philosophy: "Philosophy as theory . . . establishes the basis of its reality as praxis ["human nature" in social action]; it serves to distinguish it from religion, the wisdom of the other world." "Philosophers view the world with critical eyes, measuring existence against essence, the actual against the ideal, 'is' against 'ought.'" "The philosopher appeals to reason not faith, teaches rather than dogmatizes, demands and welcomes the test of being doubted, promises truth, and aims at the achievement of a world 'become philosophical [Godless].'" (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right') "It may be said that Philosophy first commences when ... a gulf has arisen between inward strivings [the child's feelings to relate with the world] and external reality [the parents commands along with their use of chastening to prevent the child from relating with the world], and the old forms of Religion ["top-down" authority], &c., are no longer satisfying; when Mind manifests indifference to its living existence or rests unsatisfied therein, and moral life [faith in God or parent, belief in their commands, obedience to their will, and acceptance of their chastening] becomes dissolved." (Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy Introduction B. Relation of Philosophy to Other Departments of Knowledge) Philosophy begins when the child is dissatisfied with his parent's (God's) commands and begins to think upon how the world "ought" to be (without parental commands). Praxis is the children treating their Father's commands as being irrational, his authority as being irrelevant, and (without a "guilty conscience") striking out to remove him along with his commands from their thoughts and their actions, i.e. negating parental authority, removing the Father's "top-down," "Mine, not yours," influence upon society.
"The philosopher Hegel said that truth is not found in the thesis [in God, Spirit, or the Father] nor the antithesis [in man, the flesh, or the children] but in an emerging synthesis [a feeling or sensation of "oneness"] which reconciles the two [makes the parents and their children one]." (Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love)
"Freud, Hegel, and Nietzsche are, like Marx, compelled to postulate external domination and its assertion by force in order to explain repression.... Therefore the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression – in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body. The resurrection of the body is a social project." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"God is conceived more directly after a parental image ["top-down"] and thus as a source of support and as a guiding and sometimes punishing authority." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality]
"The child, contrary to appearance, is the absolute, the rationality; he is what is enduring and everlasting, the totality." (George Hegel, System of Ethical Life)
"On account of the absolute and natural oneness of the husband, the wife, and the child, where there is no antithesis of person to person or of subject to object, the surplus is not the property of one of them, since their indifference is not a formal or a legal one." (George Hegel, System of Ethical Life)
"Thus, for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically." (Karl Marx, Feuerbach Thesis #4, Translated: by Cyril Smith 2002, based on work done jointly with Don Cuckson)
"'It is not really a decisive matter whether one has killed one's father or abstained from the deed,' if the function of the conflict and its consequences are the same." (Sigmund Freud in Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"The negative valence of a forbidden object which in itself attracts the child thus usually derives from an induced field of force of an adult." (Kurt Lewin; A Dynamic Theory of Personality)
"If this field of force loses its psychological existence for the child (e.g., if the adult goes away or loses his authority) the negative valence also disappears." (Kurt Lewin; A Dynamic Theory of Personality)
"Change in organization can be derived from the overlapping between play and barrier behavior. To be governed by two strong goals is equivalent to the existence of two conflicting controlling heads within the organism. This should lead to a decrease in degree of hierarchical organization. Also, a certain disorganization should result from the fact that the cognitive-motor system loses to some degree its character of a good medium because of these conflicting heads. It ceases to be in a state of near equilibrium; the forces under the control of one head have to counteract the forces of the other before they are effective." (Kurt Lewin in Child Behavior and Development Chapter XXVI Frustration and Regression)
"It is usually easier to change individuals formed into a group than to change any one of them separately." (Kurt Lewin in Kenneth Bennie Human Relations in Curriculum Change)
"The individual accepts the new system of values and beliefs by accepting belongingness to the group." (Kurt Lewin in Kenneth Benne, Human Relations in Curriculum Change)
"… a psychological classification system." (Benjamin Bloom, et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Book 1, Cognitive Domain)
"We recognize the point of view that truth and knowledge are only relative and that there are no hard and fast truths which exist for all time and places." (Benjamin Bloom, et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Book 1, Cognitive Domain)
"In the eyes of the dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for all time, nothing is absolute or sacred." (Karl Marx)
"In fact, a large part of what we call 'good teaching' is the teacher's ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the student's fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues." (David Krathwohl, Benjamin Bloom, etc. Taxonomy of Educational Objective Book 2 Affective Domain)
"The major impact of the new program is to develop attitudes and values toward learning which are not shared by the parents." "There are many stores of the conflict and tension that these new practices are producing between parents and children." (David Krathwohl, Benjamin Bloom, Book II Affective Domain)
"The affective domain is, in retrospect, a virtual 'Pandora's Box. It is in this 'box' that the most influential controls are to be found. The affective domain contains the forces that determine the nature of an individual's life and ultimately the life of an entire people." (David Krathwohl, Benjamin Bloom, etc. Taxonomy of Educational Objective Book 2 Affective Domain)
"... a Weltanschauung1" "1Often this is too challenging a goal for the individual to achieve on his own, and the net effect is either maladjustment or the embracing of a philosophy of life developed by others. Cf. Erich Fromm, 1941; T. W. Adorno et al., 1950"
"God is conceived more directly after a parental image and thus as a source of support and as a guiding and sometimes punishing authority." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"The conception of the ideal family situation for the child: uncritical obedience to the father and elders, pressures directed unilaterally from above to below, inhibition of spontaneity and emphasis on conformity to externally imposed values." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"An attitude of complete submissiveness toward 'supernatural forces' and a readiness to accept the essential incomprehensibility of 'many important things' strongly suggest the persistence in the individual of infantile attitudes toward the parents, that is to say, of authoritarian submission in a very pure form." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"Authoritarian submission was conceived of as a very general attitude that would be evoked in relation to a variety of authority figures‑‑parents, older people, leaders, supernatural power, and so forth." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"A tendency to transmit mainly a set of conventional rules and customs, may be considered as interfering with the development of a clear-cut personal identity in the growing child." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"Events of early childhood are of prime importance for the happiness and work-potential of the adult." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"It is a function of the ego to make peace with conscience, to create a larger synthesis within which conscience, emotional impulses, and self operate in relative harmony." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"When this synthesis is not achieved, the superego has somewhat the role of a foreign body within the personality, and it exhibits those rigid, automatic, and unstable aspects discussed above." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"... the super-ego 'unites in itself the influences of the present and of the past.'" (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"The guilty conscience is formed in childhood by the incorporation of the parents and the wish to be father of oneself." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"What we call 'conscience' perpetuates inside of us our bondage to past objects now part of ourselves:" (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Social control is most effective at the individual level. The personal conscience is the key element in ensuring self-control, refraining from deviant behavior even when it can be easily perpetrated." "The family, the next most important unit affecting social control, is obviously instrumental in the initial formation of the conscience and in the continued reinforcement of the values that encourage law abiding behavior." (Dr. Robert Trojanowicz, The meaning of "Community" in Community Policing)
"This voice which really isn't you but tells you the way the world works is a direct attack on creativity. We have to work to remove it." "When we learn to silence the inner voice that judges yourself and others, there is no limit to what we can accomplish, individually and as part of a team. Absence of judgment makes you more receptive to innovative ideas." (Michael Ray in Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p. 223, 225
"Submission to authority, desire for a strong leader, subservience of the individual to the state, and so forth, have so frequently and, as it seems to us, correctly, been set forth as important aspects of the Nazi creed that a search for correlates of prejudice had naturally to take these attitudes into account." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"The power‑relationship between the parents, the domination of the subject's family by the father or by the mother, and their relative dominance in specific areas of life also seemed of importance for our problem." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"One of the primary functions of these [matter‑of‑fact] questions was to encourage the subject to talk freely." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"This was attempted by indicating, for example, that critical remarks about parents were perfectly in place, thus reducing defenses as well as feelings of guilt and anxiety. . . . matter‑of‑fact questions were also designed to catch general attitudes with as little distortion as possible." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"What is particularly important here is that recognition of one's own individuality is the basis for recognition of the individuality of everyone, and for the democratic concept of the dignity of man." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)
"In the dialogic relation of recognizing oneself in the other, they experience the common ground of their existence." (Jürgen Habermas Knowledge & Human Interest, 1968, publ. Polity Press, 1987. Chapter Three: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory)
"Part of the dialectics of the process of winning independence from parental authority lies in using the extrafamilial peer group as a foil to parental authority, particularly in the period of adolescence." (Bradford, Gibb, Benne T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method: Innovation in Re-education)
"In the process of history man gives birth to himself. He becomes what he potentially is, and he attains what the serpent―the symbol of wisdom and rebellion―promised, and what the patriarchal, jealous God of Adam did not wish: that man would become like God himself." (Erick Fromm, You shall be as gods)
"Personal relations between men have this character of alienation. Hegel and Marx have laid the foundations for the understanding of the problem of alienation." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
"In fact, it is probably fair to say that Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man introduced the young Marx to America and provided the dominant interpretation of this thinker for the students of the New Left." "…Fromm gave the humanitarian, idealist, and romantic proponents of the New Left a Marx they could love." (Bronner, Of Critical Theory and its Theorists)
All that matters is that the opportunity for genuine activity be restored to the individual; that the purposes of society and of his own become identical." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
"The most effective method for weakening the child's will is to arouse his sense of guilt." "The most important symptom of the defeat in the fight for oneself is the guilty conscience." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
"The family thus may be considered to be the psychological agent of the society." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
". . . Definition of religious experience as experience of absolute dependence is the definition of the masochistic experience in general." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
"Man is free from all ties binding him to spiritual authorities, but this very freedom leaves him alone and anxious, overwhelms him with a feeling of his own individual insignificance and powerlessness. We are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do." "Both the sadistic and the masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and his need for a symbiotic relationship to overcome this aloneness." [Fromm believed that man could] "not take the last logical step, to give up 'God' and to establish a concept of man as a being who is alone in the world, but who can feel at home in it if he achieves union with his fellow man and with nature." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
"To experience Freud is to partake a second time of the forbidden fruit;" (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"If the guilt accumulated in the civilized domination of man by man can ever be redeemed by freedom, then the 'original sin' must be committed again: 'We must again eat from the tree of knowledge in order to fall back into the state of innocence.'" (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization:)
"In order to effect rapid change, . . . [one] must mount a vigorous attack on the family lest the traditions of present generations be preserved. It is necessary, in other words, artificially to create an experiential chasm between parents and children—to insulate the children in order that they can more easily be indoctrinated with new ideas." (Warren Bennis, The Temporary Society)
"If one wishes to mold children in order to achieve some future goal, one must begin to view them as superior. One must teach them not to respect their tradition-bound elders, who are tied to the past and know only what is irrelevant." (Warren Bennis, The Temporary Society)
". . . any intervention between parent and child tend to produce familial democracy regardless of its intent." (Warren Bennis, The Temporary Society)
"… Once uncertainty is created in the parent how best to prepare the child for the future, the authoritarian family is moribund, regardless of whatever countermeasures may be taken." (Warren Bennis, The Temporary Society)
"The real nature of man is the totality of social relations." (Karl Marx, Thesis on Feuerbach # 6)
"It is not individualism that fulfills the individual, on the contrary it destroys him. Society is the necessary framework through which freedom and individuality are made realities… only in a socialist society." (Karl Marx)
"The individual is emancipated in the social group." "Freud commented that only through the solidarity of all the participants could the sense of guilt be assuaged." Norman O. Brown LIFE AGAINST DEATH
"Only within a social context individual man is able to realize his own potential as a rational being." Joseph O'Malley Karl Marx Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right'
"One of the most fascinating aspects of group therapy is that everyone is born again, born together in the group." "Few individuals, as Asch has shown, can maintain their objectivity [belief in parent or God] in the face of apparent group unanimity; ..." Irvin D. Yalom Theory and Practice and Group Psychotherapy
"The individual accepts the new system of values and beliefs by accepting belongingness to the group." Kurt Lewin in Kenneth Benne Human Relations in Curriculum Change
"Small groups are the most effective way of closing the back door of your church." Rick Warren
"If the 1789 French Revolution was a failure it was because the most numerous part of the mass, the part distinct from the bourgeoisie, did not have its real interest in the principle of the Revolution, did not have a revolutionary principle of its own [had no emotional input, were not 'stakeholders,' had not taken on 'ownership'], but only an 'idea', and hence only an object of momentary enthusiasm and only seeming uplift." (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
"Not feeling at home in the sinful world, Critical Criticism must set up a sinful world in its own home." (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
"However, Criticism falls into an inconsistency by thus having its opinion of itself represented as the opinion of the world and by its concept being converted into reality." (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
"Criticism is now simply a means. Indignation is its essential pathos, denunciation its principle task. Criticism is criticism in hand-to-hand combat. Criticism proceeds on to praxis." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right)
"Laws must not fetter human life; but yield to it; they must change as the needs and capacities of the people change." "The critique of religion ends with the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected, contemptible being." "Criticism proceeds on to praxis." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, ed. Joseph O'Malley)
"For one class to stand for the whole of society, another must be the class of universal offense and the embodiment of universal limits. A particular social sphere must stand for the notorious crime of the whole society, so that liberation from this sphere appears to be universal liberation. For one class to be the class par excellence of liberation, another class must, on the other hand, be openly the subjugating class." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right)
"No class of civil society can play this role [emancipators of society] unless it arouses in itself and in the masses a moment of enthusiasm, a moment in which it associates, fuses, and identifies itself with society in general, and is felt and recognized to be society's general representative, a moment in which its demands and rights are truly those of society itself, of which it is the social head and heart." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right)
"Language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men." (Karl Marx, MEGA I/5)
"Science is only genuine science when it proceeds from sense experience, in the two forms of sense perception and sensuous need, that is, only when it proceeds from Nature." (Karl Marx, MEGA I/3)
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, the objective however, is to change it." (Karl Marx, Feuerbach Thesis #11)
"Theoretical praxis enters public life through the newspaper and journal of social criticism." "The philosopher becomes a journalist without ceasing to be a philosopher." (Joseph O'Malley Ed., Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right' )
If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea "Fruit", if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea "Fruit", derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then in the language of speculative philosophy — I am declaring that "Fruit" is the "Substance" of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea — "Fruit". I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of "Fruit" My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely "Fruit". Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is "the substance" — "Fruit". Having reduced the different real fruits to the one "fruit" of abstraction — "the Fruit", speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from "the Fruit", from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea "the Fruit" as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction. (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
"The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself."
"The life which he has given to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force." (Karl Marx, MEGA I/3)
"The only practically possible emancipation is the unique theory which holds that man is the supreme being for man."
"The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions." (Karl Marx, MEGA I/1/1)
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." (Karl Marx, Selected writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, translated by T. B. Bottomore)
"The immediate task is to unmask human alienation in its secular form, now that it has been unmasked in the sacred form." (Karl Marx, Selected writing in Sociology and Social Philosophy trans. by T. B. Bottomore)
"Personal relations between men have this character of alienation. Hegel and Marx have laid the foundations for the understanding of the problem of alienation." (Erick Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
"Revolutionary violence reconciles the disunited parties by abolishing the alienation of class antagonism that set in with the repression of initial morality. … the revolution that must occur is the reaction of suppressed life, which will visit the causality of fate upon the rulers. It is those who establish such domination and defend positions of power of this sort who set in motion the causality of fate, divide society into social classes, suppress justified interests, call forth the reactions of suppressed life, and finally experience their just fate in revolution. " (Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge & Human Interest, Chapter Three: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory)
"In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven."
(Karl Marx, MEGA I/5)"The only emancipation of the German is the emancipation of man. The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat [the disenfranchised-adolescent]."
"Philosophy is not outside the world; it simply has a different kind of presence in the world. The world is its ground; it is the spiritual quintessence of its age. The world is the object of its enquiry and concern; it is the wisdom of the world." (Joseph O'Malley translator of Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right)
"... theory becomes a material force when it grips the masses." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right')
"It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness." "Praxis becomes the form of action appropriate to the isolated individual, it becomes his ethics." "Marx urged us to understand 'the sensuous world,' the object, reality, as human sensuous activity." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"The unspeculative Christian also recognizes sensuality as long as it does not assert itself at the expense of true reason, i.e., of faith, of true love, i.e., of love of God, of true will-power, i.e., of will in Christ. Not for the sake of sensual love, not for the lust of the flesh, but because the Lord said: Increase and multiply. It is not sensuality which is presented ..., but mysteries, adventures, obstacles, fears, dangers, and especially the attraction of what is forbidden." (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
"Mystery, as that of educated society, withdraws, it is true, from the antithesis into the inner sphere. Nevertheless, high society once again has exclusively its own circles in which it preserves the holy. It is, as it were, the chapel for this holy of holies. But for people in the forecourt, the chapel itself is the mystery. Education, therefore, in its exclusive position is the same thing for the people ... as vulgarity is for the educated." (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
"Education as yet is unable and unwilling to bring all estates and distinctions into its circle. Only Christianity and morality are able to found universal kingdoms on earth." (Karl Marx, The Holy Family)
Robert Trojanowicz:
"Social control is most effective at the individual level. The personal conscience is the key element in ensuring self-control, refraining from deviant behavior even when it can be easily perpetrated. The family, the next most important unit affecting social control, is obviously instrumental in the initial formation of the conscience and in the continued reinforcement of the values that encourage law abiding behavior. Unfortunately, because of the reduction of influence exerted by neighbors, the extended family and even the family, social control is now often more dependent on external control, than on internal self-control." (Dr. Robert Trojanowicz, Community Policing The meaning of "Community" in Community Policing)
"Shift in philosophy about police duties vs. community responsibilities to a team concept of Total Quality Management of the community. Reidentifying the police role as a Facilitator in the community." (COPS, Community Oriented Policing Services US Department of Justice)
"Identifying common ground, where all factions of a community can work together for the common good of the community in a broader problem-solving approach. Forming a partnership between police and the rest of the community where each is accountable to each other and the community as whole." (COPS, Community Oriented Policing Services US Department of Justice)
"Leaders of the community (law enforcement, government, business, education, health, civic, non-profit, medical, religious, etc.) collaborating to identify problems in the community… and suggesting solutions to those problems." (COPS, Community Oriented Policing Services US Department of Justice)
"The theme underlying much of the research is that once you can identify a community, you have discovered the primary unit of society above the level of the individual and the family that can be mobilized to take concerted action to bring about positive social change." (Dr. Robert Trojanowicz, Community Policing The meaning of "Community" in Community Policing)
"The community of interest generated by crime, disorder and fear of crime becomes the goal to allow community policing officer an entree into the geographic community." (Dr. Robert Trojanowicz, Community Policing The meaning of "Community" in Community Policing)
"… in all metaphysics the object remains untouched and unaltered so that thought remains contemplative and fails to become practical; while for the dialectical method the central problem is to change reality.… reality with its 'obedience to laws, … is impenetrable, fatalistic and immutable." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"The great polemic against Hegel in The Holy Family concentrates mainly on this point.. Hegel's inadequacy is that he only seems to allow the absolute spirit to make history. The resulting otherworldliness of consciousness vis-d-vis the real events of history becomes, in the hands of Hegel's disciples, an arrogant-and reactionary confrontation of ‘spirit' and ‘mass'." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"When the dialectical method destroys the fiction of the immortality of the categories [God's Law over man, parents law over child, etc.] it also destroys their reified character [Fear of God above man, parent above child, etc.] and clears the way to a knowledge of reality [Social Eros]." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"In order to progress from these ‘facts' to facts in the true meaning of the word it is necessary to perceive their historical conditioning as such and to abandon the point of view that would see them as immediately given: they must themselves be subjected to a historical and dialectical examination." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"Consciousness, instead of being the watchman over a dangerous and unpredictable lot of impulses, becomes the comfortable inhabitant of a society of impulses and feelings and thoughts." (Carl Rogers, on becoming a person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"Man consciously transforms his environment in response to his needs. Only within a social context individual man is able to realize his own potential as a rational being." "Every class lacks the breadth of soul which identifies it with the soul of the people, that revolutionary boldness which flings at its adversary [the parental authority] the defiant phrase; 'I am nothing and I should be everything.'" (Karl Marx Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right')
"Marx sees … consciousness as 'practical critical activity' with the task of 'changing the world'." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"Thus when ‘science' maintains that the manner in which data immediately present themselves is an adequate foundation of scientific conceptualisation and that the actual form of these data is the appropriate starting-point for the formation of scientific concepts, it thereby takes its stand simply and dogmatically on the basis of capitalist society. It uncritically accepts the nature of the object as it is given and the laws of that society as the unalterable foundation of ‘science'." "The dialectical method was overthrown and with it the methodological supremacy of the totality over the individual aspects; the parts were prevented from finding their definition within the whole and, instead, the whole was dismissed as unscientific or else it degenerated into the mere ‘idea' or ‘sum' of the parts. With the totality out of the way, the fetishistic relations of the isolated parts appeared as a timeless law valid for every human society." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"Marx reproached Hegel (and, in even stronger terms, Hegel's successors who had reverted to Kant and Fichte) with his failure to overcome the duality of thought and being, of theory and practice, of subject and object." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"Only when the immediate interests are integrated into a total view and related to the final goal of the process do they become revolutionary," (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"The goal of revolutionary activity was understood as the unifying of theory and praxis." [putting theory into practice] (Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination)
"Revolutionary violence reconciles the disunited parties by abolishing the alienation of class antagonism that set in with the repression of initial morality. … the revolution that must occur is the reaction of suppressed life, which will visit the causality of fate upon the rulers. It is those who establish such domination and defend positions of power of this sort who set in motion the causality of fate, divide society into social classes, suppress justified interests, call forth the reactions of suppressed life, and finally experience their just fate in revolution. " (Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge & Human Interest, Chapter Three: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory)
"It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"Praxis becomes the form of action appropriate to the isolated individual, it becomes his ethics." "Marx urged us to understand ‘the sensuous world,' the object, reality, as human sensuous activity." (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"Philosophy as theory . . . establishes the basis of its reality as praxis; it serves to distinguish it from religion, the wisdom of the other world." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right')
"'Capital' … is, according to Marx, 'not a thing but a social relation between persons mediated through things.' 'These relations,' Marx states, 'are not those between one individual and another, but between worker and capitalist, tenant and landlord, etc. Eliminate these relations and you abolish the whole of society; …… a scientifically acceptable solution does exist … For to accept that solution, even in theory, would be tantamount to observing society from a class standpoint other than that of the bourgeoisie. And no class can do that-unless it is willing to abdicate its power freely. ' '... the ideological history of the bourgeoisie was nothing but a desperate resistance to every insight into the true nature of the society it had created and thus to a real understanding of its class situation.… the Communist Manifesto makes the point that the bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers.'" (György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness Class Consciousness What is Orthodox Marxism?)
"The guilty conscience is formed in childhood by the incorporation of the parents." ((Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History): The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"What the child knows consciously and the adult unconsciously, is that we are nothing but body." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Parental discipline, religious denunciation of bodily pleasure, . . . have all left man overly docile, but secretly in his unconscious unconvinced, and therefore neurotic." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Adult sexuality, restricted by rules, to maintain family and society, is a clear instance of that subordination of the pleasure-principle to the reality principle which is repression; and therefore leads to neurosis." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Neurotic symptoms, with their fixations on perversions and obscenities, demonstrate the refusal of the unconscious essence of our being to acquiesce in the dualism of flesh and spirit, higher and lower." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"The new guilt complex appears to be historically connected with the rise of patriarchal religion (for the Western development the Hebrews are decisive.)" (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"The repression of normal adult sexuality is required only by cultures which are based on patriarchal domination." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Our repressed desires are the desires we had, unrepressed, in childhood; and they are sexual desires." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Human consciousness can be liberated from the parental (Oedipal) complex only be being liberated from its cultural derivatives, the paternalistic state and the patriarchal God." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"If there is a universal neurosis, it is reasonable to suppose that its core is religion." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"The key to the nature of dialectical thinking may lie in psychoanalysis, more specifically in Freud's psychoanalysis of negation." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"The only valuable things in psychic life are the emotions." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Freud speaks of religion as a 'substitute-gratification'– the Freudian analogue to the Marxian formula, 'opiate of the people.'" (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Eros is fundamentally a desire for union with objects in the world." "Eros is the foundation of morality." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"Marx defines the essence of man as labor and traces the dialectic of labor in history till labor abolishes itself." "Freud suggests that beyond labor at the end of history is love." "Love has always been there from the beginning . . . the hidden force supplying the energy devoted to labor and to making history." "Repressed Eros is the energy of history and labor must be seen as sublimated Eros." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"If it feels good, just do it." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... the Freudian hypothesis ... does not lead back to the image of a paradise which man has forfeited by his sin against God ..."
"[... the Freudian hypothesis leads] to the domination of man by man." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)"Frauds individual psychology is in its very essence social psychology." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"A half truth ... is false since the missing half changes the content of the obvious fact." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... the hatred against patriarchal suppression—a 'barrier to incest,' ... the desire (for the sons) to return to the mother—culminates in the rebellion of the exiled sons, the collective killing and devouring of the father, and the establishment of the brother clan, which in turn deifies the assassinated father and introduces those taboos and restraints which, ..., generated social morality." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"The monogamic family, with its enforceable obligations for the father, restricts his monopoly of pleasure; the institution of inheritable private property, and the universalization of labor, give a son a justified expectancy of his own sanctioned pleasure in accordance with his socially useful performances." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"The overthrow of the king-father is a crime, but so is his restoration.... The crime against the reality principle is redeemed by the crime against the pleasure principle: redemption thus cancels itself." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... the aesthetic dimension and the corresponding feeling of pleasure ... is the center of the mind .... link[ing] the 'lower' faculties of sensuousness, (Sinnlichkeit) to morality ... – the two poles of human existence" (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"Man exists only part time, during the working days, as an instrument of alienated performance [capitalist performance]; the rest of the time he is free for himself." "The irreconcilable conflict is not between work and Eros, but between alienated labor [man not able to be himself at work, i.e. capitalist, top-down hierarchy] and Eros [man being himself]." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... the liberation of Eros could create new and durable work relations." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"Underneath the habits of work in every man lies the immortal instinct for play [the child of caprice within]." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"The human relations connected with work may 'provide for a very considerable discharge of libidinal component impulses, narcissistic, aggressive, and even erotic.'" (Marcuse quoting Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents)
"... reproduction is merely a 'by-product." "The primary content of sexuality is the 'function of obtaining pleasure from zones of the body'" (Marcuse quoting Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents)
"Fore-pleasure is the preliminary play with all parts of the body, and represent a perpetuation of the pure polymorphous perverse play of infantile sexuality." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
"... according to Freud, the drive toward ever larger unities belongs to the biological-organic nature of Eros itself." "... the modifications and deflections of instinctual energy necessitated by the perpetuation of the monogamic-patriarchal family, or by a hierarchical division of labor, or by public control of the individuals private existence are instances of surplus- repression ..." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"In the aesthetic imagination, sensuousness generates universally valid principles for an objective order. The two main categories defining this order are 'purposiveness without purpose' — i.e. beauty, 'lawfulness without law' — i.e. freedom. 'Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck; Gesetzmässigkeit ohne Gesetz'" "Whatever the object may be (thing or flower, animal or man), it is represented and judged not in terms of its usefulness, not according to any purpose it may possible serve, and also not in view of it 'internal' finality and completeness." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"'... The conflict between civilization and sexuality is caused by the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two people,... whereas civilization is founded on relations between large groups of persons [the village].... In no other case does Eros so plainly betray the core of his being, his aim of making one out of many; but when he has achieved it in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he is not willing to go further.'" (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents in Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... 'unification' of the partial instincts into one libidinal object of the opposite sex, and in the establishment of genital supremacy [husband rule, wife submit] .... is repressive." "For example, the modifications and deflections of instinctual energy necessitated by the perpetuation of the monogamic-patriarchal family, or by a hierarchical division of labor, or by public control of the individuals private existence are instances of surplus-repression pertaining to the institutions of a particular reality principle." "Psychoanalytical theory sees in the practices that exclude or prevent procreation an opposition against continuing the chain of reproduction and thereby of paternal domination―an attempt to prevent the 'reappearance of the father.'" "... perversions thus express rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality under the order of procreation, and against the institutions which guarantee this order." " Therefore, if the historical process tended to make obsolete the institutions of the performance principle [obey God, parent, boss, etc.], it would also tend to make obsolete the organization of the instincts [conscience] ― that is to say, to release the instincts from the constraints and diversions required by the performance principle." [This is what Eve did in the Garden of Eden.] "For the libidinal energy [our carnal desires] left to itself and supported by a free intelligence [a facilitator like Satan] aware of the potentialities of liberation from the reality of repression, the libidinal energy generated by the id would thrust against its ever more extraneous limitations ... strive to engulf an ever larger field of existential relations, [outside support for help] thereby exploding the reality ego and its repressive performance." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"Freud ... stressed the role of religion in the historical deflection of energy from the real improvement of the human condition to an imaginary world of eternal salvation...." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
In his book, The Future of an Illusion, Freud "... praised science and scientific reason as the great liberating antagonist of religion." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
Marcuse wrote "This dialectic constitutes the unexplored and tabooed core of Freud's metapsychology." "The gratification of non-procreative genitality are ... tabooed as perversions..." "... perversions ... the sex instincts ... which do not serve or prepare for the procreative function." "sexuality is by nature 'polymorphous-perverse.'" (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
Brown wrote "Children are polymorphously perverse. . . . by the standards of normal adult sexuality." "Fore-pleasure is the preliminary play with all parts of the body, and represent a perpetuation of the pure polymorphous perverse play of infantile sexuality." "The 'magical' body of occidental mysticism, and the 'diamond' body of oriental mysticisms, and, in psychoanalysis, the polymorphously perverse body of childhood." "Infantile sexuality is the pursuit of pleasure obtained through the activity of any and all organs of the human body ['touching, seeing, muscular activity, pain, etc.']." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
In explaining Freud, Marcuse wrote: "If Freud's hypothesis is not corroborated by any anthropological evidence, it would have to be discarded altogether ... except for the fact that it telescopes, in a sequence of catastrophic events, the historical dialectic of domination ... elicits aspects of civilization hitherto unexplained." "... the Freudian hypothesis ... does not lead back to the image of a paradise which man has forfeited by his sin against God ..." "[... the Freudian hypothesis leads] to the domination of man by man." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) "In Eclipse of Reason Horkheimer ─ 'this mentality of man as the master can be traced back to the first chapters of Genesis.'" (Jay) Marcuse wrote Eros and Civilization to legitimize Freud's dream of an un-repressed civilization, a civilization no longer under Godly restraint, no longer under "domination," a condition Marx labeled as repression, alienation, and reification, caused by an "opiate"—patriarchal religion—a way of thinking which Freud saw as the source of neurosis (those who concede to accept external domination as a way of life). Erich Fromm wrote: ". . . Definition of religious experience as experience of absolute dependence is the definition of the masochistic experience in general." "Both the sadistic [*] and the masochistic [*] trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and his need for a symbiotic relationship to overcome this aloneness." [Fromm believed that man could] "not take the last logical step, to give up 'God' and to establish a concept of man as a being who is alone in the world, but who can feel at home in it if he achieves union with his fellow man and with nature." [In other words, the German people could give up God (God above man) but they could not, out of the fear of loneliness, give up Hitler (man above man). They had not learned that their escape from loneness was to be found in union with mankind and nature.] (Erich Fromm Escape from Freedom, brackets added) [*] Our dictionaries carry the influence of this Freudian ideology: Masochism: "a sexual perversion characterized by pleasure in being subjected to pain or humiliation especially by a love object;" Sadism "a sexual perversion in which gratification is obtained by the infliction of physical or mental pain on ... a love object" Merriam-Webster Dictionary (emphasis added) In other words, by a dialectical definition, a masochist is anyone who willfully obeys their parents', Gods', etc. command, when the command interferes with their natural, carnal (sexual) desire (according to Freud all desires, including children's desires, are sexual), and a sadist is a parent, God, etc., who places a command upon another person, a command which block their satisfying of a natural, carnal (sexual) desire.As Marx "demythologized" Hegel, Marcuse "demythologized" Freud, rescuing Freud from his despair since he could not grasp a pathway in which to realize his dream of an un-repressed civilization. With the release of Eros, all Freud could see was the "explosion" of civilization, a return to barbarism; "instinctual liberation (and consequently total liberation) would explode civilization itself, ... freed from constraints ... man ... without work and order ... would fall back into nature ... destroy[ing] culture." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) Using Kant, the Marcuse attempted to deliver Freud from his mythological "error." His dialectical pathway around the "explosion" of civilization was to actualize in civilization a taxonomical awareness "from sexuality constrained under genital supremacy to eroticisation of the entire personality" to bring Eros into Civilization, into the workplace. Marcuse wrote: "To meet this argument, we recalled certain archetypes of imagination" a word he freely interchanged with "phantasy," "uniting the whole person, the universal and particular under pleasure ... reconciliation of the individual with the whole, of desire with realization, of happiness with reason ... the fulfillment of man and nature, not through domination and exploitation, but through release of inherent libidinal forces [laws of the flesh]." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... (O)n the basis of Kant's theory, the aesthetic function becomes ... the philosophy of culture ... a non-repressive civilization, in which reason is sensuous and sensuousness rational ... [according to Schiller this gives hope to] the possibility of a new reality principle ." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
According to Marcuse "... the origin of repression leads back to the origin of instinctual repression ... early childhood." "... the 'external restrictions' which first the parents and then other societal agencies have imposed upon the individual 'interjected' into the ego and become its 'conscience'; henceforth, the sense of guilt permeates the mental life." "The id carries the memory traces of the dominion ... forward into every present future: it projects the past into the future." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"The historical possibility of a gradual decontrolling of the instinctual development [the "decontrolling" of the conscience over the id; i.e. let's be positive (love the creation, love pleasure) and not negative (love the creator, love God), negating the "guilty conscience"] must be taken seriously, perhaps even the historical necessity – if civilization is to progress to a higher stage of freedom." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"'Every renunciation ... becomes a ... conscience; every fresh abandonment of gratification increases its severity and intolerance ... every impulse of aggression which we omit to gratify is taken over by the super-ego and goes to heighten its aggressiveness (against the ego).' 'That which began in relation to the father ends in relation to the community.'" Freud Civilization and Its Discontents, The dialectic idea being: children obeying their Fathers in the home results in adults obeying a dictator in society. Get rid of the father's authority in the home and the child, as an adult, will not follow or obey a dictator (or God) in society.
"Freud ... compares the attitude of civilization toward sexuality." "... lasting erotic relations among mature individuals ... a 'libidinal rationality'..." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) Freud saw the conflict in civilization as one where sex (Eros, the sensuous: touch, taste, sight, smell, sound) plays the determinant agent "'... The conflict between civilization and sexuality is caused by the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two people,..." "'... whereas civilization is founded on relations between large groups of persons. (... the effort) to combine organic substances into ever larger unities,' to 'establish ever greater unities and to preserve them thus―in short, to bind together?'" Freud Civilization and Its Discontents in Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) Unity between two of the opposite sex must be 'changed' into unity of all as "one."
Freud then reveals his true sexual bias: "'In no other case does Eros so plainly betray the core of his being, his aim of making one out of many; but when he has achieved it in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he is not willing to go further.'" ibid. (bold added) In other words a patriarch paradigm (procreation—husband, wife) predominates with mankind and not a matriarchal/heresiarchal paradigm (adulterous-homosexual culture) As Marcuse explains: "... according to Freud, the drive toward ever larger unities belongs to the biological-organic nature of Eros itself." "This dialectic constitutes the unexplored and tabooed core of Freud's metapsychology." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) Dialectic's therefore unites the carnal nature of the children (unites the children as the "one" below becoming) as it negates the restraints against carnality by the father (negates the father and his authority as the one above as given).
According to Marcuse, "... the prehistory of the sense of guilt ... has 'its origin in the Oedipus complex and was acquired when the father was killed by the association of the brothers.' [the brotherhood, the fraternity]" (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) The act of negating the Father was not equated by the children because they did not turn to themselves alone for all answers (to consensus), thereby negating any consciousness of the father as well.
"... original domination becomes eternal, cosmic, and good, and in this form guards the process of civilization." "The 'historical rights' of the primal father are restored." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
Supposedly, with the expansion of the guilty conscience, which followed the sons killing of their father, "[t]he despot-patriarch has succeeded in implanting his reality principle in the rebellious sons." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History) The fear of judgment (of accountability for their thoughts and actions) still resided within the consciousness (sub-consciousness) of the children.
With the aid of psychoanalysis, Marcuse saw memory (the "ought"—Eros restrained yet subconsciously the desire retained) as an apparatus to be used in assisting mankind out of the repressive standards of the present civilization. "The rediscovered past yields critical standards which are tabooed by the present." "... the restoration of memory is accompanied by the restoration of the cognitive content of phantasy [restoring the imagination of the heart only upon evil, as in the days of Noah]." "... psychoanalytic theory recaptures the strict truths of daydreaming and fiction." "Memory," the law of the flesh, therefore, is an organ of "truth," which remembers currently suppressed carnal urges of past erotic acts of childhood, natural acts which were suppressed by parent standards. Thus it serve as a tool for the therapist, as it did for Satan in the Garden in Eden. "If memory moves into the center of psychoanalysis as a decisive mode of cognition, this is far more than a therapeutic device; the therapeutic role of memory derives from the truth value of memory." "Its truth value lies in the specific function of memory to preserve promises and potentialities [love and support by the parent and carnal hopes] which are betrayed and even outlawed by the mature, civilized individual, but which he had once been fulfilled in his dim past and which are never entirely forgotten." "... all thinking 'is merely a detour from the memory of gratification ... memory of gratification is at the origin of all thinking, and the impulse to recapture past gratification is the hidden driven power behind the process of thought." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) Psychology secularizes Satanism, intellectuals witchcraft, treating that which is of Satan as of "human nature," to liberate man from the restraints of God (from the Father), so that all that is created can become as one, without God (without the Father) of restraint.
Only by negating the preaching and teaching of God and His word, "as given," through the dialoguing of opinions (men's "ought's") to a consensus, and putting that consensus (man as the "one" and only) into social action (into praxis), can man's carnal nature, i.e. man only as man himself, along with his lust for self pleasure alone, attained through the pleasures of the world where all are united as "one" in nature alone, through the "all" becoming as "one" in pleasure, i.e. all uniting as "one" in "enjoyment," in Eros, i.e. can man become himself, i.e. become self-actualized. Man has to be "detoxified" (demythologized) of God, of the Father, of righteousness if he is to become himself again (as he was before the Father's first command and His threat and use of chastening to initiate and sustain his "top-down" order of authority)―the praxis of Satan and man united as one in rebellion against God and his authority, becoming themselves without God in the garden in Eden (Genesis 3:1-6), until God appeared and judged not only man and the woman but Satan himself, showing him (and man) that those who praxis dialectic 'reasoning' have no legs to stand upon in His presence. "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." 1 Peter 4:1-6
Brown writes about memory as a cause for repression, when it is used to retain patriarchal standards: "The core of the neurosis of individuals lay in the 'memory-traces of the experiences of former generations.'" (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History) All this has changed, as several generations have praxised the dialectical process in their homes. Irvin Yalom writes: "The current generation is the first in the history of the world which has nothing to learn from grandparents;" (Irvin Yalom Theory and Practice and Group Psychotherapy) Thomas Kuhn writes "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Kuhn quoting Max Planck's famous dictum. (Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolution)
Marcuse wrote that: "Phantasy [role-playing "ought"] plays a most decisive function in the total mental structure: it links the deepest layers of the unconscious with the highest products of consciousness, the dream with the reality [the 'ought' with the 'is' negating the 'not,' a circumvention of restraining commands] ... the perpetual but repressed ideas of the collective and individual memory, the tabooed images of freedom." "Phantasy is cognitive in so far as it preserves the truth of the Great Refusal, ... in so far as it protects, ... the aspirations for the integral fulfillment of man and nature ... the 'lower depth' of instinctual gratification assumes a new dignity." Phantasy "... unit[s] the whole person, the universal and particular under pleasure." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
Perversions, according to Marcuse "show a deep affinity to phantasy" since phantasy is "free from reality-testing" and "subordinated to the pleasure principle alone" and can be aroused through "artistic imagination." (Imagination-"the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality" Merriam-Webster Dictionary) Phantasy "links perversions with the images of integral freedom and gratification." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"... perversions thus express rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality under the order of procreation, and against the institutions which guarantee this order."
"The vicissitudes of the 'proximity senses' (smell and taste) ... is 'much more a bodily, physical one, hence also more akin to sexual pleasure' .... give, as it were, unsublimated pleasure per se (and unrepressed disgust). They relate (and separate) individuals immediately. Such immediacy is incompatible with the effectiveness of organized domination, with a society which 'tends to isolate people, to put distance between them, and to prevent spontaneous relationships and the the natural animal-like expressions of such relations.'" (Freud in Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)
"In terms of the pleasure principles ... reproduction is merely a 'by-product." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) Where production (work, outcome, leisure and guaranteed sustenance) is a by-product of consumption (man working as one in pleasure, in Eros, in carnality, in the love of this world) instead of the other way around where consumption (daily bread) is the result of production (work), where man is to work by the sweat of his brow for his food, because of his sin against God. In a consumer driven world, pleasure comes first (justifying abortion and euthanasia, based upon the spectrum of pleasure-pain, with the augmentation of pleasure for all men being the highest end) whereas in a producer driven world, work comes first (justifying life, based upon right vs. wrong with doing that which is right before God being the highest end).
"Neither the Bible nor the prophets, neither the revelations of God can take precedence over my own direct experience." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"Experience is, for me, the highest authority." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"Prior to therapy the person is prone to ask himself, 'What would my parents want me to do?' During the process of therapy the individual come to ask himself, 'What does it mean to me?'" (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"The good life is not any fixed state. The good life is a process. (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"The direction which constitutes the good life is psychological freedom to move in any direction [where] the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"Individuals move not from a fixity through change to a new fixity, though such a process is indeed possible. But [through a] continuum from fixity to changingness, from rigid structure to flow, from stasis to process." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"The major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"In psychology, Freud and his followers have presented convincing arguments that the id, man's basic and unconscious nature, is primarily made up of instincts which would, if permitted expression, result in incest, murder, and other crimes." "The whole problem of therapy, as seen by this group, is how to hold these untamed forces in check in a wholesome and constructive manner, rather than in the costly fashion of the neurotic." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"The innermost core of man's nature, the base of his 'animal nature,' is positive in nature." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"The inner core of man's personality is the organism itself, which is essentially both self-preserving and social." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"Walden Two: 'Now that we know how positive reinforcement works [dialogue to consensus], and why negative doesn't' [chastening]... 'we can be more deliberate and hence more successful in our cultural design. "We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That's the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement―there's no restrain and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behavior―the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises." "If we have the power or authority to establish the necessary conditions, the predicted behaviors will follow." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"Dr. Skinner says: 'We must accept the fact that some kind of control of human affairs is inevitable. We cannot use good sense in human affairs unless someone engages in the design and construction of environmental conditions which affect the behavior of men." "Environmental changes have always been the condition for the improvement of cultural patterns, and we can hardly use the more effective methods of science without making changes on a grander scale . . ." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"We know how to change the opinions of an individual in a selected direction, without his ever becoming aware of the stimuli which changed his opinion." "We can predict, from the way individuals perceive the movement of a spot of light in a dark room, whether they tend to be prejudiced or unprejudiced." "We know how to influence the buying behavior of individuals by setting up conditions which provide satisfaction for needs of which they are unconscious, but which we have been able to determine." "…our potential ability to influence or control the behavior of groups. If we have the power or authority to establish the necessary conditions, the predicted behaviors will follow." (Carl Rogers On Becoming A Person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
"I have found whenever I ran across authoritarian students that the best thing for me to do was to break their backs immediately." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)
"The correct thing to do with authoritarians is to take them realistically for the bastards they are and then behave toward them as if they were bastards." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)
"We have to study the conditions which maximize ought-perceptiveness." "Oughtiness is itself a fact to be perceived." "If we wish to permit the facts to tell us their oughtiness, we must learn to listen to them in a very specific way which can be called Taoistic." (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)
"So it looks as if nudism is the first step toward ultimate fee-animality-humanness. It's the easiest to take. Must encourage it. Yet nakedness is absolutely right. So is the attack on antieroticism, the Christian & Jewish foundations. Must move in the direction of the Reichian orgasm. I certainly enjoy nudism as at Esalen & have no trouble with it. And I certainly think sex is wonderful, even sacred. And I approve in principle of the advancement of knowledge & experimentation with anything." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)
"Marxian theory needs Freudian-type instinct theory to round it out. And of course, vice versa." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)
". . . I've decided to get into the World Federalists, become pro-UN, & the like." "Only a world government with world-shared values could be trusted or permitted to take such powers. If only for such a reason a world government is necessary. It too would have to evolve. I suppose it would be weak or lousy or even corrupt at first―it certainly doesn't amount to much now & won't until sovereignty is given up little by little by 'nations.'" "The whole discussion becomes species-wide, One World, at least so far as the guiding goal is concerned. To get to that goal is politics & is in time and space & will take a long time & cost much blood." ". . . A caretaker government could immediately start training for democracy & self-government & give it little by little, as deserved." "This is a realistic combination of the Marxian version & the Humanistic. (Better add to definition of "humanistic" that it also means one species, One World.) (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)
"To identify with more and more of the world, moving toward the ultimate of mysticism, a fusion with the world, or peak experience, cosmic consciousness, etc." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)
"Self-actualizing people have to a large extent transcended the values of their culture. They are not so much merely Americans as they are world citizens, members of the human species first and foremost." (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)
"Seeking for personal salvation is anyway the wrong road to salvation. The only path was the Ikiru path―salvation via hard work & total commitment to doing well the job fate or personal task destiny called you to―an important job that 'called for' doing." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)
"In a democratic society a patriarchal culture should make us depressed instead of glad; it [A patriarchal culture] is an argument against the higher possibilities of human nature, of self actualization." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)
"In our democratic society, any enterprise―any individual―has its obligations to the whole." "Tax credits would be given to the company that helps to improve the whole society, and helps to improve the democracy by helping to create democratic individuals." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)
"History, almost universally, has dichotomized this higher & lower, but it is now clear that they are on the same continum, in a hierarchical-integration of prepotency & pospotency." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)
In "human reasoning," i.e. dialectic 'reasoning," in the 'justification' of ourselves before ourselves and men, our "body of death," our lust of the flesh and eyes and our pride of life (our idea that we can control our lives and the lives of others, i.e. 'change' the world for the 'purpose' of pleasure, i.e. for the augmentation of dopamine emancipation) takes over and controls our thoughts and our actions. No man can escape this paradigm (our 'justification' of our "body of death," i.e. dialectic 'reasoning,' i.e. our praxis of Genesis 3:1-6) but through faith in "Jesus Christ our Lord."
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians 2:8, 9
"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts 4:12
"That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." John 3:15-21
"For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Romans 14:11, 12
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them." Colossians 3:5-7
"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:7
© Institution for Authority Research, Dean Gotcher 2012-2015