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A wise woman once said: excellent people discuss ideas, mediocore people discuss events, inferior people discuss other people. This blog will be devoted mostly to ideas that I teach and write about. Ocassionally I will throw in some travel, recipes, movie reviews or other quirky indulgences. Since the state of our world and efforts to mend it are never far from my consciousness, you will also find some "current events" features under "tikkun olam." Please feel free to add your comments. Definitions: Midlife--Too late to do anything really new; too late not to. Mussar- A traditional Jewish practice to cultivate ethical insomnia(thanks to Rabbi Stone) If you want to know more about the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where I teach, check out www.rrc.edu

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Is liberal religion "Freud proof"?

In class, yesterday, I tried to suggest to the students that Freud's critique of religion was not only a critique of authoritarian, orthodox faith but also of the kind of liberal religion we are the proponents of. I pointed out several passages that seemed to make this point:
Future of an Illusion, p.54
In the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. Even purified religious ideas cannot escape this fate, so long as they preserve any of the consolation of religion. No doubt if they confine themselves to belief in a higher spiritual being, whose qualities are indefinable and whose purposes cannot be discerned, they will be proof against the challenges of science; but then they will also lose their hold on human interest.
OR
Civilization and its Discontents,p. 21
It is still more humiliating to discover how large a number of people living to-day, who cannot but see that this(orthodox) religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions. One would like to ....meet these philosophers, who think they can rescue the God of religion by replacing him by an impersonal, shadowy and abstract principle, and to address them with the warning words: ' Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain!'
Or
Future of an Illusion, p.32
Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour. Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense.
OR
Future, p. 49
Men cannot remain children forever. They must in the end go out into 'hostile life.'
OR
a letter by Freud to Princess Marie Bonaparte(quoted in Peter Gay, A Godless Jew, p.12)
The most varied drinks(are) being offered under the name of 'religion' with a minimal percentage of alcohol--really, non-alcoholic, but they still get drunk on it. The old drinkers were after all a respectable body..but to get drunk on apple juice is nothing less than ridiculous.


OUCH! I want the students to tell Freud why what they are up to is not vulnerable in any way to this critique.

By the way, Gay goes on to say that Freud lacked any respect for these applejuice people and "for Freud , to be scientific meant to be sober."(p. 17) but if one rereads his chapter one of Civilization or his letters to Romain Rolland(which I have not done but plan to!) I think one might argue with Gay's analysis. I need to look into this.

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