Psychoanalysis and Ethics

In recent years there has been a growing impatience with the sort of formalistic morality one finds in Immanuel Kant and John Rawls.  As a result, we have witnessed an attempt to formulate a thicker and more robust conception of ethics in a number of fields, including philosophy, critical theory and feminism.  The developments in psychoanalysis over the last half a century that we will examine in this class can make a major contribution to this new ethical discourse.  Because of his pessimistic anthropology and critique of civilization, Freud’s ethics might be seen as “Protestant,” in that they centered on repression and renunciation.  The developments that have occurred in the field since his death, however, which have centered on pre-Oedipal development, provide abundant material for envisioning a less gloomy and more positive vision of a “fulfilled” life.  In this class we will attempt to integrate those findings with developments in other fields in order to explore the contributions psychoanalysis can make to the current discussion of ethics.