Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche Both Addressed Term Paper

Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche both addressed the concept of human nature and of the society in which human nature are bound by. However due to their different approaches on the matter, they formulated totally different theories for each. This paper endeavours to explore their theories behind human nature, the impact of the world they were living in at the time, religion and approaching utopia through Freud's Civilization and its Discontents and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

Regarding human nature, Freud was reticent in purporting that we are inherently sinful, but rather that we come in this world full of Id. This wild, instinctive foundation is the basis upon which the infrastructure of the human psyche is erected. We are born into a dangerous world and we endeavor to evade pain and secure pleasure. Freud perceives the Id as a product of our evolutionary progress as Darwin outlined it (e.g. natural selection needs a conflict to ensue for staying alive as well as reproduction). So Freud's assessment of human nature is rather cynical, we are fundamentally egotistical self-justifying pursuers of hedonistic satisfactions, which comprises aggression and sex.

Beginning with Id but never relinquishing it, we progress as infant-toddlers to form an Ego by being educated on the divisions that exist between the outside world and us. Afterwards, we also form a Superego as our families and society employ outside reward and punishment schemes to influence us into becoming our own regulatory body. For example, prior to forming a Superego, the initial phase is 'social anxiety' whereby people are influenced by others' opinions on their behavior. (Freud, Sigmund., 1961, p. 85) Freud believed much of his own society was governed through this method. But he also advocates that society must progress past that stage to the internalization of authority, that is, behavior managed by social conventions is more uncultured than conduct in which each person is policed mainly by an authority working within themselves.Morality should be seen less as an undertaking of humiliation (that is, enforced by society) than of guilt (that is, personally enforced).

Nietzsche explored the definition of human nature and what dictates human behaviour in a different way. Basically "a living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength -- life itself is will to power, self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results." (Nietzsche, Friedrich., 1998, p. 13) This concept of will was explored further. "Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and a secrecy where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the great majority -- where he may forget 'men who are the rule,' being their exception -- excepting only the one case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a seeker after knowledge in the great and exceptional sense. Anyone who, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the colors of distress, green and gray with disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess and loneliness, is certainly not a man of elevated tastes." (Nietzsche, Friedrich., 1998, p. 26) In other words, while Freud believed our drive derived from our aggression tempered by our guilt, Nietzsche believed it was our will to power that influenced our behaviour.

The society of the time influenced their thought processes greatly. For instance, Freud had his reasons for his pessimism. He wrote Civilization and its Discontent in 1930 at the age of 74. He survived WWI, where three of his sons were soldiers. Freud survived the Post-War famines (where his daughter died) and he battled cancer of the jaw since 1923 (experiencing a number of painful….....