To: Solon who wrote (16909 ) 4/3/2004 9:21:19 PM From: briskit Respond to Becker's contribution in Denial of Death, p. 260ff.... In light of all this ambiguity we can take an understanding look at some of the modern prophets on human nature. I have been saying that a man cannot evolve beyond his character, that he is stuck with it. Goethe said that a man cannot get rid of his nature even if he throws it away; to which we can add--even if he tries to throw it to god. I am referring to the new propheticism on what man may achieve, what it really means to be a man. Take Brown's Life Against Death : rarely does a work of this brilliance appear. Rarely does a book so full of closely reasoned argument, of very threatening argument, achieve such popularity; but like most other foundation-shaking messages, this one is popular for all the wrong reasons. It is prized not for its shattering revelations on death and anality, but for its wholly non-sequiter conclusions: for its plea for the unrepressed life, the resurrection of the body as the seat of primary pleasure, the abolition of shame and guilt.....(after quoting Brown on the new man) These few lines contain fallacies so obvious that one is shocked...Once again and always we are back to basic things that we have not shouted loud enough from the rooftops or printed in big-enough block letters: guilt is not a result of infantile fantasy but of self-conscious adult reality. Wherever we turn we meet this basic fact that we must repeat one final time: guilt is a function of real over-whelmingness, the stark majesty of the objects in the world. The child's (humans') problems are existential: they refer to the total world--what bodies are for, what to do with them, what is the meaning of all this creation. Repression fulfills the vital function (in the face of this being over-whelmed by the experience of the universe) of allowing the person to act without anxiety. Brown's (and most moderns) thesis falls then, on a twin failure: not only on his failure to understand the real psychodynamics of guilt, but also his turning his back on how the child registers experieince on his body: the need to develop in a dualistic way in order to be a rich repository of life....It all boils down again to the fact that the prophets of unrepression simply have not understood human nature; they envisage a utopia with perfect freedom from inner constraint and from outer authority. This idea flies in the face of the fundamental dynamism of unfreedom that we have discovered in each individual: the universality of transference....men need transference because they like to see their morality embodied...Rieff, " Abstractions will never do. God-terms have to be exemplified....Men crave their principles incarnate in enactable characters." ....this is the hurdle that none of the utopians can get over. (Later) Unless one is talking about a real immortality one is talking merely about an intensification of the character defenses and superstitions of man. {A fine summary of modern thought in the final chapter, "What is the heroic individual."}
