Niro, Leonardo (2021) Social Evolution, Progress and Teleology in Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy and Freudian Psychoanalysis. American Imago, 78 (1). pp. 105-130. DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2021.0003
Niro, Leonardo (2021) Social Evolution, Progress and Teleology in Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy and Freudian Psychoanalysis. American Imago, 78 (1). pp. 105-130. DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2021.0003
Niro, Leonardo (2021) Social Evolution, Progress and Teleology in Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy and Freudian Psychoanalysis. American Imago, 78 (1). pp. 105-130. DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2021.0003
Abstract
This article compares notions of progress and evolution in the social theories of Freud and Herbert Spencer, thus revising Freudian social theory and relocating it within a social-evolutionist tradition. It first argues that the two authors held similarly complex theories that contained mixed elements of positivism and teleology –in its positivist aspects, both authors made use of unified natural laws and, in its teleological aspects, they understood progress and the evolution of civilization along a linear path of progressive development. It is further examined how both authors made use of analogies between organisms and social aggregates–in Freud's case, he formulated a libidinal analogy between the stages of psychosexual development and the civilizatory stages. Finally, it is examined the ethical commitments to the individual that are consequences of such an understanding of the natural law.
Item Type: | Article |
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SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2021 13:39 |
Last Modified: | 16 May 2024 20:48 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/30495 |
Available files
Filename: Final version pre-publish.pdf