The Death of Julius Caesar (painting by Vincenzo Camuccini, 1806)
Thanks for a stellar class! Your Freudian analyses of Stefan Lochner's fifteenth-century doom painting were full of your usual insight and ingenuity.
As we discussed in class, Freud's account of religious beliefs in The Future of an Illusion makes repeated reference to his earlier book Totem and Taboo. In so doing, his vision for the future of cultural and religious systems is informed by his ethnologically-inspired understanding of their origins and development.
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A key take-away from Freud's analysis of religious representations comprises his recurrent and insistent emphasis on the father-figure and paternal complex underlying our illusory beliefs in totems, gods and the God of monotheistic religions. By this means, Freud unearths --- beneath the manifest content of religious ideas --- our incestuous, cannibalistic and aggressive drives and desires, as well as our wishes for love, protection, justice and immortality.
Jupiter and Thetis (by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, oil on canvas, 1811)
For this week's blogging assignment, I'd like you to identify and describe an example (from history, anthropology, religion, mythology, popular culture, politics, current affairs, literature, etc) of a father(-like) and/or God(-like) figure. How might your chosen figure chimerically fulfill and/or illusorily satisfy the desires, drives and wishes which Freud attributes to our nature as humans? Or would, rather, your chosen figure disconfirm the Freudian account of (our relation to) the father-God figure?
As always, if you prefer, please feel free to articulate one question which arose for you in relation to this week's reading, lecture and/or tutorial.
I look forward to learning from your blogs!