The Future of an Illusion

“[…] Every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization, though civilization is supposed to be an object of universal human interest.”

At the core of Freud’s argument is the belief that human beings are ruled by base and animalistic instincts, which they struggle to refrain from acting upon. One of civilization’s key functions is to provide a structure that limits individuals from following through on their instincts. As a result, many individuals feel civilization to be a burden and develop hostile and negative feelings towards the structures of society. 

“For masses are lazy and unintelligent; they have no love for instinctual renunciation, and they are not to be convinced by argument of its inevitability; and the individuals composing them support one another in giving free rein to their indiscipline.” 

Freud describes civilization as consisting of a small, enlightened minority who use force to keep the unruly majority from behaving violently or immorally. Freud believes that such a structure, which relies on coercion, is an inevitable fact of all civilizations, as he believes that the masses are unlikely to autonomously repress their animalistic urges.

“It is in keeping with the course of human development that external coercion gradually becomes internalized; for a special mental agency, man’s super-ego, takes it over and includes it among its commandments.” 

In Chapter 2, Freud describes how civilization first comes about through prohibiting certain actions that it deems immoral, such as “incest, cannibalism and lust for killing” (10). While humanity initially requires external laws to prevent them from committing these acts, as civilization develops, these prohibitions become internalized. Freud believes that a part of people’s inner psyches—which he refers to as the super-ego­—takes on the role of external force and prevents individuals from committing these acts. 

“This satisfaction [in one’s cultural ideals] can be shared in not only by the favored classes, which enjoy the benefits of the culture, but also by the suppressed ones, since the right to despise the people outside it compensates them for the wrongs they suffer within their own unit.” 

Another way that civilizations manifest psychologically is through artworks, which celebrate a civilization’s values through culture, declaring them to be universal ideals that all should strive for. Freud describes such a process as fundamentally narcissistic, as it assumes that one’s own cultural values are the only correct ones. Freud notes that such cultural artworks help to bind a society’s most oppressed classes to their civilization, as it allows them to feel superior over those individuals who are not a part of their society. 

“But if the elements have passions that rage as they do in our own souls, if death itself is not something spontaneous but the violent act of an evil Will, if everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our own society, then we can breathe freely, can feel at home in the uncanny and can deal by psychical means with our senseless anxiety.”

Freud describes how religion originally comes about through a humanization of nature, which seeks to help individuals deal with feelings of anxiety and helplessness. As natural disasters seem unpredictable to early humans, they imagine that the natural forces are ruled by human-like Gods, allowing early humans to imagine that there is an understandable reasoning behind natural forces.

“In the same way, a man makes the forces of nature not simply into persons with whom he can associate as he would with his equals—that would not do justice to the overpowering impression which those forces make on him—but he gives them the character of a father.”

Freud believes that humans’ feelings of helplessness in the face of nature mimic a similar sense of helplessness that one feels as a child in relation to one’s parents (particularly in one’s relation with one’s father). As a result, humans project their parental relationships onto the natural elements and imagine them to be ruled by father-like gods.

“Death itself is not extinction, is not a return to inorganic lifelessness, but the beginning of a new kind of existence which lies on the path of development to something higher.”

As religion developed, its focus shifted from multiple gods who rule over nature to a single God who presides over a divine kingdom in the afterlife. Freud believes that this emphasis on the afterlife helps individuals deal with feelings of insignificance and futility, as it suggests that there is a moral order underlying the universe that will reward those who behave justly, even if their lives as humans are full of suffering.

“What [man] is entering into [with religion] is the heritage of many generations, and he takes it over as he does the multiplication table, geometry, and similar things.” 

In Chapter 4, Freud takes on the voice of an opponent who disagrees with his arguments—with one of this opponent’s chief criticisms being that it “sounds strange” to claim that society created religion. Freud explains that the reason for this strangeness is that religion already appears “ready-made,” as it has been passed down through society over many generations. As such, it seems like something sacrosanct and unchangeable, rather than something constructed to serve human needs. 

“I believe rather that when man personifies the forces of nature he is again following an infantile model. He has learnt from the persons in his earliest environment that the way to influence them is to establish a relation with them […]”

In this quote, Freud explains why early humans’ first instinct was to humanize the natural world. Freud believes that such an act is a repetition of behavior one learns as a child, when entering into a relationship with someone grants one a degree of control over that other person. Though nature’s behavior may seem to be arbitrary, by imagining nature to be ruled by human-like gods, early humans were able to imagine that they had some control over the unpredictability of the natural world.  

“Religious ideas are teachings and assertions about facts and conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell one something one has not one discovered for oneself and which lay claim to one’s belief.”

Freud believes that at the core of religion are a number of teachings that claim to tell individuals about the workings of the world and universe. However, while most teachings are founded in logical arguments that one can test for themselves, religious teachings are beyond logical reasoning and instead rely on individuals’ faith to be accepted as true.

“[…] it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life—it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any.”

Freud notes that religious teachings often relate to some of the most important questions one may have about the universe, such as the meaning of life or the existence of the afterlife. However, religion provides no factual proof to back up its claims, instead expecting that one accept religious texts as incontrovertible fact. Freud argues that it is irresponsible to accept claims about such important questions without the slightest bit of evidentiary proof.

“If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience which bears witness to that truth, what is one to do about the many people who do not have this rare experience?”

Many religious teachings are based in a single individual’s (such as a saint’s) experience of ecstasy, which such an individual claims for the proof of religion based on personal visions they experienced. Freud argues that such ecstatic revelations have little import for the majority of people, as people have no way of knowing whether such visions really occurred. 

“[Religious ideas] are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes.”

In Freud’s view, religious ideas must be considered as illusions, a view that for him has less to do with the fact that they are erroneous than it does with the fact that they seek to fulfill cultural wishes that exist in nearly every individual. Such wishes mainly revolve around humanity’s feelings of insignificance and helplessness in the face of the universe. By asserting that the universe is ruled by “a moral world-order” (30), religious teachings help to provide individuals with a purpose in life.

“[Philosophers] give the name of ‘God’ to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers in God […] notwithstanding that their God is now nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines.”

Freud believes that learned individuals, such as philosophers, are the most likely to doubt religious teachings due to the lack of rational arguments supporting religion. However, Freud notes that many such philosophers will attempt to maintain a belief in religion, often changing the meaning of “God” so that they can claim to still be religious believers. In Freud’s view, such attempts essentially empty religion of its meaning and thus fail to convincingly create a form of religion reconcilable with rational thinking. 

“Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything can be derived from it. In other matters no sensible person will behave so irresponsibly or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions and for the line he takes.”

Freud notes that while one cannot use reason to prove religion, one can also not fully disprove religion. However, Freud believes that such an inability to disprove is not reason enough to continue believing in religion, as most individuals require proof for beliefs far less important than religious ones.

“Everyone will, without inhibition or fear, follow his asocial, egoistic instincts and seek to exercise his power; Chaos, which we have banished through many thousands of years of the work of civilization, will come again.”

In this quote, Freud takes on the voice of his imaginary opponent, who asserts that destroying the institution of religion will only lead to an outpouring of sinful behavior by the masses. As religious laws exist to prohibit individuals from following through on their sinful desires, the opponent believes that individuals will quickly revert to their violent ways the moment religion is abolished. 

“We see that an appallingly large number of people are dissatisfied with civilization and unhappy in it, and feel it as a yoke which must be shaken off; and that these people either do everything in their power to change that civilization, or else go so far in their hostility to it that they will have nothing to do with civilization or with a restriction of instinct.”

A common argument for religion is that it provides individuals with a reason to live and allows them to live happily within society. Freud objects that such an argument does not describe reality, as most individuals remain anxious and unhappy despite being religious believers. In Freud’s view, religion fails to accomplish its main purpose and drives individuals to develop negative feelings towards society.

“It is no secret that the priests could only keep the masses submissive to religion by making such large concessions as these to the instinctual nature of man. Thus it was agreed: God alone is strong and good, man is weak and sinful. In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has.”

Many religions have institutions or practices for atoning for sinful behavior—such as the ritual of confession in Catholic churches. In Freud’s view, such practices in effect allow individuals to behave sinfully without fear of repercussion from God. As a result, Freud doubts whether religion could truly be said to help make society more moral.

“People could understand that [laws] are made, not so much to rule them as, on the contrary, to serve their interests; and they would adopt a more friendly attitude to them, and instead of aiming at their abolition, would aim only at their improvement.”

Freud argues that associating certain laws with religious prohibitions, such as the one against murder, suggests that all laws have the sanctity and character of divine proclamations. In turn, laws appear to be something unalterable and external to human society. Freud believes that acknowledging laws to be human constructs would change individuals' relation to the law, encouraging them to participate in the law’s betterment. 

“Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like the obsessional neurosis of children, it arose out of the Oedipus complex, out of the relation to the father.”

Neuroses are obsessive psychological behaviors that Freud believes emerge out of an inability to repress one’s instinctual desires—such as the urge to kill one’s father described by the so-called Oedipus complex. Freud believes that religion is a neurosis on the collective, societal level, as it is an obsessive practice that seeks to prohibit sinful behavior such as killing.

“But there are undoubtedly countless other people who are not in the same sense believers. They obey the precepts of civilization because they let themselves be intimidated by the threats of religion […] They are the people who break away as soon as they are allowed to give up on their belief in the reality-value of religion.”

Freud acknowledges that his arguments are unlikely to be convincing to devout followers of religion, whose belief is based less on reason than on emotional attachment to religious institutions. However, Freud believes that there is a large mass of people who only adhere to religious teachings due to the force of societal convention, and he believes that such individuals will likely denounce religion even if they do not read his writing.

“Since men are so little accessible to reasonable arguments and are so entirely governed by their instinctual wishes, why should one set out to deprive them of an instinctual satisfaction and replace it by reasonable arguments? It is true that men are like this; but have you asked yourself whether they must be like this, whether their innermost nature necessitates it?”

While Freud believes that most individuals are largely ruled by their instinctual urges and require religion to keep them from following through on such instincts, he does not believe that human nature is inherently this way. Freud argues that if one were to replace religious education with a secular education, individuals would be capable of repressing their instincts based solely on rational arguments.

“If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological characteristics of religion—the same sanctity, rigidity and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought—for its own defense.” 

Freud’s opponent argues that it is impossible to eradicate religion without implementing some other form of indoctrination to replace it. In the opponent’s view, even if Freud were to succeed in replacing a religious education with a scientific one, he would still have to force the values of science onto individuals in the same way that religious values are. The opponent thus believes that science is an “illusion” in the same way that religion is.