Who said reading Philosophy is boring?
I don’t. And in case you are trying to skip those dreaded footnotes, think again. You may be missing out. Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents contains some of the most hilarious footnotes of all time. To sample, here is one on the control of fire.
“If we go back far enough, we find that the first acts of civilization were the use of tools, the gaining of control over fire, and the construction of dwellings. Among these, the control of fire stands out as a quite extraordinary and unexampled achievement…. Psycho-analytic material, incomplete as it is and not susceptible to clear interpretation, nevertheless admits of a conjecture – a fantastic-sounding one – about the origins of this human feat. It is as though primal man had the habit, when he came into contact with fire, of satisfying the infantile desire connected with it, by putting it out with a stream of his urine. The legends that we possess leave no doubt about the originally phallic view taken of tongues of flame as they shoot upward. Putting out the fire by micturating – a theme to which modern giants, Gulliver in Lilliput and Rabelais’ Gargantua, still hark back – was therefore a kind of sexual act with a male, an enjoyment of sexual potency in a homosexual competition. The first person to renounce this desire and spare the fire was able to carry it off with him and subdue it to his own use. By damping down the fire of his own sexual excitation, he had tamed the natural force of fire. This great cultural conquest was thus the reward for his renunciation of instinct. Further, it is as though woman had been appointed guardian of the fire which was held captive on the domestic hearth, because her anatomy made it impossible for her to yield to the temptation of this desire.” (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, translated by James Strachey, Norton: 1930/1984, p. 42-43)
I have to go now. I think my guy friends are trying to put out the fire in my fireplace again. Damn primal urges!
