Death Drive - Philosophy

Philosophy

From a Philosophical perspective, the Death Drive may be viewed in relation to the work of the German Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His philosophy, expounded in The World as Will and Representation (1818) postulates that all exists by a metaphysical "Will" (more clearly, a Will to live), and that pleasure affirms this will. Schopenhauer's pessimism led him to believe that the affirmation of the Will was a negative and immoral thing, due to his belief of life producing more suffering than happiness. The Death Drive would seem to manifest as a natural and psychological negation of the Will.

Freud himself was of course well aware of such possible linkages. In a letter of 1919, he wrote that regarding "the theme of death, have stumbled onto an odd idea via the drives and must now read all sorts of things that belong to it, for instance Schopenhauer". Indeed, Ernest Jones (who like many analysts was not convinced of the need for the death drive, over and above an instinct of aggression) considered that "Freud seemed to have landed in the position of Schopenhauer, who taught that 'death is the goal of life'".

However, as Freud put it to the imagined auditors of his New Introductory Lectures (1932), "You may perhaps shrug your shoulders and say:"That isn't natural science, it's Schopenhauer's philosophy!" But, Ladies and Gentlemen, why should not a bold thinker have guessed something that is afterwards confirmed by sober and painstaking detailed research?" He then went on to add that "what we are saying is not even genuine Schopenhauer....we are not overlooking the fact that there is life as well as death. We recognise two basic instincts and give each of them its own aim".