The world is at war with itself. Pessimism is rife. Hobbes and Freud diagnosed war as a permanent feature of human life. But, arguing against these figures, philosopher Lou Marinoff, claims war is not necessary. Peace is possible. The self-consciousness of human beings allows us to negate our animalistic instincts towards aggression and hatred. But we’re asleep at the wheel. Marinoff provides a wake-up call.

Hobbes and Freud on Human Nature

Writing between the First and Second World Wars, amidst the global depression triggered by the Wall Street crash of 1929 and escalating clashes between Communists and Nazis in Germany, Sigmund Freud found many reasons to wax pessimistic about the human condition. In Civilization and Its Discontents, and related works, he postulated that our murderous biological inheritance and irremediably infantile psychology predispose us time and again to episodes of mass psychosis and organized group violence. Freud further opined that we are living “psychologically beyond our means” to suppose that we can ever achieve a world without inequity, strife and war. He implored us to “recognize the truth”: that intellect and will are merely “a plaything and tool of our instincts and affects”, that hatred is evolutionarily older than love, that our deepest impulses are Draconian, and that we are all descended from a primeval “gang of murderers”.