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Recently, in my kitchen, I watched and learned.
After downloading the BBC iplayer app on my tablet (it was about time!), I prepared myself to spend at least 3 hours in the kitchen. I was determined to feed my brain – as well as my friends on the following day picnic. On the menu: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. You guessed it, it was a bit heavy and I didn’t digest it all, but it was excellent!
The life and thinking of the three men are truly fascinating. Whether or not you agree with their ideas, their analyses of the society, religion, and mind have shaped the 20th century and continue to do so. The historian Bettany Hughes is behind the BBC series and also presents it. She gives a succinct yet thorough account of how their ideas originated and of the influence they have had until now.
Rightfully, the series refers to Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as geniuses. My acknowledging the brilliance of their minds does not mean I adhere to their ideas. What I admire is the originality of their approaches and how they broke from traditions. They were innovators and fought the authorities and society conventions to defend what they believed.
Their theories – which I will let your curious mind research elsewhere, or I will still be on this article in 6 months – are thought-provoking and I am all for what is thought-provoking. It is nice to shake one’s brain with challenging thoughts. What is a pity, though, is how their ideas turned ideologies. Where there is ideology, there is too often a group of firm believers that will constitute a sociopolitical programme around it. Among them, as history has repeatedly shown, a minority of hardcore believers will stop at nothing to see their programme realised. They do not fear to go to extremes, as for them the end justifies the means. And so the Marxism led to the excess of the communism, and the Nietzscheism inspired the horror of the Nazism. On Freudism, there doesn’t seem to be a dangerous group of extremists attempting to impose on us a Freudian sociopolitical programme, thank goodness! However, if you consider how marketing companies use every single one of our online clicks or in-depth psychoanalysis to target their customers, maybe we are more the victims of a Freudism ideology globalisation than we think.
As you might have gathered, I have strong reservations for any ideology when it is conceived as the one and only truth in its domain, and when it uses force to impose itself on people could it be on political religious, economic and scientific concepts or others. And yet I am a human being and so I have some beliefs of course, and some are based on ideologies which foundations were not always peaceful. Take democracy: it has had a bumpy ride, and sometimes a bloody one. The French Revolution comes to mind… It could be flawed too, as the democratic election of Hitler proved. And what about my faith, is it based on an ideology? On that at least, I can say that my faith is more a philosophy of life than a religion or ideology. Phew! Still, as a conclusion to these thoughts, I would say that the development into an ideology is a normal process of and idea’s evolution, and maybe even in the evolution of society.
What is important is that such ideology does not fall into extremes, being used and abused. As Bettany Hughes commented on her Nietzsche documentary, he would turn in his grave if he knew how the Nazi used his work. Tolerance and respect that others might have other ideas are key. The French idioms that ‘the freedom of one stops where the other’s starts’ also applies to the beliefs.
Those are heavy subjects and I am really only brushing their surfaces. I could go on to write yet another long book on the subject. So let’s go back to the first object of this post: to share with you what I watched and learned on Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Below are the links to the BBC streaming site, please do click and watch. They are worth it.
Thank you for reading!
Yours, Virginie.
BBC 4 – Genius of the Modern World, by Bettany Hughes
Karl Marx:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-pDi30YdR0
Friedrich Nietzsche:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlojkhtqG4c
Sigmund Freud: