Classical Studies 2200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Sigmund Freud, Incest, Seven Against Thebes

• School: Western University
• Department: Classical Studies
• Course: Classical Studies 2200
• Professor: Aara Suksi

Document Summary

This myth engages with two fundamental and universal taboos. By killing the father you take away your own history. A crime against time (goes back into origin) A confusion of cause and effect (mother gives birth to child; child has sex with mother giving birth to new child) He is nevertheless stained with pollution and considered an abomination. His specific but also very human drive to know about himself is in conflict with his horror of the truth. His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so. Philosophy: love of knowledge; is in a sense the distinctively human activity.