The treatment of human happiness in Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents is comparable to that described in Thomas More’s Utopia. Freud’s basic assumption is that man could be naturally happy, but that civilization makes rules that suppress a man’s natural ability to be happy. More’s Utopia describes a fictional land whereby the forced perfection of man ensures the general health and welfare of man so that all people achieve a basic level of happiness, but that the Utopian society limits any one person from achieving too much. Both works are interestingly comparable, but the difference is that one is an analysis of the real world (Freud) and the other is an analysis of a fictional setting (More’s Utopia). As it turns out, it seems that man’s happiness is suppressed by man himself (society).
According to Freud, humanity seeks to achieve happiness but as the world became more civilized, the less likely it is to achieve happiness. …show more content…
Freud emphasized this when describing the effect of ethics on people by stating “Natural ethics, as it is called, has nothing to offer here beyond the narcissistic satisfaction of thinking oneself better than the others." (Freud 73)
In Thomas More’s Utopia, which I found to be a difficult read – mostly because it is fictitious, More and his fictional colleagues debate Utopia, a fictional island where the perfection of man is promoted through things such as the efficiency of workers and by following the word of God. There’s an assumption that happiness is not achieved in Utopia unless “they combine some religious principles with the rational analysis of philosophy, since they think that without such principles reason by itself is too weak and deficient to investigate true happiness." (More,
According to Freud, humanity seeks to achieve happiness but as the world became more civilized, the less likely it is to achieve happiness. …show more content…
Freud emphasized this when describing the effect of ethics on people by stating “Natural ethics, as it is called, has nothing to offer here beyond the narcissistic satisfaction of thinking oneself better than the others." (Freud 73)
In Thomas More’s Utopia, which I found to be a difficult read – mostly because it is fictitious, More and his fictional colleagues debate Utopia, a fictional island where the perfection of man is promoted through things such as the efficiency of workers and by following the word of God. There’s an assumption that happiness is not achieved in Utopia unless “they combine some religious principles with the rational analysis of philosophy, since they think that without such principles reason by itself is too weak and deficient to investigate true happiness." (More,