Excerpts from Herbert Marcuse Eros and Civilization concerning Orpheus

“Moreover, this hierarchical division of pleasure was ‘justified’ by protection, security, and even love: because the despot was the father, the hatred with which his subjects regarded him must from the beginning have been accompanied by a biological affection—ambivalent emotions which were expressed in the wish to replace and imitate the father, to identify oneself with him, with his pleasure as well as with his power.” “The father establishes domination in his own interest ... he creates that ‘order’ with out which the group would immediately dissolve.... the primal father foreshadows the subsequent domineering father-images under which civilization progressed.... he incorporates the inner logic and necessity of the reality principle itself ... ‘justified’ by his age, his biological function, and (most of all) by his success ... He has ‘historical rights.’” “Primal patriarchal despotism thus became an ‘effective’ order.... superimposed organization of the horde ... the hatred against patriarchal suppression very strong.... this hatred culminates in the rebellion of the exiled sons, the collective killing and devouring of the father, and the establishment of the brother clan, which in turn deifies the assassinated father and introduces those taboos and restraints which, ..., generated social morality.” “Freud’s hypothetical history of the primal horde treats the rebellion of the bothers as a rebellion against the father’s taboo on the women of the horde; no ‘social’ protest against the unequal division of pleasure is involved. ... civilization begins only in the brother clan, when the taboos, now self-imposed by the ruling brothers, implement repression in the common interest of preserving the group as a whole.”  “... the decisive psychological event which separates the brother clan from the primal horde is the development of guilt feeling." “Progress beyond the primal horde – i.e. civilization – presupposes guilt feelings; it interjects into the individual [must be an organ for it?] and thus sustains, the principal prohibition, constraints, and delays in gratification on which civilization depends.” “The rebellion against the father is rebellion against biologically justified authority; his assassination destroys the order which has preserved the life of the group.” “The father survives as the god in whose adoration the sinners repent so that they can continue to sin, while the new fathers secure those suppressions of pleasure which are necessary for preserving their rule and their organization of the group.” “The progress from domination by one to domination by several ... makes repression self-imposed in the ruling group itself: all its members have to obey the taboos if they want to maintain their rule.” “Repression now permeates the life of the oppressors themselves, ... part of their instinctual energy becomes available for sublimation in ‘work.’” “... the taboo on the women ... leads to expansion and amalgamation with other hordes; ... formation of larger units ... the function of Eros in civilization.”  “‘... vacant [power] through the father’s death passed to women; the time of the matriarchate followed.’” “Matriarchy is replaced by a patriarchal counter-revolution ... stabilized by the institutionalization of religion.” “During that time a great social revolution had taken place. Matriarchy was followed by a restitution of the patriarchal order.” [65] “The new fathers ... never succeeded to the omnipotence of the primeval father. There were too many of them and they lived in larger communities than the original horde had been, they had to get on with one another and were restricted by social institutions.” [66] Freud Moses and Monotheism  “Male gods at first appear as sons by the side of the great mother-deities, but gradually the assume the features of the father; polytheism cedes to monotheism, and then returns the ‘one and only father deity whose power is unlimited.’”  “The sense of guilt ... intrinsic to the brother clan ... consolidation into the first ‘society’ ... guilt feeling about perpetration of ... patricide.” “The despot-patriarch has succeeded in implanting his reality principle in the rebellious sons.”  “Their revolt has, for a short span of time, broken the chain of domination; then the new freedom is again suppressed—this time by their own authority and action.”  “Must not their sense of guilt include guilt about the betrayal and denial of their deed?” “Are they not guilty of restoring the repressive father, guilty of self-imposed perpetuation of domination?” “As the reality principle takes root ... the pleasure principle becomes something frightful and terrifying; the impulses of free gratification meet with anxiety, and this anxiety calls for protection against them.” “The king-father is slain not only because he imposes intolerable restraints but also because the restraints, imposed by an individual person, are not effective enough a ‘barrier to incest,’ not effective enough to cope with the desire to return to the mother.” “Liberation is therefore followed by ever ‘better’ domination;” “‘The development of the paternal domination into an increasingly powerful state system administered by man is thus a continuance of the primal repression, which has as its purpose the ever wider exclusion of woman.’”  Otto Rank The Trauma of Birth  “The overthrow of the king-father is a crime, but so is his restoration....” “The crime against the reality principle is redeemed by the crime against the pleasure principle: redemption thus cancels itself.” “The sense of guilt is sustained in spite of repeated and intensified redemption: anxiety persists because the crime against the pleasure principle is not redeemed.”  “... the primal crime ... is re-enacted in the conflict of the old and new generation, in revolt and rebellion against established authority ... repentance: in the restoration and glorification of authority.” “... Freud suggested the hypothesis of the return of the repressed, which he illustrated by the psychology of religion.” “Freud though that he had found traces of the patricide and of its ‘return’ and redemption in the history of Judaism, which begins with the killing of Moses.” “[Freud] believed that anti-Semitism had deep roots in the unconscious: jealousy over the Jewish claim of being the ‘first-born, favorite child of God the Father’; ... ‘grudge against the new religion’ (Christianity) which was forced on many modern peoples ‘ only in relatively recent times.”  “This grudge was ‘projected’ onto the source from which Christianity came, namely, Judaism.”  “If we follow this train of thought beyond Freud, and connect it with the twofold origin of the sense of guilt, the life and death of Christ would appear as a struggle against the father—and as a triumph over the father.” “See Erich Fromm, Die Entwicklung des Christusdogmas”  “The message of the Son was the message of liberation: the overthrow of the Law (which is domination) by Agape (which is Eros).”  “This would fit in with the heretical image of Jesus as the Redeemer in the flesh, the Messiah who came to save man here on earth.” “Then the subsequent transubstantiation of the Messiah, the deification of the Son beside the Father would be a betrayal of his message by his own disciples—the denial of the liberation in the flesh, the revenge on the redeemer.”  “Christianity would then have surrendered the gospel of Agape-Eros again to the Law; the father-rule would be restored and strengthened.”  “... the primal crime could have been expiated, according to the message of the Son, in an order of peace and love on earth ... it was rather superseded by another crime—that against the Son.” “With his transubstantiation, his gospel to was transubstantiated; his deification removed his message from this world. Suffering and repression were perpetuated.”  “This interpretation would lend added significance to Freud's statement that the Christian peoples are ‘badly christened,’ that ‘under the thin veneer of Christianity they have remained what their ancestors were, barbarically polytheistic.’” “... ‘badly christened’ in so far as the accept and obey the liberating gospel only in a highly sublimated form ...”  “Equally open was the armed struggle of institutionalized Christianity against the heretics, who tried or allegedly tried to rescue the unsublimated content and the unsublimated objective.”  “There were good rational motives behind the bloody wars against the Christian revolutions which filled the Christian era.”  “The image of liberation, which has become increasingly realistic, is persecuted the world over. ... trials and tribulations of non-conformists release a hatred and fury which indicate the total mobilization against the return of the repressed.” “... religion contains ... the image of domination and the image of liberation....” “Freud ... stressed the role of religion in the historical deflection of energy from the real improvement of the human condition to an imaginary world of eternal salvation.... [In The Future of an Illusion Freud] ... praised science and scientific reason as the great liberating antagonist of religion.”  “The function of science and of religion has changed ...” “In ...culture, the functions of science and religion tend to ... deny the hopes which they once aroused and teach men to appreciate the ... world of alienation.” “... religion is no longer an illusion ... the predominant positivistic trend.” See Max Horkheimer “Der neueste Angriff auf de Metaphysik” in Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung   “Where religion still preserves the uncompromised aspiration for peace and happiness [challenge authority, freed to do your own thing], its ‘illusions’ [father figure, obedience] still have a higher truth value than science [under state control] which works for their elimination.”  “‘... phantasies of all person ... infantile tendencies ... the sexual feeling of the child for the parents.... the attraction of the son for the mother, and of the daughter for the father.... with the overcoming and rejection of these ...incestuous phantasies, ... one of the most painful psychic accomplishment of puberty; ... the breaking away from the parental authority, ... opposition between the new and old generation ... important for cultural progress.’” Freud Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex
‘it is not really a decisive matter whether one has killed one’s father or abstained from the deed,’ if the function of the conflict and its consequences are the same.” “In the Oedipus situation, the ... situation recurs under circumstanced ... assure the lasting triumph of the father." “... [the primal situation] assure the life of the son and his future ability to take the father’s place.”  “The function of the father is gradually transferred from his individual person to his social position, to his image in the son (conscience), to God, to the various agencies and agents which teach the son to become a mature and restrained member of his society.”  “The monogamic family, with its enforceable obligations for the father, restricts his [the sons] monopoly of pleasure; the institution of inheritable private property, and the universalization of labor, give a son a justified expectancy of his own sanctioned pleasure in accordance with his socially useful performances.”  “... framework of objective laws and institutions, ... puberty lead to the liberation from the father ... a necessary and legitimate event.”  "In the primal horde, the image of the desired woman, the mistress-wife of the father, was Eros and Thanatos in immediate, natural union.” “She was the aim of the sex instincts, and she was the mother in whom the son once had that integral peace which is the absence of all need and desire – the Nirvana before birth.”  “Perhaps the taboo on incest was the first great protection against the death instinct: the taboo on Nirvana, on the regressive impulse for peace which stood in the way of progress, of Life itself.” “With regard to the mother, sensual love becomes aim-inhibited and transformed into affection (tenderness).” “Sexuality and affection are divorced; only later they are to meet again in the love to the wife which is sensual as well as tender, aim-inhibited as well as aim-attaining.” “Tenderness is created out of abstinence — abstinence first enforced by the primal father.” “Once created, it becomes the psychical basis  not only for the family but also for the establishment of ... group relations." “‘... the primal father had prevented his sons from satisfying the directly sexual tendencies; he forced them into abstinence and consequently into the emotional ties with him and with one another which could arise out of those of their tendencies that were inhibited in their sexual aim. He forced them, so to speak, into group psychology.’” Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego  “Freud ... establishes a correlation between progress and increasing guilt feeling.” “He states his intention ‘to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the evolution of culture, and to convey that the price of progress in civilization is paid in forfeiting happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.’”  “... the prehistory of the sense of guilt; it has ‘its origin in the Oedipus complex and was acquired when the father was killed by the association of the brothers.’”  “... they [“‘the brothers’”] satisfied ... aggressive instinct; ... the love ... they had for the father caused remorse, created the superego by identification [with the father figure] ... created the ‘restrictions which would prevent a repetition of the deed.’”   Herbert Marcuse  Eros and Civilization