Wednesday, September 22, 2004
As a follow up to this post by Rod, below is an excerpt from Steve Beard's latest column: Dinner with Greats, in which he envisions a hypothetical dinner party sitting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis:
Freud and Lewis would have much to discuss with regard to pain, suffering, and the devastation of war. "Freud was deeply affected by the First World War," says Nicholi. "He had two sons that were in it. He looked deeply at human nature, trying to understand it, and why human beings would spend so much time destroying one another. And he came up with his theory of the 'death instinct.' That there's not only the libido, the desire to build and to procreate, but also a destructive instinct that was part of human nature."It's a great article. It got me thinking - if you could choose two people from history to sit between at dinner, who would you choose? Leave your answer in the comments.
Lewis would have most certainly understood Freud's perspective, but he ultimately comes at it from a different position. "Of course, Lewis agreed that there was something very destructive, and sinful, about human nature," says Nicholi. "He agreed with Freud that people need alteration. Freud thought they could be changed by psychoanalysis, by introspection, and so forth. And Lewis, of course, thought that the only way people could be dramatically changed was through redemption and atonement. People needed a spiritual rebirth."
In the midst of the plumes of smoke (both men loved their tobacco), it would not be long before their dinner conversation would turn to God. "They would have wonderful arguments about the existence of God," says Nicholi. "Freud seemed to be obsessed with that question. I mean, you read the first letters that we have when he was in college, and they're filled with arguments for the existence of God. And he, at that time, wrote that science seems to demand the existence of God."
Despite his resolute atheism, Freud could not escape his God-hauntedness. "The last book that he writes at the end of his life is on Moses and monotheism," Nicholi points out. "He can't leave the subject alone. I think that they would be off on that topic in two minutes flat."
If you'd like to comment on the article, that would be great too.
I think I will have more than one pair that I would choose to sit between.
My first choice - Jesus and Moses.