What Icarus Found Out: Hubris as Revelation Vs Hubris as Self-Destruction

Why Webster Was Wrong, Part Four

Interpreting, reviewing, & answering the 3rd part of Richard Webster’s Why Freud Was Wrong, “Psychoanalysis, Science and the Future.”

(Part One Part Two Part Three)

Damned Dualism

In the final pages of his book, Webster sums up what he perceives as the problem of our “technocentric, growth society.” Without using the word technocratic, he is clearly aware of the problems of Science as a rationale for technocratic social engineering.

And though he shows no awareness of how far-reaching, and how consciously conspiratorial, this problem is, he does emphasize the theory that lies at the heart of it, a theory that, in Webster’s view, almost all the priests, politicians, psychologists, and philosophers are assenting to, and which all the many systems of thought—especially psychoanalysis—are in service of:

This theory, which is entirely false, is the one whose epistemological consequences I’ve been trying to trace in this chapter and indeed throughout this book. It is the theory which, in its most common form, maintains that human beings are compounded of two separate but interconnected entities—a mind which is pure and a body which is relatively impure. It further maintains that the mind constitutes the essential reality of the individual, that the more securely it can assert its dominance and control over the body, the more surely the cause of human knowledge and human progress will be advanced. This theory might be given a number of different names. It might be known as Cartesian dualism, Platonic idealism, Aristotelian rationalism, apocalyptic reductionism, beast angel-dualism, or even Christianity (p. 505).

Though Webster doesn’t leave much out here except for Darwinism, the fact he ends on Christianity indicates that this has been his main target all along. Yet he’s also pointing out how this mind-body framework which has caused so many problems precedes Christianity, and is consistent with scientific mindsets such as that of Descartes (who was about as reductionist as you can get, while also being religious).

Yet Christianity, as Girard argued in his way (Webster doesn’t seem to have been aware of Girard at all), offers an answer to this tension, a way to resolve it, and certainly not via a rejection of the body.

To acknowledge the existence of something that transcends the body does not require rejecting the body—though it can lead to it—any more than acknowledging the ways in which the body makes us susceptible to malevolent influences makes the body itself bad. (We would not blame water or air for the pollution it carries)

It is only that this—the revilement of the physical in an attempt to be more spiritual—can be a tragic consequence of misunderstanding these ideas. It is a misunderstanding that Webster falls prey to, thereby turning the entirety of religious faith into a straw man to sacrifice on his Darwinian bonfire.

War on Religion

Webster quotes German historian Peter Gay on Freud’s rationalist stance and its resemblance to, and continuation of, 19^th century anti-clerical thought: “His view of religion as the enemy was wholly shared by the first generation of psychoanalysts” (p. 506).

Webster’s problem with Freud is not that he was anti-religious, however, but that, having “set out to defeat this enemy, he failed” (ibid.). This clearly underscores sympathy between Freud (the way Webster sees him, as an anti-religious reformer) and Webster himself.

Webster’s point is that Freud failed because he was himself carrying the virus of religion and propagating it in new forms. From my own point of view, I would be more inclined to think that this was what was good about Freud, and it is what is bad about Webster.

Both Webster and Freud were propagating a virus that religious thinking is by no means immune to: the virus of knowledge, the serpent in the garden—whatever that is—the hubristic or Luciferian element that wants to turn knowledge into empowerment, and a rejection of God.

This element is consistent through all religious movements, insofar as they have ended up compromised by worldly goals—by valuing the things of men over the things of God. This element is also consistent throughout science, the arts, and all the rest of culture, since, by definition, anything that manages to take hold within the world must be deemed of worldly value.

This element becomes more and more evident, I think, as Science—big “S”—has ascended to the throne of Western society over religion. As a pathogen, ironically, it’s even more evident in Webster than it was in Freud. The irony—which he never acknowledges—is that Webster is trying to do what Freud did, and that his main argument with Freud is that he failed where Webster wants so badly to succeed.